dear december,

This is always the time of year when I feel least mentally prepared to deal with things, even the slightest things that go wrong like leaky pipes and jammed printers.  It's also usually a busy time, a ragged, loose-around-the -edges time where I feel like I'm hurtling toward the new year and will only survive if I get there more or less intact. Part of it has to do with retail rushes and the open studio, but also the gift giving season and  general holiday season business that always demands energies when I have the least amount of them to give.  I've always joked that I wish certain holiday events happened in the summer when I am generally feeling content and able to take on the world, rather than now when I am most likely to be found huddling under the covers and hiding from it.  Even January seems less wearing than December, but by then, we're hitting that winter lull that drags and drags, but usually is at least, mercifully, uneventful.

Yesterday I was making my way through a number of book orders and realized I was experiencing the worst sort of rising panic that I needed to be getting more things finished up for Friday and that I couldn't possibly get everything finished up before then, and good god, could these covers print any fucking faster? And of course, the more frenzied I get, the more things seem to go wrong--crooked staples, empty tape dispensers, messy folds. It's inevitable.  It's times like these when I feel the least capable of being in the moment and enjoying things And I hate it, this feeling that I am basically constantly rushing from one place to another, one project to another.  It's not always like that, but in those moments, it often feels like that's exactly the case, which is not always a bad thing, and in my better moments, I love the productivity and the energy.  But in my worst, I get frustrated.  I have limits and am in good in not moving past them, but I am also woefully over ambitious, which sets me up for chaos.  It's pretty much like this with everything--writing, editing, my personal life...I've learned to live with it, but I sometimes think I just need to slow down and enjoy things more, or at least enjoy the process of things, rather than pushing so hard for the result.