Back to school time!

Even though I haven't been a student for the last 8 years I still have a soft spot for this time of year. I carry vivid teen-aged memories of going to the mailbox at the end of August and retrieving the back-to-school issue of Teen magazine with Tory Spelling on the cover, returning home and eating it up. There's just something so studious but fresh about September!

This year, at my teacher friend Mrs.Roddy's prompting, I decided to follow the school calendar with my own work. As you may know, I'm working part-time and my goal is to spend the other part of my time writing. But I confess that sometimes that other time never materializes. I've given myself a break for the last three months since I've been easing into this whole Seattle thing, but now that school is starting, I'm sharpening the number 2's and buckling down hard core. It's business time.

The first week won't be too strenuous -- no monster assignments just yet. Just an hour a day getting back into the swing of this writing life. To help kick-start the routine I'm making plans to get out of the house as much as possible. Home work is amazing but also a trap for the easily distracted among us. In fact, you'll find me right now at the hipster haunt Oddfellow's on Capitol Hill, beavering away. I count no less than nine macs surrounding me so I'm in good company.

School supplies are of course the best part of adopting a school calendar. This year I'm going for just the basics, you know, things like 0.4 black Pilot pens (only the literally finest) and graph paper notebooks for catching ideas (grass catching I've heard this called), espresso, fresh flowers and my tomato timer.

In case you're out of the fruit loop, tomato timers are so hot! The pomodoro technique is a time management technique that has me working productively (gettin' things done) for 25 minutes and then browsing etsy or the blog-o-sphere or dreaming of painting my table a glossy black for the next 5. Repeat. I'm obsessed with time management tactics and this is doing the trick for me lately. (Here's the link to download your own personal tomato to your dashboard.)

Tomatoes aside, there's another method I'm using to get myself back into becoming the part-time writer I need to be. It involves stepping way from the blog for a bit. Not completely, just a minor retreat to one post a week rather than two. Nothing dramatic but wanted to warn you and hope you don't miss virtual me too much.

Well, happy back-to-school. How are you ringing in the autumn?


{photo from design*sponge}