The Grind Helps Me Focus

"I am NOT!"
"Wait, did you just say I was cute?"
"In that case, yes.  Yes I am.  Carry on."

So the bloom is off the rose.

I'm not talking about the baby. The baby is still redonkulously cute.  In fact, today The Brain has to go renew some of her crime-fighting certifications through the City of Oakland and the County of Alameda, or she could be tagged as a vigilante and fined for stopping bank robberies and muggers and stuff.

Being a superhero in the SF/Bay Area is a nightmare of bureaucracy. That's why all the famous ones work in New York.

No, the bloom is off the rose of the semester.  It usually takes me a couple of weeks in to get a sense of how things are really going to go. Teachers aren't usually as bad as their students about misjudging the impact of a semester during the first week (because we're withered and bitterly cynical from experience), but it still helps to feel yourself get into the grind a little bit so you're not tricking yourself that some of that "clean slate" energy isn't tricking you into thinking you're an international rockstar when you're really part of a moderately popular county jug band.

I usually wait a week or two, at least, before I start committing to writing regimens. When I used to dive into them head first after the first week, I would often find myself, come week three, in a fetal position in the shower singing myself a lullaby in a hitching voice.

Even though I know having a baby means pretty much anything could change at any moment, I've got a sense about how writing for two other blogs and teaching are going to shake out, so I should be able to write the new schedule tomorrow.

This week has involved a lot of trouble writing. The difference between a writer and most writer hopefuls is that the writing gets done whether I'm having an easy day or a tough day. It's just the difference between taking three hours to write and taking eight hours to write.

There have been a lot of eight hour days this week.

There are a lot of reasons my week has been kind of grindy.  There were some ridiculously ignorant comments on a post I wrote for another blog that are hard for me to "just let go" of.  Hard for the same OCD-fountainhead reasons that I can sit and write for hours at a stretch and that . The Brain has been auditing my contributions to the Hall of Rectitude to determine if my contribution matches what I take in room, board, spandex, and super soldier serum (since I'm not a mutant). Since I've been watching The Contrarian a lot lately, and doing my best to keep The Hall of Rectitude from being The Hall of Wrecktitude. And I guess it's fair that she's doing the audit to save a few cents here and there that we might need on Wrecking Ball's legal fees.  (Long story short: Miley Cyrus is trying to sue him for the name even though he's been The Wrecking Ball since the 90's--probably didn't help that he started running around with a cybernetic boom box that plays that song while he's beating up criminals and villains. We get it dude. You come in like a wrecking ball. Fuck!) Anyway, since the lawsuits hit, The Brain has been pinching pennies on everything from uniform cleaning to the plasma bolt power settings in the training room. I feel a little under-appreciated when my every hour spent washing dishes is called into question. The Contrarian is also kind of having a rough time. Apparently he's right on schedule for his six week growth spurt and that means a few days of being hungrier than mom can keep up with, but he's been responding to people who've said he's tired or done eating with a lot of "I am not!"

So we're weathering a rough patch and trying to write despite it.

HOWEVER...
I would be remiss if I didn't speak of the highs as well. The blog is doing well, numbers are higher than they've been since last September. I am probably going to break 30k. Even though my Facebook Page is mostly about memes and puns, it at almost 7,000 members. And I recently had my eight (or ninth?) article on Stumbleupon break a thousand "likes." It's been a good week--just a tough one for writing.

And, there's no getting around this one, and it's a good thing. If I can come up with a realistic writing regimen for the semester when things are a little grindy, I can almost certainly keep it up when they're going more smoothly again.