My good life

Toes in warm sand

Originally uploaded by freerangelibrarian.

More than one person has asked me what I’m doing these days. My days are pleasantly full without being crazy-making. I’m enjoying where I am right now–and appreciating that it won’t last forever.

My days include:

Following through with job leads, which includes the usual form-filling, trip-taking, interviewing-preparing activities;

Writing articles and giving presentations, which as more than one friend has pointed out could be my next job if all else fails;

Catching up on personal tasks that didn’t get done right (such as my taxes. I usually file an extension, as I did this year, but I’ve never been this far behind on my data-gathering);

Submitting essays for publication. I submitted about 25 in the last month… with a new rule, that for every rejection I have to send two more out. I just had a short-short essay rejected, so I need to send out two more before the end of this week;

Reading quite a bit. In theory I had some reading time before, but my concentration is back, and I’m able to read closely and thoroughly. The other night I woke up with a bit of midlife insomnia and read Alice Munro’s “The Bear Came Over the Mountain.” It’s gorgeous–a great example of the perfect use of flashback–and a three-hanky storie to boot. I found my brain slowing down and registering how her flashbacks work. So nice to have a brain again;

Personal writing (such as an essay about family life I started on last week’s trip to SEFLIN);

Digging rosebeds in the backyard, making sorbet, and playing with the cats; and

Properly mourning the losses in my life (California, and what we left behind), while celebrating the gains (such as walking on warm beach sand in West Palm Beach… instead of sitting in my hotel room checking work email).

This is the month where everything will fall in place. Either one of my job leads will take hold, or I will find myself self-employed and then hang out my shingle to aggressively market myself. I’ll know one way or the other fairly soon. Meanwhile, May, 2007 will always be the month when in the same day I earned my living, worked on my personal writing, and felt warm sand between my toes.