I’ve been staring at February strangely because I am confused and annoyed that it has arrived already, but it’s been five days now so I think it’s here to stay and didn’t make a mistake or anything. I am going to choose not to think too much about my unfinished January to-do list and instead make new lists, probably without months on them this time.
Still settling in here, hanging things on walls and re-arranging lamps. I’m slowly but surely putting together my office, a process that has become slightly more complicated by the fact that my new desk does not have drawers. Most of my office stuff is in cardboard boxes, still, helpfully labeled things like “office – papers” and “office – fragile” and hopefully soon I will be able to put the fragile things and the paper things in places that are not cardboard. Cardboard feels so temporary.
I put my newly pared-down bulletin board up, which makes it look sort of office-y. This is the third space I’ve had this board in and I’ve stripped it clean before hanging each time, which feels appropriate for a new space. I added a row of my Nick Bantock postcards which have hung in every space I’ve lived since I was in college and are beginning to show their age around the corners, but having them up above my desk makes it feel more like a space I can write in. Also the fact that I have a desk chair now helps with that. Chair not pictured, but comfy.
(Also pictured on board: lower half of a print from Etsy, torn playing card procured at Sleep No More & postcard from one of several stays at the Royalton Hotel.)
I am still waiting on a few more pieces of furniture, and I keep encountering things that are in need of other things, like rugs that need those non-slippy rug pad things to keep them from slipping, but it’s looking more and more livable every day. I’m trying not to think too hard about how the estimated delivery date for my bookshelves is March, but at this rate that’ll be any day now.
And now, a word about email.
I am finally pretty much caught up with my personal email. For about three hours on Sunday I had nothing in my inbox and it was magical.
I am woefully behind on website email, and when I say “woefully behind” I mean I think my autoreply still says it’s October.
The important part: I simply do not have time to respond to every email I receive.
I tried for awhile and I can’t keep up. It takes away from time I should be writing* and also I have this creeping social anxiety that spreads to email answering and I need to think about how to respond properly so it takes me longer to respond and some people could probably handle quickly jotting off replies but I can’t. I’m sorry. I wish I could because it makes me feel terrible that I can’t respond individually to each and every message I get. I do try to read absolutely everything, though, even if I can’t read in a timely manner.
If you need to contact me for professional reasons, there is contact information for my agency in the sidebar of the blog. There is also a Random House contact for press-related inquiries.
I took my own email contact off the website for now, I am trying to figure out the best way to manage it in the future. Please be patient with me, I’m still comparatively new at this.
I’m hoping to spend most of the next few months working on a novel and in order to do that I need to basically live in my head. There’s a lot of stuff in there that I need to sort through and explore and figure out how best to tell the story of the particular bits that I’m sorting through and exploring for this novel. Also there are characters in there who are getting annoyed with me for neglecting them for so long.
I am trying to find a good balance of social media and hopefully that means the blog will be updated with actual Thoughts on a fairly regular basis.
The best place to say hi or ask questions that can be answered in 140 characters or less is and likely always will be Twitter. I do try to answer all directed-at-me @ replies, though I think sometimes Twitter eats them.
I’ve had a lot of stuff to deal with in the last two years, both personally and professionally, and I’m still working through a lot of it and trying to figure out what works best and how to handle, well, life. And when I say “a lot of stuff” I mean I would not wish my last two years on anyone, and for every high-high there’s been a low-low that I can’t tell the internet about. It’s tiring. Sometimes I need to walk away and make gluten-free salted caramel brownies. If I could I would share them with everyone (unless for some reason you don’t like caramel or chocolate or sea salt).
So, please bear with me while I settle in to new spaces and new life and quickly-moving new year and attempt to figure all of this stuff out. I greatly appreciate it.
*this includes time doing writing-related things like soaking up inspiration or reading or figuring out where to keep the pens with my drawerless desk.