personal

Tuesday’s child

One good thing about working from home: when the dog wakes you up by barking to go out at 5:30 in the morning, you know you’ll be able to come back inside and go back to sleep for another two or three hours. I’m not sure I would have made it through the day if that had been pretty much it, my final wake-up call. It was tough enough as it is.

I basically got one thing done today. Of course, another way of looking at that is: I got something done today! There’s a whole line or other somethings right behind it, and there are still i’s to be dotted and t’s to be crossed. But the heavy lifting on at least one project — not the whole book, but this one review report on it — is finally done.

Although I swear I lost a couple of hours along the way. Maybe they got washed away in the snow? It did snow briefly here today, didn’t it?

There’s something weirdly exhilarating, but also crazy-making, about having so much work to do that you lose track of whole hours. I know time is supposed to be fleeting and all, but this just seems like time is showboating, if you ask me.

Yep, that was Monday

Today started off like the quintessentially lousy Monday. I didn’t sleep terrifically well, then overslept, and I missed my morning train of choice. The next train was supposed to be an express, which is the one thing that makes up for almost always having to stand on it for the entire forty-five-minute commute. This morning, however, it was an over-crowded local, making nearly stop between here and Manhattan, and I think possibly a few new towns and villages they incorporated just for the day. New York seemed especially over-crowded this morning, and I got to work slightly later than I would have liked. I didn’t get to take the more direct route that would have let me bypass Penn Station, and I didn’t get to stop for breakfast. Sure, I’ve had worse mornings, but you know what? I’ve had better.

And then a funny thing happened: I had a lot of work to do — so much that I had work distracting me from other work — and the day flew past. The slowest hour all day might have been my lunch hour, when, despite the cold, I forced myself to stay away from the office and just walk around. When I got back, I discovered — even better! — that I’m going to be able to work from home tomorrow, which I had not been banking on. Weeks back, I thought I would have to be in the office tomorrow to take notes at a textbook meeting, and then I agreed to swap dates with another editor in the UK. Then we hired a new editor here in the US, and my boss wanted us all in the office to meet her. And then it turned out she’s actually starting work on Wednesday. So I get to work from home after all.

And apparently I dodged a bullet with that meeting, which promises to be quite long and involve a lot of note-taking. This way, I can maybe actually spend tomorrow getting more work done.

Have I mentioned lately that I have a lot of work right now?

Is it really over?

It seems insane that I’m going back to work tomorrow. It’s absolutely necessary, I understand that much. I have several huge projects I need to finish as soon as possible, and I need to squeeze in as much work as I can into the next three very short weeks. Which would be difficult even if this wasn’t the end of the year — and moreover the end of the semester for the academics from whom I’m trying to secure reviews and meetings. But I’ve been out for over a week, and the little bit of work I did in that time notwithstanding, it’s very easy to get used to being on vacation.

I have to make sure I find the time to write. Even Thanksgiving sort of threw me for a loop, and I haven’t touched this short story since last Wednesday.

Today, I mostly read other people’s stories, submissions for Kaleidotrope. Everything I accept now will go into 2014, or even later, and so I’m trying to be even more critical about what I accept, both for my and the writer’s sake. I’m not paying a lot of money for what I accept — relatively, pro-ratedly speaking — but I am spending money. (This is what I do in lieu of travel, I suppose, or a social life.) And I also don’t want to have to start telling people, “I like your story. But I can’t publish it for another couple of years.”

It’s a learning process, a work in progress. There are things I truly love about it — things I increasingly love about it — and there are also times when I’m tempted to walk away from the zine altogether. I already have enough for the next five or six issues, though, so maybe that won’t happen just yet.

No James Bond today. After the last three fairly disappointing outings, I think I’m going to give them a slight break. (The Man With the Golden Gun was pretty dismal.) I’m still interested in the rest of Roger Moore’s tenure, as well as Timothy Dalton’s outings. I’m less keen on Pierce Brosnan’s, though only because I remember how not very good a lot of them were. But I have the collected set. So I’ll get around to it. But I’ve watched four — five with the most recent Skyfall — just in the past week alone. So I could use a Bond break.

That, and the crossword puzzle, was my Sunday.

Do I really have to go to work tomorrow?

Movie sign of the times

A quiet day, spent mostly reading (and accepting/rejecting) for Kaleidotrope, and watching movies.

These included a pair of not very good James Bond movies, Live and Let Die and The Man With the Golden Gun. The former at least has a terrific theme song; the latter has one of the series’ worst. I fared much better with Beasts of the Southern Wild, the only one of the three I can even come close to recommending.

Black Friday

I did absolutely no shopping today, “Black Friday” or not. In fact, I only left the house to take the dog to the vet. (Nothing serious, just chronic ear infections that continue to make his life annoying.)

Beyond that, I read some more for Kaleidotrope, since I’d like to finish reading this year’s submissions before I start getting new ones in January. And I watched two Bond movies, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and Diamonds Are Forever. (I’d actually watched the first half of On Her Majesty’s a few days ago.) Both were disappointing, but Diamonds is often actively bad. I’m not entirely sure it qualifies as a Bond movie; it feels more like a forgotten 1970s TV show set in seedy Vegas. How seedy? I honestly expected to see Hunter S. Thompson around any corner. (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was first published in Rolling Stone the year Diamonds came out.) It also features maybe the single most annoying Bond girl in Jill St. John’s Tiffany Case. (The more imaginatively named Plenty O’Toole is barely in the movie.)

My vacation is all but over at this point. I’m really glad for the week, but it will be good to get back. Just, you know, not quite yet.