Excuses

Real life continues to interfere with my efforts to post things here with any kind of regularity. What are my excuses this time? Here you go:

1. My poor cat has been in and out of the hospital over the past two weeks, first because she ate an enormous piece of string for some reason (like, the biggest piece of string EVER) and had to have surgery to get it out of her intestines, and then because she became super-sensitive to her insulin during her recovery and went into insulin shock and nearly died. Oh and also her incision is infected. BUT the good news is that she gets to come home this evening, and I will hang out here with her as I deal with my second-most stressful blog-interfering item, which is:

2. My final packet deadline of the semester. The cat drama really set me back, and so now I am racing to get everything finished. My revisions are done, but I'm still working on my new pages and my essay. I'm a little sad that the semester is almost over; it has been so awesome working with Cynthia and I will miss having her thoughtful eye on my work and receiving her encouraging comments. I feel really good about the progress I've made this semester, though, and I'm actually almost sort of looking forward to working on my critical thesis starting in July. (I'm sure I'll feel differently once I'm actually in the thick of it, though. CT definitely = kind of scary.)

3. I also got called for jury duty, but luckily only spent the one day (Thursday) and was then dismissed. If the timing had been better I think I would have liked to serve on a jury. The selection process was really interesting, and I'm sure the trial would have been even more so. Oh, well. I'll get another chance in 8+ years.

4. Oh and BEA was here in the mix, too.

5. Plus there's all the rest of the regular life stuff, like cleaning my apartment and finding things to eat for dinner and trying to get outside for walks once in a while and occasionally getting to see my friends. But that stuff is always there, of course.

OK. I suppose I should try to get back to work, assuming I can manage to block out the ridiculously loud music pumping in through my closed windows. I like my neighborhood, but nice days on the weekend = very loud outdoor BBQs and I suppose I really am going to have to get myself a pair of noise-canceling headphones if I'm going to get anything done this summer.

as usual

Behind on blogging, writing, and everything else. Today I had a four-item list of things I wanted to do. Most were biggish things—making a plan of attack for the rest of packet 2, finishing getting my tax stuff assembled for my rescheduled tax appointment, dealing with some of my email backlog—but still, only four. So far, at 7:26pm, I have only crossed out the one small item on the list, which involved making a quick phone call. Sigh.

I did accomplish some other stuff today, including a couple of things that had been hanging over my head for a while and were good to get done. But I keep putting off the two main things I need to address—packet and taxes—and I know that I just need to stop jumping around to other things and focus already. FOCUS, ALREADY! They're both just so big and overwhelming. Well, actually, I did the worst of the tax stuff already, I think, so that won't even be so bad to just finish up. But the packet stuff is so...much. Hard to get my head around all the stuff I need to do. Which is exactly why I need a plan of attack. Especially since I was totally sidelined for the past week with what I believe was the very first time I have ever had the flu. (It was extremely unpleasant. I do not wish to repeat the experience. Ever.)

While I wasn't doing the big things I needed to do today, I joined Twitter. Not sure yet how I feel about that, but it seemed to be time. Lots of VCFA types on there, and you can follow VCFAwriters as a group if you would like to hear about all the great things VCFA students, faculty, and alumni are up to.

Oh and also—last Sunday was my birthday. Had a lovely Italian dinner with good friends the night before, which turned out to be good timing since the flu took me down out of the blue on Sunday night.

OK. Update achieved, I guess. Still time to make progress on my list. Focus, focus, focus. Srsly!

bad day :(

Today is not turning out to be a good day in all kinds of ways. Feeling down for assorted reasons, and also just have too much to do this week, and certain things are taking WAY MORE TIME than they should, which just means all the other things I need to do are still sitting there, waiting. Impatiently. Looking at me.

STOP LOOKING AT ME!!!

Blogging while blue and frustrated and stressed out is probably not the best idea. So I won't go on and on. Just felt like sending out a small wail of angst to my internet friends.

Some good news to even things out:

So happy for VCFA faculty types Kathi Appelt and Tobin Anderson for their well-deserved honors yesterday!

Also was really glad to see some wonderful children's author friends last night at Betsy Bird's Kidlit Drinks Night at Gstaad.

And forgot to mention happy news from school in my last post, which is that my advisor this semester is none other than the fabulous Cynthia Leitich Smith, and I am very excited to be working with her.

See, good things are going on, too. Just need to try and focus more on those and less on the other things. And to just keep my head down and work, work, work. But also to get outside for a few minutes to clear my head at some point. Maybe right now.

Reentry

Vermont College of Fine Arts students often mention the difficult transition back to the regular world at the end of each residency. And it's true—it's like a piece of the Hero's Journey, all of us crossing the threshold back into the Ordinary World, but carrying with us some magic treasure from the Special World we were temporarily and gloriously a part of for ten timeless days. Not that we don't love the Ordinary World, too, with its beloved family members and friends and boyfriends and cats, but there is definitely a period of adjustment as we struggle to realign with the normal rules of the universe.

I got home on Thursday, and have been trying to take this weekend to relax and recover before plunging back into work and packets and cleaning and bills and general craziness of regular life. The craziness is looming though, and it's hard to relax in its everpresent shadow. Only two and a half weeks until my first packet is due, and there is freelance work to edit and a book proposal to write and a picture book manuscript to revise and a website redesign to complete and lots of mail to go through and packages to send and birthday parties to plan and two-month old babies to visit and gym schedules to get back on track with and other things but I'm already stressing myself out with this list so I will stop listing. One of my unofficial new year's resolutions this year was to learn to relax, but I'm finding it a difficult skill to acquire.

Anyway. Missing all my VCFA friends already and wishing you great starts to the semester! And will be missing all my Kindling Words friends next weekend, but I was right in thinking I would not be ready for another bunch of days away so soon after getting back from school. Hoping I might be able to swing it next year, though!