I will be plunging back into press work and poetry work this weekend after more than a month away, so if I am supposed to be working on something with you/for you hopefully I can get it wrapped up or at least underway. Tucked carefully in an email folder there are at least a month's worth of things that were less critical--submission queries for the books I haven't had time to read yet, discussions with authors and corrections on books in progress. I have a whole lot of orders to fill so will start there. Then probably the overdue contracts for what I've accepted for 2023. And then set a plan for layouts as I close out the year. The last month and a half has been a lot of boomeranging back and forth in and out of the city and devoting what little time I have to paid work to not starve, so it's been a struggle. To triage the necessary to survive and the not. My head hasn't been in it at all--still isn't--but again the faking it and making it rule applies.
I feel even further away from my own work than do other peoples (which is at least bolstered in importance by involving others) but I hope that I can get AUTOMAGIC available before New Years. Poetry in general feels not at all important but maybe then that's when I need it the most. That when I am not writing is maybe exactly when I should. I looked at the very pretty proof copy of the book yesterday and felt the weight of sitting down to make those final edits. To even care about releasing a book when I do not feel like reality is quite real anyway. Or that poetry life and real life are not even meeting each other. Not to mention the drag of December when I swear yesterday it was well on its way to darkness at 3pm.
But then again, barring the heft of all that has happened, this feeling is always here, the uncertainty of December, especially without even a glimmer at the end of Christmas, which is less bright this year and sort of murky in the distance. I will hopefully snap out of it by New Year's--all of it, the holiday funk, the SAD depression, the writing fallow ground. Or at least I hope so. My mother's death prompted a really steady creative churn, but it did take some time to acclimate. I had hoped to do another advent project this month, either with art or words, but I am giving myself the year off, which is perhaps the kindest thing I can do. J keeps bringing me things when he visits, I think to cheer me up, --praline chocolates, a cinnamon candle-- and I am trying to be merry, putting up the tree and garlands, hanging stockings, but I still cry a lot randomly.
Tonight, I am going to settle in with whatever slew of terrible holiday romance films I can find on streaming and eat pimento cheese and triscuits, and probably an entire pine of mint cookie ice cream. All creature comforts I am fond of in winter particularly. I will light the candles and string the Christmas tree lights and shop online for an ever-dwindling number of family gifts I will never quite get used to.
