Some Days in the Life - May 13, 1999

Comments

And we have a very senior editor who knows our work at one of the biggest Children's markets anywhere (all under the auspices of Random House, which owns Bantam Doubleday Dell and... well, a lot of other markets). So, our next step needs to be twofold, it seems to me:

1. Make any needed revisions to How to Become and get it out the door to the next people on the list. Obviously, we can be a winner with this one. So, it's time to win win win! That includes continuing work on its sequel, Cat's Cradle, as we're targeting these stories as a series.
2. Work on a non sequel of the story for Bantam Doubleday Dell's consideration. I've got some thoughts for a straight children's fantasy (echoes of Narnia and Taran Wanderer running through my head) and as it's my turn to be the editor-in-chief for one of these....

Right now I'm figuring out how we can use the web domain to really work on this. Seems like I've got this great potential tool for simple collaboration, sitting right here in my office....

In any case, it was a couple of weeks of intense excitement, and any way you look at it it didn't hurt. And, as I believe I've said before, it's an honor just to be nominated, right?

I'm back on a bad sleep treadmill, and need to figure out how to break it. Last night I was working until well after five p.m., then I wandered to dinner. From there I wandered home, 'round about five-thirty, and called my folks. We talked about potential weekend plans and the contest and stuff like that, and I hung up, and then suddenly it was ten at night. Literally, just like that.

The problem with a large block of sleep is that you can't then just fall asleep when you want at night night. But it wasn't a large enough block of sleep to let me use it as my primary sleep time of the night. So, even though I went to bed before Kilborn ended, at one point I heard Speed Racer come on, which means it was four a.m. at least before I actually fell asleep.

Either way you look at it, I didn't get enough sleep last night. This seems to be the story of my life. And I didn't get to drive among the Apple Blossoms, either. Which is okay, as today is three times the day yesterday was out there, and it was nice yesterday.

The trees are full now, so it's almost like summer wherever you look. Especially in the afternoons, because you can see the sail team practicing, heading out onto the lake in a lot of little boats, sometimes smacking into each other but generally looking smooth. There's something soothing about watching sailboats at play. It's like watching dolphins or seals sporting with each other, especially if you focus on the smooth sails as they ply the waters. They seem almost alive, and generally responsive to their environment. Serene, almost.

If you look in the boat and see the three students who are sheerly panicking, one desperately trying to trim the sails, another trying to steer without smacking the instructor's boat, and a third frantically jumping back and forth, trying to "captain" but really getting in the way, the serene image is lost, of course. So I avoid doing that unless I'm feeling nasty.

Spring sports are a lot of fun, really. The Lacrosse teams and baseball and softball teams seem to have fun, and the Tennis team too... there's something very alive about walking out of the building at the end of the day and being surrounded by students playing sports. And there is an element of play to it -- you almost expect there won't be, but they're mostly having fun out there. It's nice... it's like a part of my environment that I barely remember is coming back to me. The jousting of the teams. You have to like it, even if you're not involved.

Is that age showing? Is my thirty-one year old mind that nostalgic for activities I never participated in when I was in school myself? Or is it the first signs of that all-important first Mid-Life Crisis creeping up? Who knows?

My summer is officially full. Besides a major network upgrade and the cloning of all the machines, old and new, I'm teaching both Brewster Summer Institute for one day (this is for the new, incoming teachers) and taking the "Best Practices" sections of it, to help learn the how and why of our school. I'm teaching one course in Summer Session (which was called Futureschool last year -- a name I preferred. But, according to the Director of Summer Programs, it was a bad name demographically. People were scared of it. Hurm). We're going to be training a new front desk worker and we're going to be redesigning our server systems and our Firewall too.

I was going to start taking art lessons. I'm rethinking that. The fall may be better for art.

I want to learn to draw -- I'm so addicted to pen and ink drawings the only way I can really get what I want and not be driven to poverty is to draw it myself, it seems. I'll never be great but I'm not looking for great. I'm looking for competent.

Maybe that's a part of always reaching further than my grasp. Or maybe I'm just nuts. We'll see.

I've finally received the comment from a reader. The "why do you bare your life to this journal" comment. That'll be tomorrow's subject, but one thing I found interesting was the "bare my life" part. This journal -- especially compared to some I've seen -- isn't particularly confessional. In fact, it's prosaic. I select little slivers and build essays around them. On days when I have nothing to say the entries are short, mostly fueling the Writer's Commitment. (One point of journalling is the enforcement of habit. If you write every day, it's easier to write every day. The Journal keeps that connection going.) But I don't see this as my life going on here. I see it as (hopefully) entertaining for you, and I hope that it keeps people appraised of what's going on if they're interested... but remember, there's always more that happens then you see here. Especially when it comes to other people. I'll tell the bits of their public stories that pertain to what I'm saying here, but I'm not going to tell private secrets of their lives here. And by derivation, there are parts of my own life that won't appear here.

I hope that doesn't kill the "voyeuristic appeal" (to quote one commentator) of the site, but you should know the ground rules.

So why do I do it? Like I said, let's do that tomorrow. I have to make some phone calls now.