Spring or NOT Spring?
A sunny gorgeous warm weekend, coffee shops filled with blinding rays through the windows and squinting disheveled people over their newspapers and coffee and bagel and chattering in pairs or groups--the springness of it having gotten into everyone--and then this morning, 5 a.m., i set out for yoga sock-less and my windshield was covered with frost. I was most cross. Yoga did much to improve my mood, and now it's at least not fifteen degrees below zero. Just gray. Blech. The minute I got home from Florida, I wanted to turn around and get back on the plane and return until Minnesota properly agrees to be spring. My friend in Berkeley, California claims her grape hyacinths are blooming. I am dying of jealousy. I would grow them myself if I did not notoriously kill plants. I wish I were a gardener. But I seriously am not. Anyway, anyway...
I'm cheerfully drowning in work. Good work makes one feel a little better about the drowning than unpleasant work, and all this is good. I'm working away on the novel--getting close to enough pages to present it to my agent--and just had an editorial meeting with the infamous Megan to work on edits yesterday afternoon (back when it was spring). Megan is setting out on a new painting project, to my delight. Excited about that. And am plunking away on the first chapter of the first book of two I'm writing for Hazelden Books. That's a project close to my heart, and it's good to be working on it. Wrapped up that legal article, which was absurdly fun--will post when it comes out in June--and just did a little article for another magazine on Mother's Day--the assignment was "give us 700 words on your relationship with your mother"--ha! YOU try fitting that particular relationship into 700 words! But I managed something, and will post that in May. And up this week is a piece I'll be doing for the Boston Globe. That one will be a long process of working back and forth with the editor to shape it into the kind of thing that's right for the section (the Ideas Section, if you're familiar with it), and I'm greatly looking forward to that. So--with the above various projects underway--I'm teetering on the edge of not-quite-stressed-yet-but-almost, and will be heading out to the Oregon coast in April to wrap up several in one fell swoop. Can't wait to be out in the Pacific Northwest, with the misty walks on the beach. Something to be said for spells of solitude with work. They make the return to one's wonderful crowd all the more delightful. And I do have such a delightful crowd.
Interestingly, am giving a talk tonight on mental illness and spirituality. Might make for an interesting thread on the discussion board. Anyone want to take it up?
Neat news--long shots both, but I'm a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award and the Bush Foundation Award. Will find out in April. ot holding my breath, but tickled enough just to be a finalist. Feels pretty darn good.
So I'm off to work on the Globe article. Will keep you posted on the progression of all of the above. And will let you know if the one bird who sings in the bare-branched tree outside my window is joined by either other birds or, let us hope, some leaves.
Peace,
m
I'm cheerfully drowning in work. Good work makes one feel a little better about the drowning than unpleasant work, and all this is good. I'm working away on the novel--getting close to enough pages to present it to my agent--and just had an editorial meeting with the infamous Megan to work on edits yesterday afternoon (back when it was spring). Megan is setting out on a new painting project, to my delight. Excited about that. And am plunking away on the first chapter of the first book of two I'm writing for Hazelden Books. That's a project close to my heart, and it's good to be working on it. Wrapped up that legal article, which was absurdly fun--will post when it comes out in June--and just did a little article for another magazine on Mother's Day--the assignment was "give us 700 words on your relationship with your mother"--ha! YOU try fitting that particular relationship into 700 words! But I managed something, and will post that in May. And up this week is a piece I'll be doing for the Boston Globe. That one will be a long process of working back and forth with the editor to shape it into the kind of thing that's right for the section (the Ideas Section, if you're familiar with it), and I'm greatly looking forward to that. So--with the above various projects underway--I'm teetering on the edge of not-quite-stressed-yet-but-almost, and will be heading out to the Oregon coast in April to wrap up several in one fell swoop. Can't wait to be out in the Pacific Northwest, with the misty walks on the beach. Something to be said for spells of solitude with work. They make the return to one's wonderful crowd all the more delightful. And I do have such a delightful crowd.
Interestingly, am giving a talk tonight on mental illness and spirituality. Might make for an interesting thread on the discussion board. Anyone want to take it up?
Neat news--long shots both, but I'm a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award and the Bush Foundation Award. Will find out in April. ot holding my breath, but tickled enough just to be a finalist. Feels pretty darn good.
So I'm off to work on the Globe article. Will keep you posted on the progression of all of the above. And will let you know if the one bird who sings in the bare-branched tree outside my window is joined by either other birds or, let us hope, some leaves.
Peace,
m
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