First Cup of Coffee – April 18, 2025

My week of well-refilling and alternate-achieving. Being a career creative and balancing that output with business decisions/responsibilities and keeping ourselves healthy and happily creating.

STRANGE FAMILIAR is live! https://www.jeffekennedy.com/strange-familiar 

You can preorder MAGIC REBORN at https://www.jeffekennedy.com/magic-reborn

RELUCTANT WIZARD is out now and the audiobook is live!! https://www.jeffekennedy.com/reluctant-wizard

The posture-correcting sports bra I love almost more than life itself is here https://forme.therave.co/37FY6Z5MTJAUKQGA

Join my Patreon and Discord for mentoring, coaching, and conversation with me! Find it at https://www.patreon.com/JeffesCloset

You can always buy print copies of my books from my local indie, Beastly Books! https://www.beastlybooks.com/

If you want to support me and the podcast, click on the little heart or follow this link (https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/jeffekennedy).

Sign up for my newsletter here! (https://landing.mailerlite.com/webforms/landing/r2y4b9)

You can watch this podcast on video via YouTube https://youtu.be/7KGCZNDZLk8

Transcript

00:01.95
Jeffe Kennedy
Good morning everyone. This is Jeffe Kennedy, author of Epic Fantasy Romance. I'm here with my first cup of coffee.

00:13.94
Jeffe Kennedy
Utterly delightful. ah Today is... Oh, say it with me. Today is Friday! Woohoo! April 18th.

00:25.25
Jeffe Kennedy
i I confess for a moment there I had no idea what day of the week it was because... I have not been working this week, um, or at least not writing this week, as many of you know.

00:37.50
Jeffe Kennedy
um and it's, it's been good. It has not been, um I've gotten a lot done. I've, I've gotten a lot done.

00:48.58
Jeffe Kennedy
and I'm trying to decide what I was trying to say. it has not been, has not been slothful. It has not been the, uh, is it ever for me?

00:59.40
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, I always come back to the Clifton strength stuff, which really did help me understand large parts of how I operate and, um, being number three achiever.

01:11.60
Jeffe Kennedy
I'm not happy unless I'm getting things done, unless I'm achieving things. And so when my friends tell me, Oh, you should be resting. You know, you it's like, no, I, I, I get bored and I start feeling restless, but,

01:27.21
Jeffe Kennedy
I'm very happy to report that I have completed a couple of major projects. I finished a beta read for a friend and will send her comments today. And I completed um the final tax stuff for 2024.

01:44.66
Jeffe Kennedy
We file in October. For those of you noting that it's april after April 15th. yeah ba yeah after april fifteenth Uh, yeah, I, we don't file on the 15th.

01:56.80
Jeffe Kennedy
And so technically I had lots more time to get this done because I calculate quarterly, but, um, I really want to get a lot of decks cleared right now while I am not having anything writing do.

02:11.91
Jeffe Kennedy
And I keep saying to people, I've kind of adopted the phrase and for the first time in living memory. Um, I'm not sure.

02:23.24
Jeffe Kennedy
when the last time was that I didn't have a project waiting on the wings. I mean, I have things I could work on, but that I don't have something that is due either for a self-imposed or externally imposed deadline.

02:43.99
Jeffe Kennedy
And, um, and it's, it, the freedom is just, Just amazing. I don't think we realize ah what we do to ourselves as creatives, as I want to say working creatives, as career creatives, when you get yourself into this, making a living off of your art.

03:06.41
Jeffe Kennedy
And you do have to have that discipline. You do have to have that ability to make yourself work every day, to meet deadlines. Yeah. self-imposed or externally imposed.

03:19.13
Jeffe Kennedy
If you don't have self-imposed deadlines, you don't get things out on time. You don't get your books released by the publication date or your, whatever you set up for your pre-order.

03:31.47
Jeffe Kennedy
And I was having, drinks and lunch with, ah Minerva Spencer, my friend who lives up in Taos. Uh, we had our monthly meeting at the bar in Jinja And where we sit and have snacks and drink drinks for about four hours. Well, her husband goes to the stamp club meeting.

