Very excited to announce that I was elected to the office of Secretary at our county’s Democratic Party Convention this week. I’m nervous because the position is a lot of work, but now that I’m retired, I have the time. All the officers are women, and two of them are under age 50. Our new Chair is young and motivated, so that is very encouraging.
I wasn’t sure how many people would come, but we were all pleasantly surprised to see 31 of us plus folks from the state party and even a few from a neighboring county who came to show support. I will say that it is very daunting to know that in a county with 11,000 + voters only 31 showed up, but you have to start somewhere.
I hope I haven’t taken too much on and that it won’t interfere with my writing, but I can’t stand on the sidelines any longer. All the chaos and criming being done by this administration has made it very clear that I have to do something if I’m going to be able to stop being so anxious and angry. It has also been very difficult to be in the right headspace to be creative.
I found a couple of garden-related craft projects we’re going to try out the next time Tennessee’s BFF visits, so that’ll be one way to get the creative juices flowing. If you are on FB, here are the links to the really cool projects.
https://www.facebook.com/share/r/196LRXFRwM
https://www.facebook.com/share/r/19bWPTdiNG
Also, I have my Christmas gift project that I started, but haven’t made any progress yet. There are three book club books I haven’t finished, and reading others’ creative output helps sometimes, too.
Honestly, though, I think my inability to start anything new or work on editing my first now is because I know that said novel is currently in the hands of a fellow writer (a published writer) and I’m so nervous about her opinion. So I’ll work in the garden, read, do arts and crafts, be politically active, and write blog entries.
I just read this great Substack piece by Naomi Kanakia called “The future of fiction”, where she writes about the many contributors who are publishing their fictional short stories on Substack and how it’s getting noticed by critics.
I have a few poems posted here, but I don’t have any short fiction, nor do I have an active account on Substack. I have talked about starting a newsletter under my pen name, so maybe I’ll do that through Substack and link it to my author website. It does seem a bit premature to be talking about an author’s newsletter linked to an author site, though… cart before the horse and all that.
If I can’t get any writing done, how can I call myself an author? As I look around my office, I think another problem might be too much chaos. A little chaos is needed, as a sterile environment makes writing hard, too, but my office is a disaster. Laundry piles that need to go in the wash, empty boxes that need to be broken down and taken to the recycling place, stacks of papers that need to be filed in a filing cabinet that is still in the box and needs to be assembled.
It’s almost summer, and I haven’t done any spring cleaning. Now, to be fair and not so hard on myself, I have been busy outside the house, and by the time I have time to clean, I’m too tired. I enjoy working with Tennessee in the garden, but it’s really hard work. So I’m going to cut myself a break. We’ll be done with the hard, physically demanding building of the garden soon. Once we go into maintenance mode, I should have more energy to spare, which is good because I have some politicking to do as well as writing.
This is going to be a fun summer. Time to go move more dirt from our pile to the last two raised beds so Tennessee can plant her most recent purchases.
Take care my friends.
Baby Gay When You're Fat and Gray - All Grown Up 