notes & things | 12/10/2022

In my efforts to embrace a season I am not really feeling, J and I hit up a Christmas choral concert at DePaul his friend was performing in. I'd brung a mask, but we ended up on some of the extra chairs in the back and not too close to others, so I didn't really need put it on. But still it was nice to be out, and the church at DePaul was lovely, a surprise since I hadn't ever been in there, even in my grad school years. Despite my reluctance to go places and do things, sometimes I feel better in general when I have--whatever those things are. This was true prior to covid, the difference now being that I am less tired and weighted by wanting to be home not working full-time, and also having my nights free to spend as I choose, a luxury I've lacked most of my adulthood.

If any week needed a break in the routines, it was this one, which because of slew of cloudy days, and just being so close to the equinox, has felt unusually dark and heavy. I wake around noon and then work through the afternoons, which are so short right now it kills me. I've put up my tree and garlands and wreaths, which provide some interior lights along with the star lights hung near my desk, but the I groan a little every night when I am forced to turn on lamps at 4:30.  I keep telling myself it is only temporary.  In a week and a half, we'll hit the darkest day and then it's all downhill, very slowly though, through late February when you start to notice the days getting a little longer. 

Last week, to cheer myself, I ordered some dresses, one for Christmas Day--a plaid smocked peasant dress, and then a burgundy velvet spaghetti strap number for New Years, which I am determined to do something with to close out this year that has been equal parts awesome and terrible.I also got a super cute pink velvet 40's style dress that may be perfect for a Valentines Day date night in the future. I have found that my shopping has become much less general and much less prolific in the past year, not due to money as much as just feeling strange buying clothes when I usually wear one of several cotton slip dresses most of the time. Most of my mad money I've been buying little things for the house, holiday decorations, a set of bowls, slipcovers for the furniture, a new coffee maker. In the coming year, I plan to get a new, larger bar cart and replace my troublingly leaning bookshelves in the living room.

I did make a dent in e-mails last week and this week, as well as some finalizing details on press things, which means this week I can turn to layouts.  I even managed to work out the corrections in AUTOMAGIC and submit the final file. Today, after a couple months away from my own creative writing at all, I opened a fil of poems I'd been working on in September, then abandoned, and they weren't half as lacking as I believed them to be. Some of them were even pretty damn good.  I had a fb messenger convo yesterday with a local poetry friend about trying to rekindle your enthusiasm as a writer and find audiences (me for poems, him for a new novel)  and I don't think we came to a conclusion or perhaps there is no conclusion to find in a world that barely values words at all and we all feel far more disconnected from it--even 20 odd years into "careers" whatever that means.