Pulled Multiple Ways

Life is busy, though this busyness is my own doing.

I want to write on this blog, but busyness seems to prevent me. Last night is a prime example. My plan was to write a review in the next chapter of the Carlyle lectures on Heroes. However, I came home from work and found myself much more tired than normal, at least in part due to the excessive busyness of the work day: a luncheon, a webinar, a couple of impromptu training sessions with engineers, working on prep for a training seminar next week, turning in comments to the EPA on changes to regulations, and submitting an abstract to present a paper at a conference. By the time I got home my mind and body were tired.

But not too tired to go to The Dungeon and work on my taxes. I was real, real close to finishing the trading business taxes, and wanted to complete them last night. I did so, was checking them over and relative to my spreadsheet records, when I found a $10 error—not in my favor. That would mean an extra $2.50 in taxes. Since the error was in my spreadsheet, not on the tax forms, I could have turned them in as-is and not worried about it. But I decided to fix it, which then meant transferring new numbers to and reprinting the tax forms. When I did I discovered I failed to carry the change fully on to one form, so had to do that again. By that time I was pretty much good for nothing, gathered the forms together to take to work today and review, and headed upstairs.

Upstairs not to write but to read. I have these two books out on inter-library loan, and I have to have them turned back by April 17. They are modern harmonies of the gospels, and I only need to read the essays in them—the explanatory notes of their methodologies—and take a few notes on their ordering of the events in Jesus' life, and I can turn them back. It's about 50 pages in each book. Shouldn't be a problem over a two week period, but it's reading that requires a lot of concentration, so it takes time. Last night I was able to read only about five pages in one with my limited brainpower of the moment.

As far as writing is concerned, my main task at hand is editing China Tour. As of Wednesday I was on page 115 (out of 253). Last night I was way too tired to do any. Tonight I better equipped mentally, and took it all the way to page 155, to the end of the key chapter with physical danger for one of the tourists; well, I guess for both of the tourists, and for their children as well. I think, taxes permitting, I could actually finish this first round of edits by Sunday and be ready to type them on Monday.

After that, assuming the taxes are really, really done and mailed or e-submitted, I will concentrate on the print versions of my first two novels. Doctor Luke's Assistant is formatted and ready to go, just waiting on the cover. I talked with the cover designer today, and I think she'll have a couple of options for me by Sunday. I'm also talking with a couple of cover designers for the print cover for In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. I haven't yet formatted that book for printing, and won't till the logjam clears.

Meanwhile the writing ideas continue to fill my head until I almost can't contain them. Wednesday when I walked on the noon hour, I saw a scruffy hawk fly off an electric wire near the office. That gave rise to a haiku, which I was able to capture on paper when I returned to the office. Yesterday and today the books I will someday write on John Wesley finally came into focus. I captured the list of those on paper. Don't ask me why, in the height of my busyness, this series of books at are probably a couple of years away (at the earliest) from seeing paper) found it necessary to occupy some of my ready gray cells.

They yesterday and today the possibility of my writing a simple book on floodplains came into focus. It would have a name something like Floodplain Management: What FEMA Wants, Translated into Clear English. I actually have quite a bit of this written, scattered in various classes I've taught over the last three years. So far I haven't captured this on paper.

So, for all of this, I didn't get the blog post I wanted to write written on schedule yesterday. I don't know how well I'll be able to do three posts next week, but I'm going to try.