Mind Storms: Creativity, Stress, or Migraine?
For some reason this has been a bad week for me — migraines, bad fibro days, and let us not forget the poison ivy. Luckily, the poison ivy (cross every set of fingers within ten miles) looks like it’s not going to go systemic on me this time. My right arm has pretty much cleared up. The left is taking longer for some reason but it’s not weeping and not spreading, so that’s a win.
We’re coming up on the publishing date for SFRevu and Gumshoe Review and things are a bit hectic. Most of the content is in as far as the book reviews go. I’ve got the interview for Gumshoe Review in and formatted and just need to write an introduction (I’m doing that interview). For SFRevu one of our regular contributors is doing the interview and I’m on pins and needles waiting for it.
For the next few days, I have to write up my reviews. Every month I say next month I’ll read the book and write the review in that order before reading a second book. But, somehow each month I find myself with a pile of read books filled with notes, sticky notes, highlighted passages, and no reviews in evidence. Then it comes down to lots and lots of coffee and writing, writing, writing (interspersed with coffee, coffee, coffee). It usually comes out okay in the end but it makes for some tense time just at the end of the month when the crunch comes.
Of course, having the unexpected come up during the same time period — we’ve been having a lot of severe storm warnings and have lost power for seconds and minutes at a time (no long outages thankfully). However, the worse unexpected occurrence is increased migraines with stormy weather. (I know it’s not just me because my husband gave me a reality check — our friends with migraines have also been afflicted.)
The creativity of the title is that, I’ve been jotting down notes and sentences for a short story idea I have. Just when I think I’m all focused on a project or reading or something — I’m shiny thinged. For those of you who don’t know, it often happens that people with migraines and fibro have trouble focusing and staying focused. Once I’m interrupted by something, I find myself shooting off in some other direction and working on things other than what I planned. If you’ve every read that joke going around on the internet about going to the store — first they have to find the car keys, then they see the bills need to be paid, then they go to find the checkbook, but notice the floor needs to be swept…and on and on. That’s being shiny thinged.
I just feel like of all the billion of things I want to do in a day, there just isn’t the time to do them all and I have a terrible time trying to focus on the list, choosing the things that can be done in the time period because I want to do them all. Or most of them. Or at least some of them. Today was a really bad day. It took almost all my spoons to get dressed, treat the poison ivy, get downstairs, pick up the dining room table, start the laptop, download mail, get breakfast, and read email, answer same, and start proofing and formatting reviews. Now it’s evening and I’m all caught up on everyone’s stuff but my own. So, I guess with 3 days left to go that’s a good thing — but it still feels like there so much left to do. And did I mention I have a sweater almost done that I need to write the pattern up for? Never enough time.