| I think maybe I had something I wanted to talk about today? But I don't remember anymore because we've been multitasking, and that tends to make me forget everything. It might have something to do with Sailor Moon. Apparently they pushed back the release date again. This is aggravating in the extreme, but we don't have time to worry about it. We haven't missed any other deadlines than the one this Monday (and a Sailor Moon one, which we thought was an early one, but may instead have something to do with why it got pushed back again. We're sorry, Sailor Moon fans!), but it still feels like we're behind on everything, partially because of Sailor Moon (which we really really really want to work on!), and partially because our schedule is packed to the gills even without it. But we're on the last volume of both of the two titles we blame for the excessive packed-ness of our schedule, so we like to think that maybe we will have some breathing room in the future.
On the bright side! we did almost finish the project that's due either tomorrow or Monday. On the less bright side, we're going to have another momentum problem like we did last month, because once again we have an orthodontist appointment and a church cleanup assignment on the same day. But that's okay. We'll figure it all out.
Today I'm thankful for almost finishing a daunting project (it didn't start out daunting, but then it was), finally getting out to get the mail, remembering that we ordered some old Disney movies a while back, having those movies in our possession, and the hope that we'll get to watch one of them soon. |
I'm glad to hear you're close to finishing two projects and can hope for an easier schedule in the near(?!) future!
We originally told our editor that we would get volume four in a week ago. She needed something else first, so we told her it would be a few days late, but here we are a week later and not seeing anywhere to fit it into our schedule. Of course, part of that is our fault, too, because we had Sailor Moon on our schedule so you'd think we could have made some time for it. We think a bunch of stuff took longer than expected, which again is why we don't feel crippled with guilt, just utterly annoyed at the situation.
On the other hand, we also realize that pretty much everyone on the series is in the same boat--we're all drowning in work and can't figure out a way to do it all (sorry if we're making off-base assumptions). So it's just a conundrum, and we're annoyed by it, because Sailor Moon is what we want to work on, and we desperately want people to be able to read it, and we want people to see that translation quality can make a difference. But we also want and need to do the other work. So all we can do is wish we could smack around the people who keep insisting we do monthly translations for titles that will be released tri-monthly. And say no to any new offers... *shifty eyes*
Smacking the people who give you monthly assignments for tri-monthly series might not fix the problem, but I think it'd be fair to talk to them and tell them your schedule doesn't have time for that nonsense right now. (you can say it nicer, though :) ) Yes, turning down new offers for a while is another good idea. You can do it! It might feel sad, but it might feel good too to know you did it! And then when your schedule gets swamped again anyway, you can think, "Imagine how much worse it might have been...!"
The worst was last month, when one of the monthly translations hit (not for Seven Seas), and our boss said (and maybe we've told you this story before), "When can you get it in?" and we looked at our schedule and figured out the soonest we could do it without killing ourselves and said, "How about the 24th?" and he emailed back and said, "How about the 15th?"
Of course, we thought that would turn out okay, because we'd get over the huge mountain of work early and have a little bit of extra breathing room now that it was already out of the way, but then we had to go and agree to do a new time-consuming thing (because it was related to something else we already did and loved). And this is the constant vicious cycle that runs our lives.
We will definitely talk about the one title we still have that's monthly when it's not being released monthly (almost definitely; if it's only one and everything else looks fine, we might figure it's okay (and if it turns out not to be okay, we will revisit the talking about it option)), but the other two are about to end, and we will also definitely be more up front about humanly-possible schedules when discussing new offers.