Assistant question: If anyone has an assistant who actually helps process e-mail, tips would be welcome. I’m honestly not sure how to organize this with my assistant in a way that would be helpful.
I’ve also been a little startled to realize just how much time keeping my (pretty big) house neat takes (even with a fortnightly housecleaner for the intensive cleaning of floors, kitchen, and bathroom).
We’ve been doing the daily chores (dishes, laundry, cooking, groceries, errands, picking up, yard work) ourselves for 8 years in this house, but when my assistant took over a lot of it, we started actually counting the hours. It’s significant.
Since outsourcing that, I’ve made a lot more progress on the writing work (including the business parts of writing), which I hope will soon be making enough to cover the cost of the assistant. Right now, it’s an investment in the future, like taking out a loan to start a business — but it’s surprisingly difficult to think of my writing as a business worthy of investing in.