Getting distracted

The past few weeks distracted me completely from the routine of writing I had established.

First, I had a party to deal with.  Alex's 60th birthday and our 20th wedding anniversary.  It was a good party, catered by the Bay Leaf restaurant at our house. About 30 friends and family members joined in, some from as far away as England. We enjoyed it, but it will be another 10 years before we do it again. Stress!!!


The OCC awards needed attention including a press release and web pages highlighting the stories of the winners.It didn't help that the OCC website had a catastrophic failure during that time, and I'm the webmaster. Dealing with that has been very stressful.

Next, we had a presentation to do in London. That involved creating a PowerPoint deck which we can now use for future presentations. We flew over to London for two days to conduct a seminar about cruising the west of Ireland at the CA House in London.  The talk went very well. We had more than 60 attendees, gave a lively presentation, answered quite a few questions, sold a few books and had a few laughs.  It was great fun.

But the weather has also gotten better (until this weekend, of course, being Easter and all) requiring gardening and spring clean up as well as spring chores on the boat. Not enough time for all the work. Not enough energy for the time we have.

A pile of books arrived for book reviews which I have been quickly penning. The books are very good so it makes this task all the easier. But it's still a distraction.

Next, I have to create a presentation loop for the OCC Awards Dinner in Henley next week. That's a lot of work. We leave Friday morning.

In the meantime, I had an article published in Yachting World which took a good deal of effort. And Practical Boat Owner contacted us for an emergency article on sailing the west of Ireland, so I dropped everything and did that. Might sell a few more books.

Yesterday, my niece and nephew-in-law had their first son, Alexander Lee, by C-section. I couldn't be there in the US as I had to give up my GNIB residence card to get my Irish citizenship. Cannot travel out of the country without it.  But I received a letter telling me my citizenship ceremony will be taking place April 26th in Dublin. Yippee!  A citizen of the EU and US I'll be.

So with this hectic month coming to a close, Alex hasn't been able to finish reading my novel so it's delayed in going to print. Ba humbug. I wanted to see it in my hands before I moved on to the next. So many projects so little time to action them. When God made time, he should have made lots more for me.