Friday, December 21, 2007

It is finished!

I have a ton to do before the end of the day and the start of my vacation. (See the detritus around the calendar in the photo for just a small preview.) But I wanted to let everyone know that we are FINALLY done with the January issue.

The photo's primary focus is intended to be the calendar. This calendar served as my schedule for January issue "stuff." Not shown is the page for July, when we sent the first mailing of a brochure for an awards contest we organize every year. Not shown is the day in April when we started working on the brochure for that contest.

By the time we start producing pages for the actual issue (in late October/early November), I am already So. Over. It. This is because, as noted above, I start things churning in mid-July, with the occasional "preview" of things to come earlier in the year (i.e. the awards brochure). Thank God (and I say that reverently) for the temp who works with me for four or five weeks in September and October (and sometimes for a few days closer to shipping). Without him or her we'd never get it all done.

The January issue is a BIG ISSUE for all of us. We work more hours of overtime than we like to count. We lose sleep, having anxiety dreams about missing pages or whatnot. Or we just don't sleep.

But now, except for one or more coworkers checking the few changes to what we looked at yesterday, we're done for another year. We'll have the magazine in early January. We'll both want to look and be afraid to do so. (What if something's wrong?!?) Then comes the meeting and associated exposition -- the reason for all the work.

And, before I know it, it will be time for me to make a 2009 January issue calendar, and we'll start all over again. I both dread and look forward to it.

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