A week since I've written in a journal, or done any spontaneous morning writing (see Dorothea Brande's famous 1934 book for instructions); and more since I've written here.
Well, let's see... an onslaught of students, most of them pleasant though some pretty feckless, but the sheer chaotic mass, the noise and mess, of them is daunting; three days of having a cold (more precisely: a cold virus endemic to a population of migrating undergraduates, transmission airborne, from a female first-year vector – who sat next to me in the first tutorial and sneezed and coughed at me for an hour, while I acted pleasant and urbane and thought at the back of my head, oh no, this won't end well).
And a difficult e-mail, an unfair and painful piece of work, from someone I didn't expect to attack me that way: and one that forbade me to mention it on this blog. No, I didn't feel any need to pay attention to that stricture – it's not anyone's decision but mine what to discuss here – but of course it tainted everything, adding a certain hostility, plus my own defensive anger, to every thought I've had for a week.
Which, of course, temporarily damaged my relationship to this blog, and to most everything else too... of course it has also helped me reexamine relationships, which naturally need a lot of attention in my life.
And, of course, all work on The Book has ground to a complete halt... it is always frustrating, and more than a little bit pathetic, how easy it is to stop me dead. Any foolishness can do it: I may be tough on some fronts, but in creativity/productiveness I am a helpless creampuff. Ridiculous....
Although not all the lines were broken: Patrick and I have seen each other a couple of times this week; he's doing very well, and it was very comfortable to putter around town with him, and to sit in his office while he gets ready for his own onslaught of students. The value of a good friend, in the absence of other kinds of support....
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