Today’s signs of spring: Dog panting on our walk and me only wearing a hoodie over a long-sleeved cotton shirt.
I’m sitting in a local coffeehouse, feeling low-grade anxiety. This low-grade anxiety tells me I ought to be working on today’s day-job task. This low-grade anxiety tells me that straight-A students don’t delay the paying work for a few hours. This low-grade anxiety tells me that someone (but who?) will get mad at me if I don’t turn around today’s day-job task one minute from now.
But here’s the first thing: The immediacy of day-job tasks will always trump fiction if I let them.
Here’s the second thing: Which means that if I’m not careful I’ll accomplish less fiction than usual.
Plus this: Unfortunately, my creativity turns off at night because by then I’m brain-tired.
However: Since I always make my deadlines and the day-job task isn’t creative, I’ll get it done this evening for sure.
So: Here I sit in a coffeehouse about to complete a few hours worth of fiction. Take that, low-grade anxiety. Pipe down, you.
How’s that for negotiating with myself?
I’m coming at you live from a cafe called Three Friends. As a sign of my mood, sitting around a coffee house rates as positive.
I won’t dwell on the only-ifs like I won’t dwell on the fact that my time-off was supposed to last until July, 2009. Bloody economy.
3. This is a better fit for me than the salaried job I left behind, which enervated me in the biggest way even though it, too, was part-time, from home. (Key word: “salaried.” Meaning: still enmeshed in a corporate culture with its 1-on-1s, meetings, boss politics, and performance reviews.)