More time flying
I don't really know what's happened to the past two weeks. I've been sitting around at home, not going out much, so it seems like I should've had plenty of time to get caught up on magazine stuff, or write stories, or do dishes, or read books, or finish projects, or something.
I know where some of the time has gone. Have watched several movies and a bunch of episodes of Will & Grace and Six Feet Under. (The problem with the release of TV shows on DVD is that now I can watch them all, thereby negating much of the advantage of not watching TV. Though I suppose this way is more efficient than watching every week.) Have spent a fair tad bit of time with Kam, which has been very nice. Have caught up on various online forums where I'd fallen way behind during a busy past month or two. (I probably ought to have just given myself an amnesty.) Have dealt with various financial things and finalized house deal. (It still doesn't quite feel real, perhaps because it was finalized a week after I signed the relevant papers; I keep expecting to have to Do Something more to finalize/close the deal. Which may also explain why I've been so resistant to doing what I absolutely must do next, which is calling people to do various kinds of work on the place, which I want to get done before I move in, because I'll never do these things if I move in first.) Have seen a few people I wanted to see, but haven't seen a lot of others. Have utterly neglected to go spend time with Arthur & Pam & Baby Ray, something I meant to do a great deal of these past couple weeks.
Today was reasonably productive, though I still didn't get a lot of things done that I need to get done. I did a bunch of reading—the story I'm working on requires me to read or re-read or at least re-skim at least six books, two of which I didn't own (so I bought one and checked the other out of the library). I'll say more about those later; I know at least one of my fellow workshoppers reads this journal, so I don't want to talk about the necessary research just yet. But it's been fun. And for that matter, writing the story has been fun—I wrote over 1100 words of it today, finishing a segment and leaving just half of one segment to finish up tomorrow before I send it off to workshop. I have no idea what people will make of this thing. We'll see. It's an idea that I've been kicking around for many years, but I never actually sat down to try writing it 'til a couple weeks ago.
Then there's the collaboration with Mary Anne; did a lot of backstory for that the other day, though the actual writing on it remains elusive. But I think that'll be fun too.
Other reading: finished the Hartwell/Cramer Year's Best SF 8, and made some progress on their Year's Best Fantasy 3, which I had set aside when I realized that I had already read more of the stories in the SF volume (and thus could finish that one faster than the fantasy one). I enjoyed the SF one quite a bit; there are half a dozen stories in it (more than a quarter of the ones in the book) that I would've put on my own year's best list, which is a higher percentage than I think is usually true for me with year's best volumes of any sort.
And I sent out a couple weeks' worth of rejections recently, and read some subs. And did some other computer stuff I'd been meaning to do for a while.
I guess another thing I've been doing lately is making web pages. Threw together the MonkeyCon site last week (with occasional updates this week); today, I wrote the first new Words & Stuff column in nearly three years, and did some work toward the rest of the set. (I'll be officially ending the series by the end of this year, closing out the last unfinished alphabet worth of columns.) That was very satisfying.
Less satisfying has been writing long emails, some of which I've subsequently decided not to send, on various topics regarding various group discussions. I've been even more verbose than usual lately; having a hard time reining in the impulse to go on and on and on.
Oh, and I've been taking naps sometimes (though not today). Haven't been getting enough sleep at night, as usual, but it's very nice to be able to lie down in the middle of the afternoon and sleep for an hour or two.
So I guess I do know where all my time is going, and much of it is actually being productive, so I can't really complain. But I can't help still feeling that I'm frittering away my sabbatical. There are a lot of things I had intended to have done by now that I haven't yet started. And I had intended to take brief trips down to LA and up to Seattle/Tacoma, but my usual scatteredness about planning has made that very unlikely at this point.
Of course, one thing I could do is stop writing this journal entry and go get stuff done. Or sleep. That might be nice too.
