Disorganization Is Not Sexy

I have got to get my job under control.

"Job" and "life" feel pretty interchangeable at this point, but of course they're not. I can lean on others for help with my life. Last night I called my husband from an event in Santa Monica and asked him to make dinner, so I and my guest would be able to eat almost as soon as we got home, and although I felt bad because there was the briefest pause and I knew he'd been at work all day and I was asking him to work some more and he was clearly not really up for it, he did it, because we are married and that's what the spouse does, they help, even when they don't really want to. But for my job I'm stuck with me. Matt can't review books for me, he can't follow up on pitches for me, and he can't apply for awards and grants for me (regrettably).

I had a houseguest for the past several days who has been doing full-time creative freelancing for a lot longer than I have. She is also naturally more organized than I am. She gave me a whole lot of ideas and pointers, some of which I'm going to implement right away (divide work into three categories) and some of which won't adapt to me (visual project planning) (she is an artist, and I can't draw a decent freehand rectangle). While she was here, we visited a heavenly stationery store in Highland Park, and I bought a huge, beautiful project planner, with all kinds of room for whatever I need to keep track of. I haven't figured out exactly how I'm going to use it yet, and I don't want to muck it up with false starts.

In the meantime I'm going back to my old Panda Planner, which I loved for several months, but which doesn't have enough room in its monthly calendar for my purposes. My deadlines are based in months rather than weeks or days (something I learned along the way), and I need the space to plot them out, which little monthly squares don't give me. Since my next three weeks are going to be tightly plotted, though, I'm going to use the Panda unconventionally to set things in order.

The first dramatic step I've taken is to archive everything in my email box before January 1 of 2018. I am a keeper, not a thrower-awayer, so I had 4,000 emails in one mailbox and 5,000 in another. Now that's down to under 1,000 each. I'd like to take it down further, archiving & deleting everything unnecessary, so I can do the "inbox zero" practice that thrower-awayers generally do. The follow-ups are too time-consuming at the moment, and could be much better if I could get a system going.

Yes, I did this to myself. No, I'm not complaining. Not really. I told an editor the other day that I'm running around with my hair on fire, and that's true, but complaining? I love my work. I love my life. I wish there were a bit less of it, is all.

In this week's big news, I will have a review in the Times Literary Supplement this week, and I bought this novelty pillow:

I'll leave it to you to decide which is more impressive.

Out in the world (it's been a minute since I did this):

I extracted a piece of my thesis-project memoir, named it "Boundin'", and reworked it (with editorial help) for Nailed. If you haven't known me for long, or if you happen to have a grumpy opinion about my financial privilege or emotional stability, I recommend you read it. My life was not always so.

I interviewed Carlos Lozada of the Washington Post for sinkhole. We talked through an intermediary, so I didn't get a sense of his personality via email like I usually do, but via his answers he seems like a good, smart, friendly guy.

I interviewed Litsa Dremousis for Books I Hate. She, on the other hand, demonstrated a wealth of personality, and I enjoyed every minute of it.

I reviewed a book of short stories from Bolivia, Sleeping Dragons by Magela Baudoin, for Cleaver. I liked the book. Very economic prose.

I reviewed Sybil Baker's novel While You Were Gone for the Heavy Feather Review. Both Sybil's team and HVR were great to work with and I hope to do so again.

I reviewed The Rending and the Nest by Kaethe Schwehn, a beautiful book, for Locus. This came out in print in the...August? issue, I think, and is just now on the website. It's accompanied by a bitchy little take on a book I really disliked, Moon Brow, by Shahriar Mandanipour.

More to come, including Rain Taxi and, oh, did I mention the TLS?

Books! Books! and Additional Books!

This evening I did a little book-shifting in an attempt to force this apartment to make sense. (Yes, it's over a month since we moved in and no, I haven't finished emptying boxes and organizing and tidying. That's just how it is.) On the shelves in the second bedroom, the books pile two-deep and sideways, and yet there are empty shelves in the living room. So I moved all my Marilyn books and most of my film books to the shelf next to the TV (get it? *finger-gun click*). And now the shelves in the bedroom groan a little less.

Click to embiggen if you're nosy like me. The Marilyn books are mostly in shadow, which is not terribly helpful for the purposes of this anecdote, but getting a decent picture would mean moving the lamp, and eh all over that.

At first I couldn't find the smaller Marilyn books, the paperbacks, and as I was scanning the shelves in the second bedroom, awareness of all of the books on the shelves that I've read - most of them - flooded in, overwhelming me. The plots of them, or the stories, or the arguments, or the characters. And memories of where I got them all: which ones were gifts, which ones were finds on used bookstore shelves, which ones I stupidly bought full-price in hardback because I was just that obsessed with Sookie Stackhouse. I read that and that and that. Oh, and that. Oh, man, Matheson was such a better writer than I imagined he could be. Ooh, I was in no way ready for radical feminism when I bought that Sadie Plant book.

