Deadlines, deadlines

My triple witching hour of weekly/monthly/quarterly deadlines has passed, and yesterday I felt remarkably free. There was bandwidth for new ideas and for getting Little Guy to write with punctuation (and without cApitAl letTerS in the middle of words). Relieved, I took Amsterdam for a walk in the crisp fall air, and felt as if all was right with the world. It sure is nice to see the good things that are hidden from my heart when I'm stressed or sick; it's not that they don't exist when I'm preoccupied, just that I don't see them.

And then the phone rang last night, and it turned out that the biggest piece I'd turned in was for the wrong month. Oy! It wasn't possible to tweak what I had, either. And so I had 24 hours to come up with an entirely new piece on a different topic, 1200 words long, with at least 10 quotes and a handful of anecdotes. Polished.

As I staggered to my computer an email came in, ALL IN CAPS, alerting me to the need to invoice something within 24 hours or I wouldn't get paid. Now it's not hard to write up an invoice, is it? So I started to do that, hoping my brain cells would kick into gear while I was typing.

Then I discovered that the invoice had to include specifics about each of the six programs in a winter nature program for kids that I'm going to do. Erp! Hmmmm. I hadn't planned those out yet because, well, y'know, the first one doesn't take place for another three weeks.

By the time I'd designed the programs and hammered out the invoice, my brain was so fried I needed a synapse infusion. None was forthcoming, so I went to bed. Got up this a.m. and started grinding out the big piece. It felt like traveling cross-country by pushing a car.

But now it's done, or at least done enough to be in the review phase, and I am heading out to a book reading about Catherine the Great. I don't know much about ole' Cath, but I do know the author, and that's good. I'm taking Big Guy and a friend's child.

Revisions will await me upon my return. I'm hopeful that hearing about Catherine will stimulate activity in at least a few brain cells, and perhaps even re-awaken my desire to write. If I don't fall asleep while I'm there, that is. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.