#MFRWAuthor Blog Challenge | Linda McLaughlin/Lyndi Lamont

Every business consultant says you should have a five-year plan and a ten-year plan, but let’s face it, life seldom cooperates, it just happens as cartoonist Allen Saunders pointed out back in 1957. (No, John Lennon didn’t make it up, just repeated it.)

Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans. – Allen Saunders
Photo by license from depositphotos.com

This truism was born home to me rather forcibly in 2014/15. Losing my husband to bladder cancer wasn’t in the plans, but it happened. Since then, I have tried not to sweat the small stuff, and there’s a lot of small stuff.

Should I have a one-year plan and a five-year plan and a ten-year plan for my career? Probably. But do I? Not really. I know it’s not possible to predict the future in the kind of detail that a plan requires. Future trends can be predicted, sometimes, though the predictions are often wrong or way off target as to timing. I’m still waiting for my jet pack and flying car!

So what do I think (hope) my life will be like in ten years? Not in any order.

First and foremost, I hope I’m still in reasonably good health ten years from now.
Lots more books & novellas written and published; more royalty money earned.
Lots of travel to blog about for Tuesday Travels. I have quite the travel bucket list.
A circle of dear family members and friends.

Do I have dreams of winning awards and making bestseller lists? Not really. I don’t have any control over that. What I can control is maintaining a reasonable healthy lifestyle, getting the writing done, maintaining relationships with loved ones, and not passing up any opportunity to travel.

I really need to work on that healthy lifestyle thing. But my niece is planning to grill pork chops on the BBQ tonight. There’s always tomorrow, right?

How good are you at planning?

Linda

Click on the linky list below for more posts for Week 32: Ten Years from Now… in the MFRWauthor 52-Week Blog Challenge.

I wish I could say that I’m one of those highly disciplined writers who maintain a daily schedule of x hours of writing before doing anything else, but for me every day of the week is different, and not necessarily like the same day was the previous week. Sigh.

Our interconnected world has made it more difficult than ever for people to concentrate. It’s like everyone is ADD now, just trying to keep up with everyday life plus social media. When it is time to write, I have to power down the cell phone and disconnect from the Internet to get anything done.

I won’t go into all the reasons why I don’t have a regular schedule, but I do have several days of the week that are “running around” days, which means I have an hour or two max in the morning before I leave (if that) and I may not get home until 2-3PM or even later. Some authors try to cram all of their shopping and appointments into those two run around days, but I never seem to manage to fit it all in. And if a friend wants to go to lunch… well, I’m unlikely to say no. So sometimes I write in the morning and sometimes in the late afternoon. By evening I’m too brain dead to do much of anything.

If I’m lucky, my niece Patty and I find time in the evening to drive to the beach overlook to watch the sun set. Watching the waves move in and out relaxes me after a busy day. We’ve had some really pretty ones lately, like this one from last week. My new Nexus 5X takes pretty good pictures!

I do need to start carving out bigger blocks of time for writing. Wish me luck.

How about you? Do you have a set schedule?

Linda

As always, use the linky list below to find more posts in the #MFRWAuthor 52-Week #Blog Challenge.

Linda McLaughlin/Lyndi Lamont

Romance author

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