once i set the mood right imma make it sound like

Words cannot quite express how sore I am today; I was right that Alyssa was trying to kill me yesterday, and I have to get up and let her try again tomorrow. I suppose it's all worth it, but when my legs nearly gave out from under me every time I tried to climb any step/slight incline or sit down/stand up, it was hard to remember the long-term goal in the face of the short-term incapacitation.

However, other than that, today was mostly lovely. I didn't go to the gym this morning, but I did mess around on the internet and take care of some stuff while lazing about in bed. Then, I dolled myself up and went to my old place of employment, where I had lunch with Meital. She's Alan's admin, and while she started being his admin after I stopped reporting to him directly, I still got to know her quite well. It was wonderful to catch up; Alan's out of town this week, as is the big boss, and so she had time to linger over lunch and coffee while we discussed all sorts of topics related to work and life. Finally, I escaped, stopped at Starbucks for some tea, came home, took care of a couple more online errands, and called my parents to replace the call that they missed out on while I was driving back from Vegas on Sunday.

After I got off the phone with my parents, I procrastinated for a little bit, then decided I had to stop. I'm in a complete tailspin from the stress over whether my book will sell or not, which is a) not good for my attempts to eat healthy, since I gave in to my pasta craving tonight, and b) more importantly, is blocking progress on my next book. So rather than taking tonight off as I said I would, I went to Stanford, sat in one of my favorite study rooms (the Bender Room, on the top floor of the Bing Wing, which was filled with evening light and not filled with very many people), and tried a meditation exercise before writing. And, much to my surprise, it worked. It came from a guest post that I facilitated last week on the group romance blog I'm part of, and at the time I'd dismissed it as kind of silly. But, after fifteen or twenty minutes of sitting in silence and envisioning walking down a series of steps to my ideal writing place, my mind had stopped frantically obsessing over my sales potential, and I was able to write 5+ pages of character development stuff related to my hero's childhood and personality.

Through that exercise, I discovered that my ideal writing place has a minibar, but I won't dwell too much on the implications of that; if it makes you feel better, a fancy tea machine and an abundance of Diet Coke and ice featured more prominently than top-shelf liquor. But, I'm glad I was able to write, if only for a little while. I came home, still quite peaceful, to make sure that the post I'm facilitating for tomorrow's romance group blog went live at the right time, and then did some desultory answering of email.

And now, I'm going to go to bed, and when I wake up tomorrow morning and start obsessing over whether my phone will ring, I will hopefully hit myself in the head and try to go to my quiet place. Goodnight!