Journal of a Sabbatical

March 19, 1999

wildly productive

I think I'm manic. I've been wildly productive today. Zip, zip, zip through tons of errands, folding cat shelter newsletters, making phone calls, gathering tax documents and mailing them to my accountant... zip zip zip.

Tom thought last night's reading would inspire me to write some poems today, but he was wrong. I can't write anymore. Too wired. Besides that, I've never believed I can actually write. It stems from good old Sister Eudes, whom I mentioned yesterday. Tom says I've still got a nun sitting on my shoulder. I told him "yup, and I know exactly which one".

One of today's manic activities was a dashed off a long e-mail (well, long for me) to Tom Parmenter prompted by last night's reading, about Mark Schorr's mention of being published in Desperado and how I missed the heyday of Desperado in the late 1980's because I was working at a startup and we didn't have e-mail - we used voice mail for everything within the company and there was no money or real need for us to be connected outside... long story ... when I started there I had a table in the hallway 'cause there were no desks or offices available... and I was a manager... anyway, I missed a lot of the cream of Desperado's literary flowering and impact upon world events. At least according to Mark Schorr's telling of the tale. So I jotted all this down in a message to Parmenter waxing nostalgic about days of old (where is the management paradigm of yesteryear?) and ending with an update on what I'm up to these days. And I had to put in punchline: "and I still think I can't write worth a damn. "

And this is a day when I'm in a good mood...