Wednesday, November 09, 2016

world serves its own needs, don't misserve your own needs

I'm tempted to just direct you to [censored]'s attempt at writing a blog post for me (see last night's comments) and call it a night, since he #nailedit. But I suppose I should tell you that I'm still alive, although I'm brutally tired - I was up until after one a.m. last night, and didn't sleep well (thanks to almost five glasses of wine), and I woke up at seven feeling like death (mostly due to lack of sleep, not a hangover, which I miraculously avoided as the only gift of today).

It was rather interesting experiencing the aftermath of the election with a bunch of writers - writers are strange beasts anyway, and tend to be highly emotional (or at least sensitive to drama), and often very opinionated. And it was clear that the energy throughout the hotel was awful - there were a lot of tears and red eyes, and a lot of fear.

So I tried to put it all out of my head and focus on the work of learning how to tell better stories, but the morning workshop opened with a rather long diatribe about the election, and it totally distracted me. I took a couple of great things away from that workshop, but I was really exhausted and really unable to focus, so I ended up skipping all the afternoon stuff so that I could relax in my room, then go out and seek a late lunch by myself (salad and a glass of wine at a bar where the locals were also devastated), and then wander around Salem for a little bit. Salem's a really pretty town, and I wish I had more time here - but I think I'll be ready to go home when the time comes.

Then I came back to the hotel and hung out in the bar with my new friend Heather, who is awesome. She and Barbara were signing books at seven because they're workshop presenters and all the presenters did a signing, so I picked up a couple of books and then hid in my room for another hour. But then we all had a late dinner at Bit Bar, which was charming - it had a video game theme, with lots of old gaming machines, and Barbara had tater tots shaped like Tetris pieces, and it was delightful.

But now I'm desperate for sleep and hoping that I can refocus tomorrow since there are some workshops that I really want to get something out of - goodnight!

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