CONDITIONING . . .

The bottom line is this: I am now officially most productive between the hours of 10pm and 5am. Anything I attempt to do outside of those hours is completely useless. After months of conditioning and hanging out with people who are night owls -- and I mean, NIGHT. OWLS. -- I've become one of them.

The challenge now is finding a legal job -- a real legal job -- that lets me work these hours. Huh.

***

ON WRITING . . .

It's funny. I try to write; I really do. I mean, write, like, for real.

But I find that my best writing is in my emails. You should see some of the tomes I send out. Cheese knows. Ha knows. Flacon knows. The NHF Seven know. If those weren't so personal, I could just bind those and send them out as a manuscript. A real sordid, emotional, bare, raw, revealing, uncomfortable manuscript.

Still, that would be a heck of a lot more than what I'm producing now. When I sit down to write "for real," my brain shuts down. Everything that comes out of my mouth sounds awful, trite, stupid, uneducated, recycled. Not like my emails, where I am pouring out my heart and soul and mind, where I can think and rethink and formulate and dig for the very, very, exact words I want to use. No thesaurus necessary. Just me, just my feelings. The real me. Not the dictionary-aided me.

What is a wannabe to do? Maybe I'm not cut out to be a writer, not "for real," anyway. Why do I want to write anyway? To be published? To have my book on some list? To have people want my autograph and to have people look at me as A Writer? Or do I really feel the urge to express myself in that medium? Is there no other way I can be me, out loud?

***

TO FIGHT MYSELF . . .

Another busy weekend looms. Then a busy week. Then an even busier weekend.

This is horrible, but ... I can't wait until it's over. I am on the verge of not enjoying the experience. And believe me, that would be a real, crying shame. Truly detrimental.

I shared with a friend a couple of nights ago that I ... gulp ... don't want to attend the upcoming NHF women's retreat. I have not yet recovered from starting out this year exhausted and beaten down. To have to go and be with a group of women, to have to care for them, to have to take care of business, to have to be "on" ... I don't know if I can do it. It's not even a matter of wanting to anymore; I just don't know if I can physically do it. I have frightening visions of me withdrawing and going away to a quiet place every chance I get, or being unable to be free and muster up an outgoing nature for 36 hours, or even collapsing from the mental burden of living. Either way, I'd miss out, and that would suck.

My friend wisely assured me that it is in moments like these that God will lift me up the highest. It's not that He waits for me to be at my lowest point to show Himself; it's merely that His power is most obvious when I step aside and let Him be Him. So, that's all I'm depending on right now, that God will be God, and that He will use me and work through me despite myself, and that He will bless women through me even if I can't see that being done with my own limited human eyeballs. Oh yeah, and that He will keep me awake.

***

OWIE . . .

I have a papercut -- actually, a cardstock cut -- in the webbed part between my thumb and index finger.

It hurts.

***

SMILE AND WAVE . . .

I can't stop thinking about and enjoying the penguins from "Madagascar." They are just too much. I've been told that I'm turning into them. I can't see that as being an entirely bad thing.

Cute and cuddly, boys, CUTE AND CUDDLY.