WHEN THINGS DON'T GO RIGHT

I have a school visit in Maryland tomorrow in the morning. My plan WAS to leave around 3. Ha! That didn't happen. I got home from work late last night (10 or so) watched some TV and ate dinner and then fell asleep on the couch (it was an exhausting day at work because Pete Townshend was talking and there was a craze at the store). Then I awoke to an interesting movie on PBS so I decided to watch it. Then I went to bed. I started to doze off but suddenly awoke to a horrific pain in my head. It was SOOOO BAD. Then I got nauseous and started vomiting. I watched the clock go from 4 am to 5 am to 6 am... I tried going back to bed. Clearly my plans for getting up early, changing the oil in the car and then doing my laundry were OVER.

So now it's 3 pm and I've done nothing but sip some coffee and hope that my lingering headache will disappear. I've also gotten an email from my editor with another draft of my 2013 picture book. They need my response ASAP. My editor had called while I was trying to sleep off my headache around 10 am.

So I don't really have clean laundry. My car will probably run out of oil. And my editor hasn't gotten a response yet. My point in all of this is that as an author/illustrator you have to learn to roll with the punches. You can't get stressed about things when the plan doesn't go exactly the way you wanted it to.         Sometimes the projector won't work... sometimes a kid will say something unexpected and strange... you have to just go with it. If you're the type who gets really upset when things don't go exactly right then you might not make it doing this type of thing! At least I think so.