03:54.21
Jeffe Kennedy
And one of the things we were talking about was she was saying she was having a very hard time making herself work on this book. And we were talking about moving to this thing. And I think I've mentioned it before where we don't set up books for pre-order anymore ah because it creates so much pressure on ourselves.

04:13.58
Jeffe Kennedy
And she had run this book past me, you know, like essentially plotting it out, talking out the plot. And so she knows what she needs to write and she just doesn't want to.

04:28.17
Jeffe Kennedy
And I, and the thing is, is she's made really good money and they are in a good financial position now. I mean, not enough that she can stop, but also she's not worried about paying next month's bills.

04:42.92
Jeffe Kennedy
And, um, and I said, why don't you just write something that you do want to write? And she got this look on her face, like this look of intense hopefulness.

04:54.22
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, and she said, do you think I could do that? I said, yes, just cancel this pre-order, give yourself permission to write whatever you want to write. And that's a very interesting place to be.

05:08.14
Jeffe Kennedy
um I remember when I was a newbie writer,

05:14.97
Jeffe Kennedy
Oh, these many, many years ago, I'm going to say 20 years ago when I first started um writing essays and getting them published. maybe more than 20 years ago, because my first book, my essay collection, Wyoming trucks, true love and the weather channel came out in 2004.

05:36.12
Jeffe Kennedy
two thousand and four So a little over 20 years ago now. And so I think this may have been before that, when I was starting to get essays published in magazines.

05:49.29
Jeffe Kennedy
But yeah, but But that was, that was, it I think i it was enough that I was like, considered to be a legit writer, um which is not to say those of you who do not have publications yet, you're, it's not that you're not legit, but you know how it feels, right? Where you're writing and writing things and people are like, are you still haven't finished that book yet?

06:13.38
Jeffe Kennedy
and you don't really have anything to show for it. So this was a point after which I did have something to show for it. And the writers in my small Wyoming town um had kind of admitted me to their circles.

06:28.69
Jeffe Kennedy
which makes it sound more highfalutin than it was, but it's simply that they, they knew I was a writer also. And, and I was friends with Mark Jenkins who lived a block down the street from us. And we were good friends with Mark and his wife.

06:44.19
Jeffe Kennedy
She was just great. and We would socialize together a lot, but Mark also wrote for outside magazine. He wrote a couple of books. He would go do these like adrenaline junkie adventures.

06:58.38
Jeffe Kennedy
And Outside Magazine was located in Santa Fe at the time. And he would sometimes fly from Laramie to, you know, Laramie to Denver and then Denver to Santa Fe.

07:09.99
Jeffe Kennedy
And I was traveling a lot for the day job. And there was more than once that ah Mark and I ended up on the same, you know, first flight out on the prop plane from Laramie in the morning. And we would chat there too.

07:24.27
Jeffe Kennedy
But Mark said something to me one day. that has stuck with me, although I did not follow his advice. Uh, and I, do I wish I had, I don't know.

07:36.67
Jeffe Kennedy
I, I'm not much for going back and thinking about what I wish I'd done because the path led me here and I'm happy with here.

07:49.95
Jeffe Kennedy
But um Mark gave me some very wise advice. He said, enjoy this time when you have no expectations, when you have nothing to you, you know, have no deadlines.

08:04.99
Jeffe Kennedy
No one is expecting you to write anything in particular, not your readers, not your employer, not Now is the time when you have the ultimate freedom to write anything at all.

08:17.29
Jeffe Kennedy
And he says, I wish that I had enjoyed it when I had it. And for me, um i was i didn't want to listen because I wanted what he had.

08:29.14
Jeffe Kennedy
Right. I wanted to be employed by a magazine and have deadlines and expectations. I wanted there to be readers out there who wanted it my work.

