wiseheart | Not dead yet... but not far from it, either

The last couple of weeks had been seriously trying my endurance.

Since our insane education reform, life as a teacher has become a lot more difficult, and I'm not getting any younger. Add the fact that Christmas baking has started, that the company we get the central heating from reacts to the enforced price drop with restricting the heat we actually get and that my work now consist of three different pieces: regular lessons in the morning, part-time school librarian and afternoon hours with the kids that don't go home after lessons, my life has become so stressful that I hardly managed to write the odd page here and there in-between.

It isn't the actual hours that I spend at work - their sum isn't much more than last year, I had worked rather insane hours in recent years - it's the fact that they're so unevenly spaced. Either I'm at work for 11 hours, or for 3 hours. Granted, the latter happens once in a fortnight, which means that I have to do on that single afternoon everythign I haven't had time for during the previous two weeks. Either I start working at 7:30 or at 11a.m or at any possible or impossible hour in-between. Either I stop working at 11 a.m. (once in a fortnight) or at 7p.m, or at any possible or impossible hour in-between. There is no rhythm, no order, no nothing, and it's more draining as if I had to work regular 8 hours a day.

No wonder that my poor muses can't keep up with this insanity. The hope that I'd actually finish Emissary of the Mark before the end of this year is diminishing. A shame, really, as I only have two half-written chapters to finish left.