I forgot to take my sleep aid medicine last night, which meant that I woke up after 3 hours, and have been up since 3 a.m., and I did get a LOT done (baked love cake! cut out fabric for a half dozen masks! made candles! made soap! posted about Kickstarter! got into long discussion about school reopening and running for office on Facebook group with local moms, okay, that might not be an accomplishment exactly, but anyway), but now I am groggy and having a little trouble focusing.
I ended up going down to the basement for the fabric cutting, and seem to have settled in there for work today, which may not have been the best choice, as it’s a real disaster down here at the moment — we’re talking tripping over things when you try to walk across the room, because I got so harried the last six weeks of the semester, I was just throwing stuff in the basement to organize later, and then sometimes the piles fall over — so I keep wanting to get up to clean and organize at least a little bit.
I really need to keep my butt in the chair and do some writing — I have a Wild Cards blog post that’s overdue, despite poor Stephanie reminding me every darn day for the several days beforehand. I *meant* to do it on time. And then George sent a note chiding me for lateness, gah. And I even know what I want to write about — trying to create alternate history for Sri Lanka in the Wild cards universe and not stepping in political landmines in the process. Harder than you might think.
It’s fiction, so you think it’d be safe, but alternate history can be particularly dangerous, often re-inscribing and reinforcing violently racist, sexist, etc. political and social structures. (Benjamin, maybe a good topic for the podcast? Do we know anyone who does a lot of alternate history? Or examples of alternate history that is particularly pernicious?)
The cat has just come to purr next to me (thank you, Arya, for not sleeping on the stack of just-ironed tea towels, which I clearly need to move off the couch as soon as I get Kevin to help me bring a folding table down to the basement). The purr is very soothing and also rather loud, so maybe it will function like white noise and help me focus? Fingers crossed.
I’m about to go into an hour of co-writing with my students (and anyone else who wants to join, drop note in comments for Zoom link), which is also useful for focus. You don’t have to be working on fiction! Just dealing with e-mail or whatever is also fine. We usually work for 50-55 minutes on the Zoom with video / audio off, then check in for 5 minutes, then repeat.
