This weekend has brought some much needed time to breathe, which I am thankful for. I had planned this weekend as a time to crunch in as much extra work as possible, since Justin is up north for the weekend, and I prefer to spend the little time we have together being, well – actually together – then busily working on projects whilst I am sitting next to him, but a world away, in a laptop or a manuscript. But still, I’m taking this weekend as a personal time to breathe, which is quite nice.
Last night I had a nice dinner with my mother, and then spent some time at the house catching up with my brother. I left their house with the intention of going home, but found myself aimlessly sitting at Starbucks, again, with the intention of doing work. I checked my email, then, the hell with it, closed it up and went home. I hit the bed exhausted, and much to my annoyance, did not finish the episode of South Park that was playing on the television. I hadn’t seen this one before – but I can only conclude that Cartman, Kenny, Kyle, and Stan returned the goat safely to it’s rightful owners and escaped the Iraqi military in one piece (well, perhaps Kenny didn’t escape safely).
Saturday morning came, and I turned off all alarms, phones, and other annoying devices the night before, to ensure my time to sleep. I took my time in the AM gathering my laundry and thoughts, and eventually left the house to return to Starbucks (I know I won’t get any work done just sitting around the apartment).
Down here I ran into Chris, whom I let borrow my copy of The New York Diaries, since he lost his in his last move. Ricky and I discussed life and the our usual bantering of web-site optimization techniques that neither one of us really employs. Over the course of a few hours, thanks to the incredible slow processing of Lulu’s photobook files, I wrapped up work on TimeStop 2006. This wrap-up basically included of the addition of the Venice pictures, which I could have sworn were already included, but weeks earlier when I received my proof copy of TimeStop, my sworn vows were discounted by the fact that the photobook concluded with Jerusalem, not Venice. I felt kind of funny ending up a photo book with images of Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocasut Museum, so I decided to wait until I had ample access again to Justin’s much-faster laptop to add the photos, plus the bio and bio pics. Done.
I browsed through all the files and discovered that I had started work on this book back on October 22nd, 2006. It was meant to be a quick little project, not really intended for mass distribution (evident by the book’s $42+ production cost), but merely as a fun thing to have for myself and a couple friends who have gone backpacking. Nearly three months later, this short and quick project is completed. I guess this is short and quick compared to the time I’ve spent working on my second book, which dates back to November 2005).
Hopefully The Vagrant will not take nearly as long, and it shouldn’t – not to bad with work started on it on December 9th, with a February 23rd release date. But there are a few of us working on that one (really, mental work – the planning, thinking, starting, clunking, planning – on The Vagrant began, also, around November 2005).
Now it’s to task on catching up with homework. I have spent the last week off of University of Phoenix (except for the occassional urgent phone call), sub-contracting copywriting and development work for an optimzation company. This has been highly enjoyable, getting to use my intelect on something other than Pell Grant and Title IV Funding. In the evenings I have been furiously pounding out freelance and other sub-contractor assignments, not of the more random of which include writing histories for a company that sells paper models for grade-school children, to assist on their school assignments. It, too, is enjoyable work, but certain complexities naturally arise within me when writing histories on Ford’s Theatre and Freedom Tower for children.
But before the homework, it is off now to dinner with my good friends Brandon and Andrea Willey. It’s good to catch up.
Give yourself a day off.
Sharoute 