The longer I sit here, waiting to start writing, the higher my stress levels are climbing. It's not that I feel like I've run out of stories to tell, it's that I am so afraid of the phase we are entering that I don't want to talk about it. But it's all I can think about, so I'm left sitting here wondering what the hell happened to my day, and is there anything I can focus on besides the choices to be made in the next few weeks. We have hit the decision making time, when we look at contractual obligations, and have to evaluate where we want to be and what we want to be doing in the next phase of the long term plan. If we want to significantly alter our direction, then we have to start thinking about it now. It's kind of a "long time to turn a cruise ship around" type time scale. We have been tossing ideas around for months now, and we gained a grace period on making any concrete plans when the teaching position the man interviewed for fell through (I'm still happier that it did), and his current contract was extended. But there are only a few grains of sand left in the hourglass. It's time to stop dithering. I am a world-class ditherer. I hate this part.
I'm trying to get better at using the Twitter machine lately. I signed up for it months ago, and put out maybe three tweets before I abandoned it, thinking I wasn't funny enough in small bites. I tried using it a couple weeks ago to post links to the blog, but I lack control over the photo thumbnail, and that drives me crazy. I also don't think it is as widely seen when I do it that way. A couple days ago, I decided to take another crack at it, and am trying to use it properly, for single pictures and one-liners. I can do this. I'm determined this time. Just don't expect me to get into Twitter fights with celebrities. And I still haven't used a single hashtag. One step at a time.
I went out to dinner with a handful of ladies I haven't seen in months, and there were two new faces I'd never seen before. I sat between a dear friend (mother of my practice grandbaby and new mother to the cutest little wizard ever--move over Harry) and one of the new (to me) women. Turns out the new lady and I had a lot in common. She also writes, both a blog and a novel that is eerily similar in theme to the one I started and have been stuck on for months. She is much further down the path than I, having been picked up by a publisher, and waiting for a summer release of her first book. We talked for a couple hours, between dinner and standing in the parking lot after the other women had gone home. I could learn a lot from her, and I'm hoping that an association with her can help me take this blog and my writing in general to the next level. I can't stress how fortunate I was to go to dinner tonight, and to elect to sit where I did. I was absolutely in the right place at the right time. I hope to get to know her better in the immediate future.
Today was not a picture heavy day. I barely touched the camera at all today. The only activity I tried to capture was when I happened to hear a scuffle near the dog bowls, and looked around in time to find the big bear of a huntress peering under the rubber-backed mat where I keep the dogs' water. It didn't take a genius to figure out what she had done, and I got up to retrieve my dustpan and squeegee so I could take a badly bruised baby skink to sanctuary on the front porch. Once again, I'm not sure I got to him in time. But if nothing else, I got him to a juniper bush where he could die in peace, and not in pieces in a cat's mouth.
No comments:
Post a Comment