I’ve actually been observing weekends so far this year, forcing myself to turn off the office computer on Friday when I wrap and and not permitting myself to turn it back on until Monday morning. (I still check the customer-support e-mail account once a day over the weekend, but I do that from the family computer, and I don’t let myself do anything else on the site.)
I’m not sure just yet what effect on my writing taking real days off will have. I haven’t adjusted. It’s been nice from a family perspective, though. I hang out with the guys, we do fairly impressive imitations of the Solanum tuberosum grabatus, or common couch potato. We stay up together on Saturday and listen to Art Bell. I knit.
This is the current thing I’m knitting. It is the unblocked bottom border of an experimental sweater. I haven’t yet built the body — have a few more blocks to do to finish the border, and then I’ll start working in the verticals.
I also did almost the entire copyedit of I SEE YOU over the weekend, but that was minor. The changes were minimal, and I did most of it while watching the SuperBowl. (Not a football fan.) I still have three points on the copyedit to finish up today, things that could potentially cause some reworking. But not a lot, I don’t think. Then I need to get to work on the proposal for the next one. A crit. Worldbuilding Clinic. HTCB. Cady II. Get the redesign on the website that includes the Shop links finished.
I try not to think about the list of to-dos. Especially on the weekends, when my aggravating workaholic side kicks and screams and tries to lure me into the office on all sorts of ludicrous pretexts. I keep reminding myself that last year was not fun, that I do not want to duplicate it this year, that if I rest regularly, I will not finish out the year thinking never writing again might not be such a bad thing. I have fallen back on knitting like a junkie falls on crack; knitting hits the switch on my brain that silences the workaholic. It induces a transcendental state wherein I am present in the moment, but wherein the moments become silence, the stitches and patterns form, the colors connect in their odd juxtapositions, picking up each others highlights, and the textures play off one other. My fingers move, progress progresses, and the hurry-up-stuff-to-do-let’s-go-let’s-go part of me gets the crap kicked out of it by the serene, meditative me that is doing something.
Knitting is something. It’s especially something for Type A Libra/Metal Rats who, after more than a minute of doing nothing, begin fidgeting. So far, since I picked it back up shortly before Christmas, I’ve knitted two sweaters, one and a half pairs of socks (long story), a big blanket, and most of a third, dressy sweater. Plus the border above. With eyebrow arched, I note that that’s a lot of relaxing.
