Free-Floating Stuff

Barrelhouse Writer Camp was really wonderful. I didn't do much, except socialize and probably gossip too much, but I relaxed and spent a lot of time outside, which it's becoming impossible to do here for the next six weeks or so. 

I am doing everything possible not to revise the last section of the Casablanca book. It's becoming more urgent, but I reeeeeally don't want to and I'm acting like a huge baby about it. 

Watched The Revenant, which I'd heard was a sort of contest rather than a film, and that assessment was wrong. It took my breath away. The idea pinged into my head while watching to write an essay about DiCaprio, which is an idea I should've had long ago but now that I finally have, it's another great thing to do rather than revise the last section of my book. 

Still on a wild, woolly, expensive perfume journey. Have ordered a bunch of perfumes both vintage and not, and none of them has even come close to the first one I tried: Mitsouko. It's truly like nothing I've ever smelled. 

Actual writing isn't going well, but reading is going OK and thinking/churning/editorial is going OK too. 

I still haven't unpacked my duffel bag or my backpack (got home seven days ago). I remember there was like one trip in my whole life where I unpacked the next day like a good girl, and every other time I unpack whenever I can't avoid it any longer like a chaos muppet. 

While away, I went to the Sleeping Beauties fashion exhibit at the Met, and I gotta tell the truth, it was incredibly disappointing. So much an exhibit meant to make people talk rather than making them think. I know a thimble's worth about fashion and perhaps a little less about about museum curation, but I know enough to know the way this was set up and curated was about flash, not meaning. It was a pain in the ass to get there and get through the exhibit, plus I dragged Matt along with me, which made the disappointment all the more frustrating. 

I keep thinking I need some kind of strategy to cut down on my phone use and social media use (different categories that overlap a lot), but probably what I need is to just stop. Hacking my brain has never, ever worked; tricks or strategies are generally wasted on me. The I stopped smoking was to stop buying cigarettes and putting them in my mouth and lighting them. Quitting a habit or an addiction is more complicated than that, but it's also not, and I feel like the "also not" is the place I need to get to for my phone/socials use. 

Wire Mothers seems to be well-received. I'm surprised about this, but pleased. Some external stuff reportedly coming in the next couple of months (review, interview). 

A writer I admire bottomlessly has reached out about her next book and we've had a kind of shy, gentle meeting of the minds. I am so happy about this I want to cup it in my hands like a firefly. 

I hate deadlines, and I need them. 

I hate routines, and I need them. 

I wish it was September.