Summer Reclusiveness

Sunrise as viewed from my deck. Not bad!

I took a break from the blog when I traveled with the kiddies down to Virginia at the end of June, and then never quite returned to it after we came back. Part of this is because I've been busy with making/going to doctor's appointments that SHOULD have taken place during the school year, chipping away at the clutter in my house and attempting to right all the wrongs in my housekeeping habits, and sometimes actually working on those writing projects I mentioned a month ago. 

But also: I just haven't had as much to say.

I'm feeling a little quieter. I kinda want to curl up and disappear from the world. And by world I really mean people. I'm rethinking/revising not only the way I write but the way I approach the different facets of my life all the time, and sometimes I feel overwhelmed, as if talking about those changes will put them all in jeopardy. It's a crazy-person kind of paranoia, really. I mean, sometimes it really helps to talk about them, whether to a paid professional or the internet via this blog, but at other times it really doesn't help at all, it just leaves me feeling exposed.

So, you know, I write about it here in this really public forum! Ha!

Also, logistics play a part in blogging. I simply haven't had a lot of alone time, and part of this is because I've been really relaxed with my normal wake-up-early-and-write schedule. I said to myself, fuck it, it's summer, and so I've been reading Harry Potter books with Little Miss Talkalot until, like, 10:30 or 11 at night and so not waking up until 6 or so when A. has to go to work. And then there are dogs to contend with (they need a thorough good morning face-mushing and butt-scratching, and with two wriggling labradors this is EXHAUSTING but also very necessary). And there's coffee to make, otherwise my mind wouldn't work, and so by the time my Olympic Dog Petting session is over and I'm into my first cup of caffeine, I don't really have much time to write before Vampire Toddler wakes up and demands, well, anything (her whims change daily by the second).

My very noisy writing partner, Vampire Toddler.

It's SO NICE, however, to wake up and go out onto the deck and attempt to write in the mornings, even with Vampire Toddler chatting away to herself or her food beside me (the other day I heard, in the midst of scribbling away in my journal, "Nice to meet you, orange..." -- it kinda threw me off my train of thought, but made me laugh). Summers out here are so lovely. There are a lot of fucked up things about Long Island, and sometimes I really loathe living here, but I rarely feel disgruntled during the summer, when I can smell salt in the air from the bay and know that the Atlantic is a short drive away. Of course, visiting the ocean with three children is another kind of near-Olympian feat in and of itself, but it's totally worth it.

For the record -- because why else blog unless to record these things? -- here's what I'm working on right now:

• New poems: These may not be very good -- I feel like I'm rusty and clunky and need some time to get back into things. But hell, it's nice to be writing poems again. (Individual ones, not be project pieces, like . . . see my next bullet point)
• Revising Act One of the verse play: I'm inserting new scenes into the act that further develop the characters, and beginning to wonder if maybe what I'm working on, this act, is really a full-length play in and of itself, and if my original idea for one play with three acts is really supposed to be three individual plays linked by subject matter and theme. Which will entail a lifetime's work, at this rate. Still . . . what else am I going to do with my time? If it's worth it, it's worth it. And if it happens, it happens. I'm not going to force it, but I'm not going to fight it, either.
• Writing a review of a chapbook for the Hyacinth Girl Press web site, one of their new projects.
• Reading a little bit of everything, but not a lot of anything, apparently. Nothing substantial yet, anyway.

Here's what I NEED to do (without feeling too stressed out about it, at the moment) before the end of August:

• Poetry video: My schedule in June did not coincide with my colleague's, so I need to see if I can make this happen before the end of the summer (when both of us will have far less free time for collaborative projects like this)
• Finish revising the one act
• Finish writing the review (I said I'd have it finished at the beginning of this month -- oops!)
• Attempt to write an essay (like, say, that Poetry of Witness monster I've ALSO been talking about for, say, five years?)

Anyway. PLANS.