raining in baltimore

I know, 10:30 is ridiculously early to go to bed, particularly when there were two parties I should have gone to. But I had a long day, and I just sketched out a plan for extreme productivity over the next week, so bedtime it is. I only slept five hours last night; I woke up at 7:30, made the mistake of checking my email rather than going back to bed for another hour, and ended up wide awake and working until ten. Then I had to speed down to the south bay to train with Alyssa, who was good as usual. While I worked out, we discussed my plans for the coming year, and we ended up deciding to cut back and only train twice a week and see how that works out. I like training with her three times a week, but I hate the drive, and spending six hours in my car every week for three hours in the gym makes me really surly. So we're going to try twice a week for now, and then experiment as we go to see whether she can program workouts for me to do on my own, or maybe find a trainer friend of hers in the city who I can alternate with to cut down on my drive time. We'll see what happens; I think twice a week feels more reasonable than three times, so hopefully that's a good start.

After training, I got a smoothie and came immediately back to the city with the intention of getting groceries, then working all afternoon. Instead, by the time I got home I was in desperate need of a nap, and by the time I napped and then took care of some stuff online, it was after four p.m. So I went to the grocery store, came home, worked for a bit, and made supper -- vegetable beef soup, which is quite appropriate for the rain lashing at the windows. It turned out really well, even if it was a bigger batch than I expected, which meant I had to dump everything into a different pot halfway through. It's not exactly my mom's recipe, but it seemed pretty close, even if this recipe required V8 instead of tomato juice, and even if I threw in a leftover zucchini (a vegetable that I don't know if I've ever seen my family cook).

I did some desultory work this evening, but Malcolm and Amelia really aren't going well and it's making me really frustrated and slightly depressed. So I wrote in my journal and figured out that a lot of it is a reaction to the fact that it didn't sell, and I took that feedback too much to heart (even though there wasn't much specific to work off of -- I just second-guessed myself), and while the changes I've made are good ones that I'm happy with, they were so major that it just became a bigger and bigger endeavor. And lurking underneath it is this insidious belief that everything I write must be better than the last, which means Amelia and Malcolm must be better than Ferguson/Madeleine, which is hard to see/believe in when I'm comparing rough material to something I polished and haven't lived/bled with for the last couple of months.

So I'm going to try to calm down and just finish the end that I'm struggling with, and then go back and take a more objective view of it. But that means I need to write all weekend, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars, so that I can feel accomplished enough to take some time and savor the official book launch on Monday. Luckily I have about five gallons of vegetable beef soup and a lot of caffeinated beverages in the fridge, so I can hole up and write like there's no tomorrow. Goodnight!