08:40.41
Jeffe Kennedy
And those are all great things to want. Right. um You know, that's part. You have to want them if you're going to be a career creative. Right. You know, you. you want there to be an audience hungry for your work because that's how you make a living. You know, you want there to be people who pay you to, to do the thing that you do.

09:01.79
Jeffe Kennedy
But he was absolutely right in that. I did not value that time when I could write anything at all. The, the way that I could have, and I want to say should have, um,

09:16.26
Jeffe Kennedy
And it's something that we just, we get ourselves into this pattern, which is important. It's important to establish that pattern, right? Of productivity, of meeting deadlines, of getting books out regularly, you know, producing the next book in the series.

09:34.00
Jeffe Kennedy
But seeing that look on Minerva's face when I said, why don't you just write something that you just want to write? And it seemed like such a ah gift. And I don't know if she will.

09:48.18
Jeffe Kennedy
She might keep trying to work on this book that she has up for pre-order. ah But I am realizing right now that I am in that space where I don't have anything that I have. Well,

10:03.07
Jeffe Kennedy
caveat this. Of course, I need to write Magic Reborn, the final book in my nine book cycle of Bonds of Magic, Renegades of Magic, Warriors of Magic.

10:14.55
Jeffe Kennedy
But I have the pre-order up for October 31st. I can't publish it before that because of my non-compete with Tor. And I have lots of time to write it. And I am cognizant that, you know, that's like six months away.

10:33.35
Jeffe Kennedy
And so it's not like have infinite time, but I certainly have time right now. And, you know, eventually I will be getting edits back on a rose in the mirror, a rose in the mirror.

10:48.63
Jeffe Kennedy
And there will be a sequence of things to do on that. You know, and so I may just wait until those come in. I may work on some other things. I might just...

11:02.41
Jeffe Kennedy
write something for fun. I got, I got an idea, um, that it's just really a formless, formless nebulous idea right now, but I kind of want to write it.

11:14.79
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, but I'm just going to let it percolate. I'm going to, you know, do this well refilling thing that I'm always advising all of you to do. I'm going to do it for myself. Um, and focus my achieving on all of these household chores.

11:29.97
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, So taxes for 2024, pretty much all done. I need to run some QA and make sure all the documents are there and send that off. But then I'll send comments to my friends on her book.

11:45.47
Jeffe Kennedy
And then I'm going to start in on 2025 taxes. I've been trying to do quarterly, as I've mentioned, I really need to report quarterly. ah And so, of course, I'm already behind on first quarter of 2025.

12:00.80
Jeffe Kennedy
I'm going to try to assemble all the information monthly. I've altered my spreadsheet so that, for instance, when I go look up my credit card bill, you know, like what do I need to pay this month, that I go ahead and grab that information of expenses and put it into my tax sheets. My taxes are complicated.

12:22.03
Jeffe Kennedy
I probably should have said that straight off because I know that for many people, they take the standard deduction and you know, it's a fairly easy thing. um I am one of those people with a mountain of receipts and I have, I itemize, I have a lot of deductions for the business.

12:41.58
Jeffe Kennedy
There are some parts of my income that are not reported on 10 99. So I have to keep track of all of that. Um, I'm, I'm a very compliant taxpayer. And so, yeah, I'm, I'm going to start to compiling that information monthly, fully aware. Yeah, Julian's going to get himself tangled up.

13:03.25
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, fully aware that the cat will, get himself tangled. Uh, fully aware that there will be some months that I slide behind. and I really just, uh,

13:14.94
Jeffe Kennedy
I don't know I have this goal where I want to try not to slide behind so much and if I could just. Um. Manage my writing schedule. but This is my ultimate goal. And I know this is, but if you're a long time listener, you know, I talk about this all the time.

13:31.25
Jeffe Kennedy
Like maybe I need to scale back my, my daily word count. Um, so that I have a little more brain space to do business, uh, to keep up with all the numbers.

13:47.38
Jeffe Kennedy
We'll see. i I don't know. Um, And then I want to do, so of course we've been building the casita, but regular listeners know we've been building the casita. So one of the things that goes along with having a massive construction project on your property is we have one of those immense dumpsters, right? You know, like one of those industrial size construction worthy dumpsters.

