i'm gonna suspend my senses

I was so caught up in the desire to write today that it was very hard to focus on the tasks at hand. The day started off with a bang when I carpooled to work with Adit; we left early, since I had to drop him off at his office and make it to my own by 8:30, but we succeeded admirably. Later in the morning, I snuck off to downtown Mountain View and met with my tax lady, who entertains me greatly; she is very nice, even if she is quite adamant that I should consider buying a house and I am still as commitment-phobe as I was when I was eighteen. I understand that it could be a fiscally sound decision to make, but I have a mental block against paying $400k for a condo, and more to the point the act of buying a place says that yes, for now at least, I intend to remain here, and I have never wanted to say "I shall remain here indefinitely" in any place that I've ever lived, even though I have loved places like home, and Stanford, and everywhere else for that matter.

Anyway, the other highlight of the day was that I had lunch with Gyre; he recently celebrated his seven-year anniversary with our company, and as my seven-year anniversary is coming up this fall (speaking of places that I never intended to remain indefinitely), we have much in common and much to discuss. So, lunch was fun, and I followed it up by doing some desultory slogging in the afternoon and leaving at five to avoid traffic. I made it home by 6ish (impeded by sudden downpours throughout the drive), and started contemplating my manuscript. I also fed myself well tonight, making polenta (with butter and parmesan stirred in, yum) and a pork chop, which I tended to while brainstorming all the scenes that I somehow need to fit into my manuscript. I had a brief moment of panic (v. rare for me, I almost didn't recognize it for what it was) as I felt overwhelmed by the sheer amount of writing ahead of me, the fear of not being able to do it, and the broader, more sweeping issues of what I'm doing with my life and why I'm such a commitment-phobic disaster -- but I took a series of deep breaths and brought myself back to the brainstorming. And, really, the brainstorming was quite good, and I'm going to get up early tomorrow and think through it all some more before work.

I had to put it aside, though, so that I could catch up on the reading for my class tomorrow night. We're reading "The Last Summer of the World", which is about a photographer during World War I (although, of course, it's really about so much more than that); it took me awhile to get into it, but now that I'm about two-thirds of the way through, I think that it's really lovely. But I had to put that aside too, even though I just wanted to finish it -- if I'm going to survive work tomorrow, and write in the morning, and sit through three hours of class in the evening, I really need some sleep. Goodnight!