Getting back on track

On multiple levels, I mean.  For one thing, I need to keep my family from sidetracking me completely from my work.  (See the last few days.)  For another thing, I would like to keep my family concerns from hijacking this blog altogether.  Not that I won't occasionally post about them.  (Hell, everyone else does on their academic blogs!)  Last post, though, made me feel kind of wrung out, and it's not what people steer their browsers to this blog to see.  (I think...?)  Still, I guess it had to bubble out of me somewhere; nowhere else on the internet is safe from family: not the other blog I keep, not Facebook, nothing.  Sometimes you just have to vent in a safe space, you know?

Anyway, my main comment at the moment is: Phew!  I feel a combination of exhaustion and relief for all the things I accomplished lately.  I survived cooking for my family — I was disappointed with the vegetables cooked in the chicken jus, but the chickens themselves came out great — as well as the time spent with them.  I even made it through a rather long day of road travel to help my brother acquire some furniture for his new apartment.  (I'm humbled by how bad I still am at navigating some of Hometown's highways.)

Today, I finally got my mojo back and made myself exercise before breakfast, which gave me a surprising burst of energy.  (And — no exaggeration — worked off two pounds of the spare tire I've been carrying for the last few months!)  Even better, I made it through emailing at least a semi-coherent summary of my book project to a potential press editor.  That particular duty scared me so much that it took me four days to set it down in black and white, while the ideas fermented in the back of my mind.  On the advice of Dr. Crazy, I spent some time poring over a few how-to books on turning a doctoral dissertation into a good, publishable book, and now I'm a little paranoid that my sketches and thought processes are still hidebound and dissertation-like and no one will want to publish or read such nonsense, and I will only run around in pointless little circles and wail piteously alone in my room until some kindhearted editor takes pity on me and takes my publishing virginity.

Ahem.  Now you have some insight into my nonexistent dating life in high school.  Whoops.

The point is, I emailed the editor.  And I fancy that I even sounded realistically confident but self-critical, rather than unrealistically self-deprecating or bragging.  And now I kind of want a drink as reward.  Maybe I should make myself wait until this evening when I'm actually supposed to go drink with a friend.