14:15.14
Jeffe Kennedy
And one of the things I want to do, they're going to be wrapping up in the next week or two. is I want to clean up the property. I want to do my spring cleanup. Um, it maybe it's going to be warm next week. We're snow this weekend, snow starting this afternoon.

14:30.78
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, it's no end rain, which is, we want the precipitation. Uh, I posted this to social media, but doesn't it seem like precipitous should mean full of precipitation.

14:42.58
Jeffe Kennedy
I feel like we should have a write in campaign to change the word meaning. Um, so while I'm doing that, I want to, I want to clean up the property so I can throw all that stuff in the dumpster because I don't normally have that.

14:58.72
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, we do have the garage cleared out. David did a lot of work on it, uh, enough that we can put the new car in there as well. And, but I want to do a complete garage overhaul. I want to, we have these shelves at the back that are, I mean, there are things that we put there when we moved in 15 years ago, that kind of thing.

15:20.54
Jeffe Kennedy
In fact, my friend Minerva is one of these people who loves to purge. She's like, I will come down and help you clean out your garage. And I was like, I might let you, um, um And of and we' we were talking about the balance of these kinds of things because I said, should I have a garage sale, which means stacking this stuff up so that I can do a garage sale.

15:42.24
Jeffe Kennedy
So I put it on Craigslist. And she lives in this massive house. They used to run it as a And she... b and b and she um she's been doing a lot of cleaning and purging.

15:57.51
Jeffe Kennedy
And she said, you know what I did was I just put everything on. um She said, I gave it away. She said, I just donated everything because it was worth it not to spend my time dealing with people coming and looking at it and saying, well, will you take this and all of this kind of thing, the time to do a garage sale.

16:18.80
Jeffe Kennedy
And I'm kind of feeling that way. We'll see. Um, but you know, it always comes back to this conservation of energy and effort, right?

16:30.55
Jeffe Kennedy
So, you know, like over time we have this, what we call the, uh, the garbage pen, this little fenced in area on the North side of the house that the garbage bins are supposed to be in. And when we'd gone down to having our overcrowded garage with just one car in there, we'd start keeping the garbage bin and the recycle bin in the garage.

16:53.10
Jeffe Kennedy
And so I need to go over and clean out that side, you know, make it so that you can actually move things through there. And yeah, all of these things. So I kind of want to get all of, maybe I'm going back to the, you know, like Maslow's pyramid, you know, the, the habitat, you know, getting, i need to shore up some of the foundations of the pyramid. And if I can get a bunch of things in place, then I can move forward creatively again.

17:24.64
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, yeah, so I mean, my to do list is very long. It's got indoor and outdoor projects, depending on the weather. Uh, you wouldn't believe how long this list is.

17:38.57
Jeffe Kennedy
I mean, it's probably like 50 things on there. Some of them are daily things, but, uh, yeah.

17:51.37
Jeffe Kennedy
Oh, there we go. It's weird how it freezes like that. i I guess it just keeps going in reality, but on my screen it doesn't. Zencastr will only run on Chrome. I know I probably mentioned that before. I've pretty much switched entirely to Firefox except for this.

18:08.21
Jeffe Kennedy
The other piece of news in my life is that I did talk to my mechanic about the Jag. And when I go to Canada, I'm just going to leave it with him for the week and he's going to play with it.

18:21.88
Jeffe Kennedy
ah he He says it shouldn't be doing as badly as it's doing. So, uh, Cross your fingers. He did lead off saying, he said, you know, Jeffe, this needs to be not a daily drive car. And I said, I know I bought a new one. And he said, oh, and he approved of my car purchase. So there's that.

18:43.20
Jeffe Kennedy
All right. Well, I'm going to work on some things today and, you know, knock a chip off this list. And yeah, I will talk to you all on Monday.

18:55.32
Jeffe Kennedy
You all take care. Bye bye.