Weekends are not break time

I look forward to weekends, but not because they're a chance to rest and relax. I guess they could be that, of course, if I were a little bit less masochistic about making myself get things done. No, for me, weekends involve the hardest work of the week. They tend to be when I spend the most time on my creative activities, and because of that it's both the most stressful part of my week and the most rewarding.

I've had houseguests since the first day of the month. How is it already October 12th? Anyway, a lot of my attention has been spent on them--first my friend Fred, and then my sister Patricia. It's been busy but fun, and to add to the excitement, my youngest sister Lindsay got engaged! So we've had all kinds of celebrations.

With Patricia at Thai Temple

Family at dinner: Dad, Patricia, Lindsay, her fiancé Mike, me!

Despite all the visitaters, I've gotten a fair amount done. During the two weeks, I uploaded to online photo albums, kept up with my weekly webcomic and wasn't late, planned a Halloween party and did the first shopping trip, had a blog post up every day, managed to pop in and out on Facebook and Twitter, got interviewed in South Florida Gay News on asexuality, did Internet karaoke twice, and wrote a short story.

Whew.

But today is the last day my sister will be here, and then Sunday I will have an empty house again for the first time in what seems like a while. And of course, my eager-for-punishment brain jumps at the chance to demand that I accomplish things, so the following items populate my to-do list for the weekend:

• Decorate for Halloween so I don't have to do it later. (I'm having a Halloween party next weekend.)
• Research markets for my new short story.
• Work on tweaking my nonfiction book.
  
• Prepare my part of a collaborative video I tentatively agreed to participate in for Asexual Awareness Week (begins October 20).
• Write and film my individual contribution to Asexual Awareness Week--a how-to-come-out video for asexual people.
• Internet karaoke and maybe reading.
• Write the next webcomic so I can start working on it early.
• If I have time and I feel like it, work on my other in-progress short story.
• Laundry, man.

That'll be in addition to all the stuff I usually do every day (blogging, being a social media nerd, taking random phone calls, eating things and laughing at cats on Tumblr).

I'm going to have a pretty stressful week coming up as I try to get all kinds of ridiculous things baked for my Halloween party--I always bake everything from scratch, and there are a ton of homemade desserts I need to get cooking on. I'm not going to have time for creative stuff the closer I get to the party so I'd better get something satisfying under my belt before Monday rolls around.

Something satisfying, besides my coffee. There will be a lot of that too.