It’s been a long week…

It's been a long week already, and it's only Thursday. That's mostly due to having a DesiLit meeting Tuesday night, and an arts collective meeting Wednesday night, with today being long teaching day. I cooked for both meetings, so we have lots of rice and curries leftover to get us through the next few days; also a decadent chocolate cake, which I was road-testing for Nilofer's baby shower. It went over very well -- honestly, I think it may be the best chocolate cake I've ever had. I followed the recipe almost exactly -- the only thing I changed was adding a teaspoon of chili powder to the cake batter (not the mousse), which nicely accentuated the chocolate. Warning: it's hard work, making this cake. Lots of constant stirring, whisking, etc. And it takes longer than you think, because you have to let the cake cool to room temperature before you can chill it and start the mousse layer, never mind the six hours minimum that the mousse has to chill. I plan to not cook anything else on any day when I make it again! But well worth the effort, I think.

Tomorrow I should get to rest some, and we're making good progress on various fronts, at least. For the SLF, mentorship requests have started coming in, which is cool. If you want to apply, please do it quick, since we only have fifteen slots this time around. I think we'll be accepting on a combination basis of 'yes, your work appears to be at the appropriate level for this -- not too far ahead or behind' and 'first-come, first-served'. The next thing to work on for the SLF is a membership drive, upcoming in March. Expect to hear more about that soon.

DesiLit Chicago has sketched out a schedule for the next few months that's pretty full. In March, we're doing a rapid-fire reading of local authors and bringing in Indu Sundaresan for a reading and a private brunch. In April, we're holding a 48-hr writing contest. In May, we're joining in with SAPAC to help put on the spring show, Voices of Resistance 5. And in June, we're going to do a one-day intensive writing workshop, hopefully bringing in an editor and an agent. It's all good.

And the arts marketing collective is working on joint postcards, a website, a mailing list, and a name. Not necessarily in that order. :-)

The trick now is to hold all this in my head and not drop any of the balls -- while keeping my teaching and my own writing as the actual priority. And remembering to have a life. And exercise. And take Sundays off. :-)

Plan for today: exercise, shower, dress and go into campus; teach my class; teach another class subbing in for a colleague (because I'm nice); write up and post minutes for the two meetings; copy flyers for my students' new online magazine and post the online version around and about; try to work on a short story for Catamaran (because they asked so nicely) on the theme of 'coupling'; teach my evening class, come home and collapse.