Tag: five year plan

Another World

Monday, Monday, can’t trust that day…

And so today it is back to the office with me, lickety split. I slept well and had a nice, relaxing weekend, which was great. Yay! We shall see how my week goes, though, won’t we? I feel like I’ve not been in the office in months, while it was really only a week and I went in for a half-day on Friday, which wasn’t so bad. I also now kind of/sort of have a plan for the next five years–subject to change at any moment, natch–which is a good thing. I haven’t made a plan since Katrina blew my last one to smithereens, for obvious reasons, but if your plan is flexible and adaptable to change, there’s no reason not to have one, you know? Five years isn’t such a long time, either.

Imagine my joy and delight when making groceries the other day to discover they had Creole tomatoes back in stock, so they must be coming back into season and to that I say, huzzah! I love them! They are the best tomatoes, and…you know, I’ve been wanting to make fried green tomatoes for a really long time now, and why not make them with green Creole tomatoes? How delicious would that be? I ate one yesterday with some mozzarella cheese balls and Italian salad dressing and it was heavenly.

I was also very pleased to finish and send out another newsletter on Saturday, writing about Alafair Burke’s marvelous The Note, which I enjoyed thoroughly. I also got the next week done and scheduled it to go out on noon, Wednesday, giving me five days to think about, write, and edit the next one. I kind of like this “getting ahead” of things; it makes more sense and relieves any pressure on me about blowing the weekly deadlines I’ve set for myself. Despite being easier on myself now, I still berate myself for missing deadlines.

Like I said, yesterday was chill. I had some groceries delivered via Instacart from Fresh Market (including my favorite jelly beans, which I need to stop eating), and I did some cleaning up and organizing around the house. I got caught up some more on the news (which was as horrible as I figured it would be; don’t even get me started on Janky Jeff’s KKKLan redistricting plan, bootlicker that he is), worked on a newsletter a bit, and we watched some more of our shows; we had another two episodes of Hacks before moving on to Widow’s Bay, which we are getting more into. It’s a bit of a slow burn, but the more we get into it the more curious we become.

While all this was going on I was paging through my copy of In Cold Blood, which remains one of my favorite books. Capote was so talented, I always think about how he wasted his abilities focusing on being a social climber and the gay pet to his swans, whenever I pick up the book and look through it again. I remember watching the film on television while we still lived in Chicago; I don’t remember much of it other than Robert Blake. I picked up a used copy at a second hand bookstore in the late 1970s while I was living in Kansas–it hit a little close to home, as you can imagine. I got another trade paperback copy after we moved to New Orleans, but I currently have a second edition signed hardcover that I bought off ebay for a ridiculously low price (maybe only the first editions have value, but a second edition–printed before the official release date–might be worth a bit. It doesn’t matter because I’ll never part with it). Capote’s description of the lonesomeness of the Kansas prairie and its sparsely populated counties that is probably the best I’ve read so far. It seems weird to consider a true crime novel about the brutal murders of a farm family a comfort read, but there you have it.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back in the morning.

This is one of my favorite buildings in the Quarter, on the corner of Royal and Orleans.

Guilty Partner

I slept better last night than I have the last two nights, but it still left something to be desired. I woke up regularly throughout the night, but managed to relax enough somehow to always feel like I was resting, which was lovely and nice and helped; I certainly hope I am not going to be as fucking tired today as I was all day yesterday–which was miserable. Tonight I should go to the gym after I get off work, but we’ll have to see how I am feeling. I can always, in a worst case scenario, push it off till Wednesday night if I am too tired this evening.

Heavy sigh.

But it’s Tuesday and the week is progressing; time and tide wait for no one, and especially not for me. It occurred to me last night as I sat in my chair watching another episode of The Capture (which is really well done and interesting; here’s hoping they don’t blow the great premise over the final four episodes) that I am turning sixty this year in August and what I really need to do, really should do, is come up with a five-year-plan that will carry me into retirement from the day job. I know I shouldn’t really retire that early because of the benefit increases to seniors if I wait until seventy; but I honestly don’t know that I can do another ten years, honestly. So, if I want to retire at sixty-five, I need a plan to increase my income to compensate for the loss of my salary. (And yes, I know retiring at 65 means I won’t get my full benefits, but I can’t see waiting another almost two years. I can barely handle it now, let alone almost another seven years.) So, I am going to try to figure out a five-year plan for me, both personally and professionally.

I have to say, rereading the manuscript on Sunday (it’s not a good sign that I fell asleep reading it; but I was tired from the gym and not sleeping well Saturday night) but I was kind of embarrassed by how bad some of my sentences were and how paragraphs were constructed, to the point I was beginning to question my ability to write anything; I’m not going to lie, since the pandemic struck I’ve been having a lot of issues writing, and what little confidence I may have had at one time (not entirely sure I ever had any, honestly) is completely gone now. That’s something I really need to work on. Several years ago, in another fallow/low-confidence period, I came up with some things to say every morning, going with the old theory that saying something out loud every day will make it come true because I will start believing in it. Needless to say, at some point I stopped saying the affirmations aloud every morning–not sure when that happened, or why it happened; but I just did, and I think I may need to start doing it again. I’ve never had much self-confidence about anything, to be completely honest, and it’s very easy for me to go down the dark path of self-doubt and self-castigation.

The joys of the mood swings, seriously.

But today is much better than yesterday–and Sunday for that matter; being tired clearly affects my moods–and so I am probably going to try to dive back into the manuscript tonight when I get home from work. Here’s hoping I have the energy to not only do so but to make dinner as well. Fingers crossed, right?

But I do need to snap the fuck out of whatever this whatever it is, is, and get back to work on everything.

Heavy sigh.

I also need to get back to reading for pleasure. I have so many amazing books on hand that I want to read, and yet somehow I just am always so worn out in the evenings I can’t focus on reading anything other than things I am reading for research, and I also need to jump back into writing new stuff–Chlorine is just sitting there, and there are any number of other stories I want and need to write or revise or finish. I’ve already allowed so much time to go past that I am going to miss a submission deadline for a story I wanted to get out there–partly the current computer nonsense, mostly; an annoyance I am not going to get into right here–but the older I get the more of a Luddite I appear to be.

And on that note, tis back to the spice mines with me. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader.