Cleaned up from yesterday’s Daly Bagel event (there’s something about a forest of champagne flutes that I just find so lovely; I don’t even mind hand-washing them out afterwards, because then I get to set them up again, upside-down), so now I have no excuse for not writing.
Except I do, because I FINALLY did a comprehensive first post about the SLF fund drive, which I’ve been meaning to do forever, a sort of end-of-year, this-is-what-we-do-and-pla
It is time-consuming, looking at my friend list and tagging in people individually, and of course, I don’t want to bug people *too* much, so I try not to do this kind of mass tagging in more than once or twice a year. But the SLF is my baby. I was talking to someone at another foundation this past week about the Portolan Project, and she said it sounded like a huge undertaking, and I said yes, that it probably was going to be the main nonprofit project I spent the next decade of my life on.
It’s good, actually, coming to a peaceful acceptance of that. I feel like I was flailing for a while the last few years, not really sure what I wanted to do next. I had tendrils tossed out here and there, trying to assess what was really needed, where I could be of most use. I think my academic background and my intersectional space in the writing world (as a queer, brown, sort-of international, genre AND mainstream writer) are going to come together beautifully in the Portolan Project, and in the SLF’s activities overall.
Now I just need to fundraise a little bit more, and organize a host of volunteers, so we can grow this into something amazing. It’s exciting. 
The plan for today — I’m going to spend another twenty minutes working on the fund drive and SLF stuff (I just confirmed our three Chicago chapter co-chairs for 2020, and will be telling you more about Chris Bauer, Jeremy John, and Dain Broadbent very shortly, once they get all their initial chapter info organized). I have some volunteers in my e-mail that I need to connect with Karen.
At 10-ish, Stephanie Bailey is stopping by, and will work on printing out labels for Feast, and will take some more completed orders out to be shipped, yay. I’m going to make sure she’s set up, but then I plan to retreat to the shed to FORCE myself to write. I’m also going to use tech (the Focus program) to turn off the internet on my laptop, and leave my phone in the house. No wibbling, Mary Anne.
I’ve been severely avoidant the last few days, and also atypically exhausted; I’m not sure if it’s the tail-end of the cold that knocked all of us out last week, or if it’s that I ran out of my ADHD meds on Thursday and haven’t had a chance to get them re-ordered yet. I suppose I’d better call about that next, actually.
But I have no real schedule for today; I’m trying to keep both Monday and Friday free of appointments for the rest of the year. So write, Mary Anne. Do the necessary things, try to wrap that up by 11 AT LATEST, and then write write write.
This is the current queue (it will not all be completed today, but maybe the first three….)
• finish drafting the Wild Cards story
• revise food essay that workshop critiqued and send to Pooja for advice on where to submit it
• revise gardening essay and start researching where to send it (no idea who publishes that kind of thing! Just garden magazines? creative nonfiction places?)
• open big SF novel again and remind self where we stand on that
• start organizing gardening memoir stuff into book shape