Over the last few months I’ve discovered a disturbing trend. Not only do I seem able to work long hours writing, editing, reading and doing the occasional bit of semi-shameless self-promotion, I actually seem to enjoy it. In fact, whenever I’m not doing something that pertains to this writing business, I feel like I’m being lazy. I get antsy, self-deprecating and generally unhappy. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule.
About once a week I feel the need to just push aside a few hours to let the television abuse my gray matter, chat with friends on the phone or go out into the world in an attempt to be social. Also, whenever I get to hang out with my daughter I spend 99% of my time with her and enjoy every sacred minute of it. Outside of these pleasant distractions though, I’ve found that I’m only truly happy when I’m working.
As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I slacked off around the holidays and entered 2012 with a feeling of being two laps behind what I should be doing. Since then I’ve been pushing my engine into the red and trying not only to “catch up” on the things I should have done, I’ve been trying to add even more things right on top of it. Part of this effort involved getting back on a reasonable sleep schedule, where in this case that means the sort of a sleep schedule a turn of the last century farmer might have enjoyed. I can now report a resounding success, despite the rather depressing transition.
As futile and self-feating as all this might sound, I think I’ve pulled it off. I’m out in front of the pack with nary a pit stop between me and the finish line. We’ll see how things go.
Anyway, the most noteworthy thing going on this last week was seeing my mother trucked off to the hospital in an ambulance. If you follow me on Twitter you might have seen me worrying about it while trying to not worry about it. The details are many and not what I’d consider entertaining, but I felt the need to thank all of you who sent me encouraging words as well as give you a quick update.
My mother was having severe chest pains, shortness of breath and a variety of other symptoms that were frightening to say the least. She was transported to the hospital and spent a night there. They kept her under observation, gave her a bunch of meds and conducted a battery of tests for which they drew twenty (yes, twenty, I kid you not) vials of blood. Given my mother weighs roughly one hundred pounds, I can only assume they had to wring her out toward the end.
After all that and a sleepless night for those concerned, the conclusion is that she didn’t suffer a heart attack. They sent her home and said we should all “keep an eye on it.”
That’s some impressive bullshit medical advice, right there.
And now some stuff I found on the internet:
- Eluveitie – A Rose For Epona – I like a great many of this band’s songs. This is one of them.
- 27b/6 – Funny as hell, but in no way safe for work.
- The Restart Page – I saw this a while ago, but stumbled on it again this week. Funny if you’re a geek, otherwise you’ll just wonder what the point is.
- Blogging from A to Z April Challenge – An interesting challenge wherein bloggers commit to writing one post a day, for nearly every day of April. From the site: “Using this premise, you would start beginning April First with a topic themed on something with the letterA, then on April second another topic with the letter B as the theme, and so on until you finish on April thirtieth with the theme based on the letter Z.”
I’m spending the rest of the weekend working on a short story. I also have a bunch of revision work to do, but since there’s always more revision work to do, I don’t even know if I should bother mentioning it.
Have a great weekend!
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