This week, since it's spring break, I've been doing half days in the library and spending the rest of my time in the studio. Subsequently, I have put a good dent in the books that were released since the beginning of the year and am getting author copies on their way still left to go out. Things keep getting clogged (I catch up on orders and meanwhile author copies orders get backlogged. Then I spend time on those and get behind on orders. Rinse and repeat. ) The weather is better, and today, the first day I could go without tights and multiple layers, so my general mood is better. The past couple of weeks I've been fending off an unusual exhaustion that comes outta nowhere, even with adequate sleep. This goes along with what I like to call my midday cliff, the one from which I seem to fall in terms of energy and clear-headedness. Everyone keeps talking about how these things happen at middle age (there it is again, the phrase I am trying to embrace rather than run from) , but if so, I really need to work on rationing my energy in the earlier part of the day.
It does not help that, even working only four hours in the library doesn't mean I work less, only that I have more to do in less time (and even moreso since our student workers who process ILL are out of town for the week and I have to do their jobs in addition to my own (and in our short staffedness, that is in addition to what I actually do permanently.) I am also working on getting up the Strange Fevers show, either tomorrow or the beginning of next week. I had a rather spectacular singular moment of frustration this afternoon about yet another meeting that took a chunk of the day that could have been handled in an e-mail, so much so that I needed to calm myself down in the back room before I bit anyone's head clean off. I was reading an article someone linked to on perimenopause, and while I don't seem to have the usual physical symptoms (and my lady cycle has always been outta wack, so I might be slower to notice any change in that) I wonder if acute flashes of anger are related to midlife hormonals (I remember there was a period of time I thought my mother, at this age, was rabid and insane.). Whatever it is and whatever the source, I want it to go away. It may just be that I really, really need a vacation.
So instead, I am dreaming better things. Everyone is at AWP this weekend, so I am spying on them from Chicago with a equal mixture of both envy and relief. I am always a little torn on whether to to go. It's not an option particularly this year due to work and money. In general it's way too expensive and an endeavor to take the press and pay for the table fee --even a shared one--anymore (and I am not particularly happy with them jacking up the prices every year), but I still would love to go for the social aspects, even of that just means off-site events. I meet so many people I only know online and re-connect with others, and it's wonderful. Next year is San Antonio, which is a city I really like, so if I can swing it, I might just go for the offsite things.
I am gearing up for my NAPOWRIMO-ing and doing more HH Holmes research which is faring well. A few pieces are from the p-o-v of one of the women he was married to, and later murdered, along with her sister. I sent the first batch of pieces off to a journal on Friday and finally decided on a title- [licorice, laundanum]. Last year, I round up switching gears mid-month to keep momentum, so there are some back burner projects waiting as well--everything from the Hollywood starlet poems to the series of pieces that I want to accompany the Eleanor collages I made a few weeks back. Last summer's research-intensive project, the Slender Man series, a collab with my sister on visuals, is about to be installed in all its glory in the Strange Fever's exhibit (and in related Slender Man news, I've just begun printing the first copies of the MANSION anthology. )
In visual pursuits, last weekend, I harvested a bunch of dead flowers from my vase on the table and played a bit with some botanical prints and some more monotypes. The results were mixed (see above) and I threw about half in the trash, but some of the others are nice. I have more flowers at the end of their prime and may do another round this weekend. I do get a free weekend before I have to go to Rockford the next, so I am going to hide in the apartment, drink coffee, make more soup, edit some recent writing pieces, and binge watch whatever my heart desires. Last weekend I blew threw the two seasons of Handmaid's Tale (which I definitely will be writing about more when I have some time.) So stay tuned...
