Pressure!

Ever get to that place where you're incredibly busy and feel...



Ah, that's a good one, isn't it?

This week the pressure is on!  I need to get my PowerPoint presentation finished for Friday.  Add that to the billion other things I have to do.  Luckily, I like playing around with PowerPoint.  This will be my first time using PowerPoint for a presentation using a projector, and I won't have my Personal Tech Guru (PTG) on hand.  Wish me luck that my Super Villain powers don't come into play and zap something.  After all, without PTG and his Super Hero powers, who knows what could go wrong?!

I do enjoy being busy and having jobs to do, and I'm very excited about Friday.  All of this busy, busy, busy is good for one other thing, too: I finally said "no" to someone.  You see, I'm one of those people who doesn't want to let anyone down.  I want to help them out, and I hate to disappoint.  Thus, I will find a way to be able to say "yes," even if that means a significant amount of stress or pressure.  Well, someone asked me to add one more massive project on top of all this and I told them I couldn't do it.  And you know what?  The world didn't blow up!  I don't even think they hate me.  Go figure!

One bad thing about the busy is that I haven't made any time for writing or editing (other than blog stuff), so that is something that must change.  I am going to give myself license to not feel guilty about that for this week only, and then next Monday I will begin NaNoEdMo.  I did NaNoEdWriMo (which I made up) last year, but this year I plan to hit NaNoWriMo for real in November, thus leaving me October for editing.  I want to edit my WIP#1, Lonely Hollow, and I want to edit several short stories I have written but not revisited.  If I could FINISH editing Lonely Hollow I could start querying in November or December.  While that puts a sort of additional pressure on me, the butterflies it causes are ones of excitement, which I'm delighted to discover.  I get excited when I think of getting back to editing my WIP, and I get excited when I think about beginning the query process (hopefully).  Do me a favor and remind me of that when I'm getting those rejections and falling into a deep hole of depression.  Mmmm-k?

Speaking of rejection, I did receive two rejections in the last two weeks.  One rejection I was quite okay with; the other I found very disappointing - I wanted it very badly.  Happily, a few people cheered me up on Facebook, and I was able to just spend one evening being sad then move on.  It happens, and I'm going to re-submit both pieces elsewhere.   

What's your pressure this week?  Does Billy Joel still rock or what?  What are your favorite and/or most productive ways to cope with pressure/stress?  Do you have trouble turning people down?

May you find your Muse.