i promised not to call but i lost all control and i need you now

I'm back, bitches. Not that my physical location matters so much to any of you, unless you actually live in the bay area and care to see me anytime in the near future, but it is nice to be home. It's amazing, though, how going away for a few days somehow both rejuvenated me and got me to do a whole ton of work -- I would do it more often, if spending money on a hotel in addition to paying rent in one of the most expensive areas of the country didn't seem like a supremely foolish thing for an unemployed person to do.

But, in this case it was worth it, even if the amount of work I did yesterday meant that I spent most of the day today wandering around in some sort of weird melty haze. Writing is like no other work I've ever done, in that it seems to consume some vital part of my energy that other activities leave untouched; and if I push really hard, at some point I come to the end of the line with that energy, and it saps everything else while trying to replenish itself. So that's how I felt all day today, although I managed to navigate the twists and turns of the road back up from Monterey without incident. I got home around two and forced myself to clean my house before sitting down, since I knew that if I didn't do it immediately, I wouldn't do anything about it for several days at least. Then, I talked to my parents, who seemed to be surviving the weather (which, as usual, made me feel guilty for being annoyed at the 50-degree weather we've been having here).

After I hung up with them, it was time for the Oscars, and I watched the whole telecast even though it was supremely boring. Really, I found most of it rather unenjoyable -- but since I had planned to watch it, I followed through anyway. Post-Oscars, I was too tired to edit, but I needed to finish judging Golden Heart entries, so I sat down and forced myself to read the remaining four entries. Two were at least well-written, even if they had too much backstory and so left me feeling like I hadn't gotten to the story yet; one was meh, and again almost all backstory (when the hero hasn't shown up in the first fifty pages, it's a problem); and one was so ridiculously awful that it felt like I was reading a poorly-written satire. I need to sit down and figure out the numerical scores to give tomorrow, but at least I'm done. With my house clean and the judging finished, the only tasks on my list this week are grocery shopping, laundry, and some quality time at the gym -- and beyond that, I should have plenty of time to finish editing my story so that I can get it out to the world.

But that requires sleep so that I am capable of seeing straight tomorrow, so it's time for bed. Goodnight!