I am an extremely visual thinker. I think this is, at least partially, why I am a very good, clear writer, but I struggle in verbal communication. In conversation, I can’t reorganize my thoughts to make sense of them before I share them, but in writing, I basically kick ass in the clarity department. 

So any time I have a problem or project to work out, I end up drawing pictures, making lists, and rearranging the parts a half-dozen times. This is why I love David Seah. He designs wonderful “forms” that help you spatially visualize your work in various ways. I have been using his Compact Calendar for a couple of years. I probably print two dozen of these a year and use them to map out all kinds of things, from vacations to project time-flow.

Well, since I became a freelancer, I have been keeping detailed time sheets on what I do with my working hours (some of them are billable, some are not, and others are pro bono, and this gets complicated, since it is all work). Now that I am also a graduate student again, well, that just cramps it all up even more.

I went over to David Seah today and discovered this wonderful new tool about work-life balance (boy do I have a  vacuum of that these days) and I have incorporated it into my own routine.

The Day Grid Balancer | David Seah. (By the way, you better believe I am using the explicit version, how could you even ask?)

Two more things I am going to be testing out in the next few days are Harvest, a timesheet and invoice system that is free if you are small enough, and TimeBridge, which is a meeting and calendaring service that runs cross-platform through the web to set up meetings with my board members and volunteers who are not tied to Outlook like us desk-slaves.

If you click through to any of these links and like them, please let me know so I can feel like I contributed to your productivity somehow!

And then I sat down at a table in the library and saw the full-page ad for the talk on the back page of the newspaper.

Probably means people are coming.

I tried it for a while, and even bought my own mom a copy of the book. And to be honest, though I left the gimmick behind, gratitude is still a big part of my spiritual practice, especially since it is emphasized by many Buddhist teachers.

So, while I’m hardly going to break open a new “gratitude journal,” (more journals are all I need right now, with a journal for each MFA course spread across my desk) I do think I’ll revisit the practice more often.

So here goes, tonight’s short list. I am grateful for:
5) my unbelievable husband, lying in bed beside me.
4) the sense that most of the work that I do matters.
3) the opportunity to make sense of my life through my writing.
2) the container of delicious homemade fried chicken in our fridge.
1) the safety and security of middle class American life.

To be honest, I wanted to put the chicken at #1, but I thought it would seem too shallow. Nite.

If you were ever wondering whether an expensive hairdryer was worth it, you should have seen my hair before the cut, after a year with my $29 hairdryer from Target. And no, my hair is not fluorescent colored–that’s photoshop.

Sunset behind Grand Teton yesterday. Eleven days in Jackson Hole and Yellowstone comin to an end today as we sit in the Salt Lake City Airport, waiting to fly home.

You know, I never would have guessed how much I would love Wyoming, and especially being in the National Parks. We saw 17 bears, up close in the wild, including at least four different cubs, and a grizzly on sitdown strike down the yellow stripe in the road ; a pack of wolves at work on a fresh elk kill; two bull moose and a mama with her baby; foxes; a half dozen bald eagles including two eaglets (yes, eaglets is a word)…and lots of other species.

It is so relaxing to be around the animals. The only game theory you need in Yellowstone is about how to see the most wildlife.

I also viewed an original Albert Bierstadt, for sale, in Jackson. Is it possible Wyoming has everything? No. That’s why I’m about to board this plane.

“seeing J,” I responded.

SweetiePie laughed. “well besides that. I mean, GREAT answer, but, what’s the next thing?”

“Driving into Hayden Valley and seeing all the buffalo,” I responded.

“I’m looking forward to getting into that kayak on the Snake River,” he said.

“OOH! I almost said that one,” I said, wiggling in bed with excitement.

We just spent around three weeks east of here. Two weeks on the farm, the family farm, the ancestral farm, the confederate-bank-notes-in-the-barn farm. Then a dabble in Baltimore, a dabble in Williamsburg, a dabble on the beach, and a lightning-fast stop in Philly to round it out. Check here if your travel is work-related; check here if personal. Check check.  keep reading. I’m too chicken to say it outright. 

Virginia is a beautiful state. South of the Chesapeake Bay it looks more like Louisiana than Texas. (These are my frames of reference, forgive me.) We fished in the “Little River,” a tributary of the Nottoway that exists wholly on family land, and I sat in the skiff, day after day, watching the Turtles and Great Blue Herons glide by. Every day, I felt like a page out of my mother’s favorite James Michener novel, Chesapeake, which I read three times as a child, without understanding it. keep reading, it’s further down.

I experienced the whole trip as if I were reading historical notes. Williamsburg, full of colonial costumes; Baltimore, with tall ships for OpSail, celebrating the bicentennial of the War of 1812; Philadelphia, with cartoon drawings of William Penn and Benjamin Franklin everywhere. Also chapters of my own history unfold with Philly and friends as the background. Everything through the parentheses of a chapter, an essay, a short story, these days. keep going, soon now.

Speaking of which, it’s time you knew…. I have been a full-time writer for the last six, seven, nine months. Around the time Sweetiepie moved into the President’s office, I moved into the home office downstairs and completely off campus. here goes…

I wrote a novel.

Now, officially three people have seen excerpts of it, and one person has the whole manuscript. You know who you are, wink wink.

It may not be any good. Pandering drivel. Pedantic, tired. Ill-researched. (My fears are audible.) I haven’t even read it yet. But now I know I can do it.  I am not the one who said she was writing a book. I wrote one. It was not an agonizing, gut-wrenching, self-annihilating experience that drove me to drown my frustration with drink. It was great. Even when it wasn’t. Winston Churchill said:

Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public.

I’m not at the flinging, maybe never. It needs more work, more words, more revising. My fears prove it is my tyrant. But I am in love with the process, and I want to do it again, and again. I am so serious about it that I am about to get some professional help.

I’m going to get an MFA.

I start next month.

“Do you have a tummy ache, mommy? How about if I lie on your knees and be super cute? Will that help?”