Thursday, September 2, 2010

catching up

This is a time of high activity. Not all work - but not all fun; intense.

Today the pace caught up with me in the form of missing my chiropractic appointment because I mis-remembered the time. And I really wanted that appointment today. We rescheduled and there is no giant, serious thing going on that will limit my ability to work or play (well, not much) - but it would have been really nice to have seen her today. Now I have to wait another week; and I'll be fine.

But missing appointments is not something I normally or frequently do. I'm generally very good about keeping track of where I need to be and when; sometimes I misjudge the traffic or get bogged down in a project and am a little late, but I get there. Noticing when I start running a little late too often is a sign that my life is out of balance. Missing an appointment, for me, is a sign that I'm slipping into the over-coping mode and need to evaluate my schedules and activities.

That would be now.

And in that looking at things, I also see that I have fallen behind on working on the novel. I am writing pretty regularly right now. I'm back in the Wayward Writers group and loving it. I write at least two pieces a week and give and get feedback; it's wonderful! But it's not the novel (but some of these short pieces will be developed into sections of the memoir). For the novel, what I need now is time. Blocks of time. I've done notes and research and charting - now I need chunks of time to work on revision/editing. I'm going to look at what I have in October and plan to spend some time on that before NaNoWriMo-November; I'll do some in September, too - but I'm not sure how many blocks of time I can fit in around PICA's T:BA:10 and a short trip.

I also have two friends who have had some serious medical situations in the last couple of weeks. One was a planned, major surgery - a member of the dragon boat team and everyone pulled together to set up daily meals delivery for her and her daughter; amazing group of women! The other one is an acute and unexpected illness that has had her nearly immobile and hospitalized for a couple weeks; and she has just moved to a rehabilitation facility for about six weeks. Another member of the team and, again, the members have been great about visits and phone calls and really being there for her, too. These two situations have really emphasized the value of friends and community and having people who care. I feel so blessed to have these women in my lives.

It's also important for me to note that not everything I have going on is negative or bad stress. Last week I got to interpret for ZZ Top and this Friday I will interpret for Lynyrd Skynyrd. I like interpreting concerts. They are a lot of work to prepare for - but fun. It's fun to play with languages (the translation from English to ASL) and to make it match the performers. And the audience members I'm interpreting for really like these bands, I know what their language needs are, and they like my style. Last week they had an awesome time, they said - they left smiling and happy -- and isn't that the goal?

So - one more concert, then I will get a couple weeks off of that type of preparation. Next week my work is light and the TBA festival begins. The TBA festival is theater, writing, drama, performance, dance, film, music - all stuffed into 10 days of creativity. I will be an audience member - and a creative observer.

Ahhh.