The Additional-Fire Effect

Just now I opened up edits on a review and I had one of those moments where it all crashed on my head, the whole and entire weight of what I've gotten myself tangled up in for the last two years, all at once, CRASH. The edits were asking me to do the exact opposite of what I've trained myself to do because editors generally prefer it (reiterate the same point in the intro and conclusion, don't be too colloquial, don't go on weird tangents). So I thought about putting myself in the mindset of this editor's wishes, when I had just spent the whole morning in the mindset of editing my own non-review-related work, and had only an hour or so before I had to put myself in a teaching mindset, after spending a few minutes first thing this morning in self-promotion mindset...[pop]

All summer, the tarot has been telling me to be patient and things will improve. Things are improving exactly at the time and in the ways the tarot said they would. This is spooky, but also great, but also, even as things improve, my responsibilities are not decreasing. CRASH.

The best thing to do when I'm feeling overwhelmed is to accomplish a pile of small, overdue things. Getting the oil changed in my car, calling my website vendor, doing some chores for an authors' group I'm involved with. But instead I'm just making list after list of things to do and worrying about email replies I haven't received. Rearranging rather than doing.

There's good news. The last couple of weeks have been emotionally unnerving, but I channeled that energy into writing the Last Tango in Paris essay I'd 3/4 given up on. I couldn't stop working on it for the past two days, not even to go volunteer with the horses. Now, it's essentially done. That means I've written nine of the ten essays for Weird New Shit, which means I'm on track, and not behind. I will finish it by the end of 2019. That feels so good that it throws a blanket on some of the fires elsewhere burning in my freelance life. The blanket is semi-flammable. I elect to feel good about the smothering effect today and worry about the additional-fire effect tomorrow.

via GIPHY

In the past couple of months I've stopped drinking almost entirely. I tried this out early in the year as a Decision, but it didn't stick, and so instead I'm trying it as a habit with occasional exceptions. My relationship with alcohol has never been addictive, so my motivations for the teetotaling habit are about feeling good, changing the physical cycles my body goes through daily and weekly, and sitting with psychological discomfort instead of blotting it out. I'm using vaped cannabis a little bit here and there, but it's so different from booze. I can't really get used to it or predict how it will affect me, so I like it less. Also, I have only been marginally successful at rewiring my brain to believe that cannabis is OK. Drugs were very, very not okay in my family, and that training has lasted despite the increasing legality of weed and, you know, being an adult with my own judgment.

Next week an interview that's been in the works for two years is actually being published. I think. I won't believe it until I see it. This week, a review is going up at a publication I labored to break into. Ask me about it sometime.

All right, enough, I need to spend the afternoon accomplishing small, overdue things. Oh fu--CRASH