Happily Alone
I love today. This is the first day I've had all to myself in a very long time.
My convocation (which was good, actually--I was very glad I went) started a chain-reaction of sleep depravation and craziness that only ended Friday night. But this morning I got to sleep and sleep, rising only when I was tired of lying around. I spent most of the morning cleaning, actually, tiding the piles that had somehow grown to take over nearly every flat surface in the room, and washing dishes, and folding laundry--and it was good. I played Paul Simon songs and other random goodness--often music that I like and that Carly would hate to listen to. I put on my anklet with the little bells, and put a sparkly clip in my hair and ate chocolate and popcorn. I read some of
The Eyre Affair and sat out in the sun. I've watched five episodes of Farscape and will likely watch one or two more before going to bed again.
And I've done what feels like my final edit/rewrite of "Ohntai." Two out of two critiques have mentioned that this feels like chapter one of a novel, but if it is I have no idea what the story is. (And the thought of trying to write that novel is enough to make me very, very afraid.) Perhaps it should be shorter than it is--it still hovers somewhere a bit above 8300 words--and yet I don't care. Quite a few of those are new words, total rewrites of sections, and maybe there is more that could or should be rewritten but I can't do it anymore. It's done. And so I'm going to put it in manuscript format and print it and send it out, and see what the rest of the world thinks. Or at least the editorial types.
I feel good. I've been both productive and lazy. And, best of all, I've been totally alone all day. Which is not to say that I wouldn't have had a good day if I was with someone else, or that I dislike having Carly around, or that going out and visiting someone would have been bad. It's just that it has been so long since I've just been alone to be myself and do whatever it is that I want to do with no one else to answer to.
A full day of my own. Right now, I can't think of anything better.
