I love the feeling of being comfortably on the right side of my deadlines. This past week, I had all my pieces up by Tuesday and finished my drafting for the week on Thursday morning. What a lovely feeling.
But perhaps you recall that I'd declared my intent to have all my pieces for the rest of the year scheduled and ready to go by Thanksgiving. Perhaps you are figuring out, from what I said in that first paragraph, that I didn't quite get there.
Yeah, not quite. I'll be posting this piece Monday evening, just as soon as I finish it.
I'll forgive myself for my "failure" this time around. Whatever chance I had of getting weeks of pieces together in time went out the window in the run-up to and the aftermath of the election. I couldn't tune out the noise around the election, couldn't tune out the anxiety I felt around me, couldn't keep myself from feeling anxious as well. I spent a lot of time the last week or two before the election keeping myself distracted. Afterwards, I had to both grieve and then process what had occurred, and the shock of what seemed (and continues to seem) something of an inflection point in our country's history--time will tell if this is so or not--demanded a response on my part. Which left me with little energy to do anything else, writing-wise.
And that's all fine. But now we're closing in on the end of the year. As with last year, I will give myself a year-end sabbatical, which leaves me three weeks to publish at least five weeks of pieces. Six would be even better, to give myself a little window of safety and ease at the start of the new year.
So let it be written. So let it be done. (But wish me luck anyway.)