Simplifying my life

Today, I turned in the March newsletter for my church, and also resigned as the Editor, effective June. What a relief that is! It was always a few weeks of annoying moments of remembering that I'm absent-minded (the idea was to send out weekly reminders to contributers that the deadline was approaching, and I always forgot), and then a mad, packed weekend of slamming the thing together, and then adjusting margins, fonts, and grammar/typos. The timeline used to be "articles in on Sunday, draft ready Wednesday morning," but I quickly found that working full-time and actually having a life (and maybe hockey) on Sunday made this impossible.

So I shifted the deadline to Thursday and it was more possible... but still annoying. Articles requiring so much mangling ahead of time, and then whatever software I used to lay it out, had problems of its own. Finally, as I moved into a position at work that required my attendance at a weekly Wednesday-morning meeting, having to rush the proofs to church on Wednesday morning became insane. The donation of a wide-format printer (thanks, R!) to proof 11x17" originals on, as well as the ability to simply email a PDF to the church office for printing directly to the copier (again, thanks, R!) made this simpler.

But it still did not fill my soul, and in fact, felt quite the opposite each month. Proofing it with DD, the other "Comma Queen" at church, was the only joy. (She is as persnickety about commas etc. as I am; perhaps even more so, earning my eternal gratitude and adoration.)

So, with the submission of today's PDF, I resigned. And I hope against hope that someone steps up really soon so I can really be done.

Labrador Rescue is next on the chopping block. I am just not home enough to return the calls on a regular basis, and asswipes who dump their poorly trained dogs just wore me down. Next!