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I am again too exhausted to write—I need to work on this problem. It’s, what, about 11:30 on a night after a nine hour shift. I got home at 10:20, warmed up a bowl of rice. Came down here. Stared ahead of me a few minutes to give the day time to scuttle off my back, and then I sit down. This is not the ideal time to be doing time--but I’m dedicating more daylight hours, when I can claim them, to work on other projects. That is more important. A good friend recently expressed concern that these scribbles are taking attention from said regular projects, and he wasn’t wrong. So: these go in the cracks now.

 

By other projects, I mean my short stories. I am getting sick of my short stories. I am getting very, very sick of my short stories. Which is why I’m pushing myself through them now. Two more to do for draft two, then I begin a third draft. Five or so of them still need real work, so that won’t be as quick as I would have liked. But I’ll take a break after that, let my brain rest, forget about them for awhile. Maybe get on figuring out the self-publishing process for Vancouver Observed; or get on submitting Still Life; someday I want to at least look into how one gets an agent.

 

Or rest. I could do that. I probably should do that.

 

Oh well. Anyway:

 

It’s properly cold as of yesterday—when it snowed. We had had warning, mutterings were passing back and forth in the streets and the shops, but it still caught me off guard. This is Vancouver, snow always does that to people. It was the tail end of the afternoon just before it started to get dark at this early hour winter likes to get dark at, and I looked out the living room window and there was the snow sticking, actually sticking to the ground. Did not go down to Grounds for Coffee like I’d been thinking of doing; did leave for the Vancouver Story Slam a few hours later, because of promises and etc.

 

And today it’s -12. I got myself at hot chocolate from the Tim’s at King Edward Station just so I didn’t freeze to death waiting for the bus. Hot chocolate and a donut. The bus was mercifully on time. It sped me home and to that bowl of rice mentioned above. That’s today: worked nine hours today; not much to say about today. Nobody wanted to go outside, so few customers. The shipment was late too. We spent many hours wandering aimlessly about the empty aisles.

 

Yesterday was more interesting. I went to the monthly story slam event at Hero’s Welcome on Main St. I had decided to get there earlier than planned because I was unsure ho the snow would effect traffic. Had already agreed to get their early, to get a table for Mark and Kirk. Mark was reading, and I had gone to support him. But a reader had cancelled due to the snow, and so I ended up reading too. Totally unexpected, and I had to pick a story at short notice off of my laptop. It was the one about the missing child and the grieving mother. Mark read a story about going to Ireland after a breakup. They were both good. Neither of us won anything.

 

I am getting project fatigue over this, too. This is what I do with life: I take what I love and I wear myself out on it.

 

I suppose we should all be so lucky as to do what we love so much we get to drive ourselves into the ground with it.

 

There you go: I told you (did I?) that this is heathy for me. I’m already squeezing optimism out of it.

 

I’ll come back to it entry tomorrow morning and maybe I can flesh this out into something nice. Otherwise, I’ll just post this. I’d rather not, but I will.