It’s been a rough couple of weeks – like working all day and then having a shoot at night and working all evening, that kind of rough. On top of that I like to add nutty things like yoga and karate, and oh, trying to be a first time author.
On Friday, the first samples of the book arrived, and, I’ll be honest with you guys, it just wasn’t right. I tweaked just about everything; content, paper stock, layout… even added a new section. I want this thing to be perfect, and perfect means something else entirely when you’re writing a book instead of a blog, that you hope people will buy and use and love, and that seems (compared to the blog at least) frighteningly permanent.
I knew the stress was gettin’ was bad when, on the one day I’d booked off for fun, I decided to throw a hissy fit first thing in the morning. I apologized to my forgiving friends (4 or 5 times), stewed at myself for the rest of the day got over it, and went on to have a pretty awesome day at the farm. Apples straight from the trees, a round up of the Highland cattle (they’re so cute when they run) a wine tasting and tour at Frogpond Farms, a BBQ with some of my favourite people/cows/dogs, a trip to a farmers market to load up on Ontario produce (the best in the world, but I’m biased) and a stroll through Buskerfest with 2 of our closest friends. Look how stressed I am… that’s a run-on sentence if ever there was and I was sure my editor had beaten that one out of me.
I fretted instead of slept, got up at 6, worked on the book some more, breaked for brunch (with even more of my favourite people, really, this has been a blessed weekend people-wise and I should stop complaining) and came home to work on the book some more.
It’s 4:30, and I’ve finally sent another version off to the printers, with fingers crossed and muscles cramped. I’ve poured my heart into it, and I just can’t wait to share it with everyone.
I have a thing I call ‘airplane calm’. I try to stuff lots of things into the day, and I’m bad at relaxing. I relax on airplanes though, because if it’s all going to hell in a hand basket… I can’t do anything to change it. I can’t work, check email (that’s changing, damn them) or accomplish much. So I relax. Knowing that the book is off to the printers at last gives me a certain amount of airplane calm, and dammit, I’m going to enjoy this.
I still have to work on my day job until 10 or so… but hey, I get to do it while eating blueberry pie, so that’s alright :)