This week I thought things would calm down a little with my day job. But that wasn’t the case. The workload actually increased. It seems every time we accomplish something, the higher ups decide we can do more quicker. That’s part of the reason I tend to focus on managing my stress in these posts. Life certainly isn’t easy. Stress seems to be all around. Much of that stress in my life, comes from expectations of those I work for.
It’s important to me that I learn how to endure the stress without losing my cool. Not all stress is bad, and some can make me work better. I just can’t afford to be overwhelmed. That also means I need to learn when it is time to step away for a couple minutes. One way that I step away is through writing my books and stories during my one-hour lunch break. I used to sit at my work computer, open a word processor, and type, but with all the office communication software, typing on my computer makes me vulnerable to questions during that almost sacred lunch time. I recently adjusted how I manage my lunch breaks.
Rather than use my work computer to write my stories, I have begun to bring in a small tablet. Now, when I go on lunch, I turn to another part of my desk and open my tablet. My work computer doesn’t indicate that I am at my desk, and the questions wait, most of the time. A few coworkers pay attention to this. If they see me typing away on my tablet, they know I am at lunch. In fact, a few times, they come to my cubicle, check the time, and will wait until the end of my lunch break before interrupting me.
If there is one thing I’ve learned in the last few years, it is that stress is a part of my job. I may not be alone in my struggles with it, but I have to work through it. I have to find the ways to unwind, escape, and disconnect from it. Writing stories, something I enjoy, helps. In the evenings, reading stories and books for a few minutes before I sleep also helps.
There will always be deadlines, expectations, and more work than I can probably accomplish. But I have my ways to manage it. Reading good science fiction and fantasy, and working on improving my own writing in my science fiction and fantasy stories, is one of my ways to keep it under control.
Check out my books A Map, a Mage, and a Sacrifice, The Promise of Dust, and Progenitor’s Legacy: Deceit, which are all free on Kindle for the next few days, beginning today.
Dissonance, my sequel to Resonance, went live on Amazon Kindle and as a paperback on September 3, 2021. In that book, time travel is tearing the world apart, and only those that sense the resonance can feel the changes. Wyatt, Brooke, Aldan, Jeremy, and Avery, have to determine who to trust as they look for the source of the changes. It is a sequel to Resonance, which is my best performing book on Amazon, so far.
My fantasy, A Map, a Mage, and a Sacrifice, was a fun book to write. It is set in a world with limited technology, but where sacrifice is a necessary element to magical power. The greater the pain and suffering, the greater the magical power generated. The few mages in power use voluntary sacrifice of the citizens to generate power they use to protect and defend the empire. But their rule may be coming to a close.
If you’re looking for a science fiction story, try my book The Promise of Dust, which takes place in a cloud city floating in the atmosphere of Venus. Or Progenitor’s Legacy: Deceit, which takes place many years in the future on a tidally locked world that orbits a red dwarf and has been reached by humanity in their search for the alien progenitors who seeded the galaxy with nano machines.
If a young adult science fiction is more to your liking, check out my series This New Earth, that starts with Demons of a Dead World and Secrets of a Dead World.
If you are looking for a young adult fantasy, check out my book The Threads Unbound.
DANIEL R. BURKHARD 