Pictured: A shelf that makes no sense yet, because I haven't organized the bookshelves throughout the apartment like I organized the one above, and no, that's not driving me crazy at all. But this was one of the shelves in view during my little epiphany. 

This sensation - an awareness of the sheer wealth inside those covers and hence inside my head - ran counter to what I usually think and feel when I look at a shelf of books. Namely: the nag of my own mortality. The intolerable truth that I will not be able to read them all; that I will not live long enough for that; that no human lifespan is that long. But seeing what I've already consumed, appreciating the heft of it, knocked me back a little. Maybe I haven't read all I want to, but I have read many, many books. And perhaps, for just a moment, I can be satisfied.

I've read all of these, except for the big gray book, which is The Best American Short Stories of the Century, which is really more of a reference book. And it elevated my monitor very nicely for a while there. 

Books have seen me through so many years. The books in the bedroom, in particular, but books in general. I don't know how people pass through a life without reading passionately and addictively. I honestly do not know.

The To Be Read shelf. I arranged a bookcase near the kitchen largely for this purpose. 

And finally, an acquisition at the Iliad today. I'm not sure I have a sincere intention of reading this, but I couldn't resist.
Could you? 

Irrevocably Attached

Still no writing news. Heck, I haven't even read anything other than the internet and work material in the last week. The place is starting to come together, with the help of cheap plastic crap from China organizational devices from Bed Bath & Beyond and Target. We're unearthing a lot and throwing away a lot, both of which feel great.

Having a small space to work with has been more of an inspiration than I thought it would be. Part of the reason is that I read this a few months ago, have been rereading it ever since, and have sworn to myself that this move marks a new start for the stuff-fest that has been my life for the past 30 years. I told my mom this morning that there were only two things I could think of offhand to which I'm irrevocably attached, things that I would really be upset if I lost - barring things like my laptop and my birth certificate and such life-necessitating things that are tough to replace. One of them went with me on the plane (small plastic Tom Servo), and the other one I unpacked yesterday (framed poster of map of Narnia).

I totally fail to understand why I'm so attached to lil' Tom Servo. I feel like an idiot about it. He's definitely my favorite commentator on MST3K, but that doesn't really explain it. He's just a little plastic desk gewgaw, and there's no reason in the world why he should stir such affection in my heart when I see him sitting there. But he does. I put him in my carry-on baggage for the trip to L.A. Part of the reason for this was that he was a special one-off figure for an MST box set, and although I haven't researched it, I don't know that I could replace him easily.* That still doesn't really answer why I just have to have him around in order to be [more] happy. I truly have no idea.

Took this at BWI before departure. Me & Tom, seeing the world. 

Anyway, there's also the Narnia poster. Which we couldn't find at first when unpacking our picture boxes yesterday. We found every single other thing we'd hung on the walls of our old house, including a lot of stuff that we don't plan to put up at all in the new place, but no Narnia.

I found it on eBay, this poster; it's a laminated version of Pauline Baynes' map of Narnia and surrounding countries, and was created probably in the 80's for a classroom. It has a terrible green and white border and information about Scholastic press on it, all of which was hidden behind a mat by the framers. I am glad of every single penny (of many) I spent on the framing job, because I love it and it's beautiful and it makes me happy just to look at it. It's growing harder to find these posters, though, and I was pretty worried about replacing it if it was lost. (Maps of Narnia other than Baynes', which are all generally easier to find, have various problems that make them unappealing to me.)

But we did find it, inside a box with another stupidly heavy framed item that was a lovely gift which we don't want at all. I'd mistaken the box as only holding the big heavy not-want thing, but the Narnia poster was wrapped up with it. And now it's here, sitting next to me, only slightly the worse for wear.

There's a crease down the middle that was created when
the poster was laminated; not much to do about that.
Open in a new tab to embiggen; the detail
on this poster is one of the best parts about it. 

I really have a hard relationship with stuff. I tend to be owned by it. This move is continuing to teach me lessons about that. I've had a hard time keeping to my work schedule in the last few days, because all I want to do is unpack and organize and turn this into home. And GET RID OF THINGS. That's actually more exciting to me than the idea of having all my stuff back, out of boxes, between my hands or within sight. I have a vision of a home where there's a place for everything and everything is in its place. Because this seems even harder to accomplish when the home is so much smaller than the space we used to occupy, I'm even more determined to do it.

*Although if I have a few hundred dollars to completely blow, I can buy a full-size working replica. Don't think I haven't considered it. One day, when I'm wildly rich and successful, I'll probably buy him; I'll put him in the back of my electric DeLorean.