…it’s still winter
…it’s still winter

…it’s still winter

And now we enter that time where we’re usu­ally sup­posed to feel like get­ting down to busi­ness. You know? The hol­i­days are over so enough of that non­sense and get back to work! But to me… it’s still winter. The weath­er sucks. Some­times we get snow, but usu­ally it’s just rain rain rain rain… some rain and… a bit more rain. It’s gloomy, and even though the days are sup­posedly get­ting longer, it’s so bloody dark with clouds that it just feels like the dark­ness and rain will nev­er end.

Pro­ductiv­ity is down. I make my To Do lists, and I do have to report to Beth each week, as I men­tioned a week or two ago, but I def­in­itely notice my con­cen­tra­tion is poorer than usu­al, and I have to work harder to stay focussed. Listen­ing to the news cer­tainly has encroached on my cre­ativ­ity, and that’s import­ant, but it means I have to work harder to keep it togeth­er. Some days I find it takes extra effort not just to get my butt in the chair, but to put words down.

I think we need anoth­er hol­i­day at the end of Janu­ary… Some­thing to look for­ward to, some sort of cel­eb­ra­tion that lifts the spirits.

In the name of get­ting down to busi­ness, I sub­mit­ted two short stor­ies to pub­lic­a­tions on Jan. 1. And… one of them was rejec­ted on Jan. 3. I love that, actu­ally, because it’s like, great! Now I know they can­’t use it, let’s find some­where else to send it. So in a way that quick turn­around helps with the whole down to busi­ness thing.

The oth­er thing I did was finally set up my office. I keep my closet as my record­ing room, but I set up my son’s old room as my office, and I’ve been work­ing in there for nearly a year, but it was still kinda junky, y’know? Boxes and stuff from the base­ment that migrated up here when we were renov­at­ing down there, and then nev­er made it back down. So I’ve been going through and turf­ing stuff, and organ­iz­ing. We put up my jazz fest­iv­al poster right in front of my desk… It’s from a bus shel­ter so it’s enorm­ous, kinda needs a cer­tain sorta place to put. Then we put up my little shelf so I finally had a place to put my LotR fig­ures! Yay! They’ve been lan­guish­ing in a box since 2014, so I’m sure they’re thrilled to see the light of day again! And I finally finally got my speak­er sys­tem con­nec­ted. Some decent sound qual­ity in here now.

I hope you also find ways to Get down to busi­ness… and most import­antly to keep busy and bright dur­ing the rest of the winter. This part of the sea­son that just feels end­less until the weath­er gets bet­ter. Tir­rah! Take care of yourselves.

***

Plug for a friend:

My friend Dirk Van­Stralen is a car­toon­ist, and now you have the chance to own his book, Keep Calm and Bury On — a select­ive his­tory of a plague year.

You can find him on Ins­tagram at dirk.vanstralen, or send him an email at dirk dot van­stralen at gmail.com