bethofalltrades

I wrote this blog on my Blackberry on Monday, when I was on my way to Boston. I stayed in Boston for 6 hours, went back to NYC, threw some things in a bag and got on a plane to London.

I held off on posting this until I had the Boss's okay.

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I am on a bus to Boston. The power outlets don't work so I can't either. Frustrating.

Saw alannabear and her husband Mark. It was fun, like old times. Except instead of being jaded theatre students, now we're grown ups with jobs. She's a nurse. She helps deliver babies.

She said sometimes she wishes she had my life. I wanted to say that in the grand scheme of What Matters keeping babies alive probably trumps keeping the circus running smoothly.

Someone asked in a comment a while ago what I actually do. Well, I've got time and only a Blackberry to entertain me, so I will tell you.

I usually wake up around six because Cinderella wants food. At this point I will have slept between three and no hours. I stagger out of bed, feed the cat, and check my blackberry for anything Urgent. If I find nothing Urgent, I go back to sleep until about noon, when I get up, get breakfast, shower and start the day.

Email. Email requires about an hour to deal with Important things every day, and another hour for maintenance. I can skip maintenance, but each day I do that adds another 100 to 150 emails to be dealt with, then filed or deleted.

What are these emails?
Out of 100:
- 20 of them are from my Boss, to only me, asking that I Do something
- another 20 are from my Boss to other people and I'm CC'd.
- 5 are from my Boss's rad manager, asking that I Do something
- another 20 are from my Boss's rad manager to other people and I'm CC'd.
- 10 are from other people on the team (photographers, filmmakers, our internet marketing team, designers, publicists, the label, our artistic director, touring crew, merch folks), some of which require that I Do something
- 15 are from people who Want Something (an interview, a meeting, a track for a compilation, photographs for a press outlet, to open for my Boss, a box of swag for a charity auction, an introduction for a book, an advance copy of the CD, a spot on the guestlist, a photopass, an autograph)
- 3 are fanmail
- 3 are friends wondering why I've been out of touch for so long
- 3 are from my Mom
- 1 is a Your Mom joke

After email there are Projects. Right now we have:

- book with Neil Gaiman and Kyle Cassidy
- 7" vinyl
- WKAP songbook
- world tour planning, including:
-- merch round-up (we'll talk more about this later)
--photo passes
--guestlist
--finding yoga on tour for my Boss
- launch of amandapalmer.net
- launch of redesigned dresdendolls.com
- peak oil awareness project (I am trying hard to care about peak oil)

These projects take varying degrees of time. There are also ongoing projects like:

- artist outreach and relations for Post-War Trade
- fixing my Boss's computer when things go wrong
- reorganizing the tens of thousands of live and promo photos in the archive
- pulling photos for use in press, website, MySpace, etc.
- helping troubleshoot when Things Go Wrong (like the recent binding problems with The Virginia Companion)
- maintaining my Boss's schedule. Sometimes this involves the actual creation of more time
- keeping a finger on the pulse of the fanbase; this involves checking MySpace, the forum and the comments on my Boss's blog
- sorting fanmail
- general clerical (mail this, order that, file this, draft a letter to her, etc)

These things also take varying degrees of time. I do things like check the forum every day. I haven't really started reorganizing the archive.

Now let's get back to merch. I'm in charge of organizing all our ideas, pricing things out, guaging interest, and making recommendations to my Boss. Then we talk it out and come up with a full plan. I work with designers to make it happen. Sometimes time is short and I do the designs myself. Sometimes I clean up or alter old designs. Then the art goes to the merch company who produces it.

This takes way more time than it sounds like it would.

Okay. So Projects, both finite and ongoing, take up most of the rest of my day. I usually get dinner around 8PM and then settle in for a few more hours of work. By then there is new email to be dealt with, so I do that.

Around midnight or 1am I usually spend some time reading the blogs and watching YouTube videos. I also try to fit in time IMing with various friends during the course of the day-- I take breaks or multitask whenever they happen to be around.

About 2am I realize often that I Did Not Do something important, so I do it then. Wander to the kitchen for a snack, then I settle in to try to sleep. About this time Cinderella decides its time to sleep too, so we snuggle. While we snuggle, I think about the things I didn't get done and create a mental gameplan for the next day. Around 4 or 5am I fall asleep.

This is a day when I'm in New York and my Boss is not. When we are in the same city, my days are very different, especially if there is a show. But the majority of the time, this is what the days look like. Sometimes I alter my schedule to see a movie or have brunch with a friend. I am finding work life balance, slowly.

I find it incredibly fulfilling. Yes, I'd rather be out on tour, but until that happens again, I do this and I know that what I do is necessay and important and keeps things running smoothly--and I am
good at it.

And, unlike Alanna, when I have a bad day it's not because babies died.

Love,
Beth