I experienced some winter doldrums after finishing my sociopathic-mom book at the end of January, and those doldrums felt like they took forever, but I finished that draft only a little more than two weeks ago! And in the past few days, I’ve felt pretty good. I’m certainly not as high on life as I was last fall and during the winter break, but I also don’t feel like there is nothing in the world that is interesting and good. Nope, I just generally feel okay about things.

Hard to say what the future holds. Maybe the doldrums will come back again. But since the weather seems like it’s going to be getting better from here on out, that’s hard to imagine.

I am trying to live in the present and enjoy the final semester of my program; our classes are good, and I’m enjoying teaching again, but it’s hard not to be impatient for the future to happen. Last night, I went online and tweeted up a storm about how nothing ever happens when you’re a writer. Even when a story gets sold or appears in a publication, it’s not an event, it’s just an email. Writing is an interesting and freeing and high-status profession, but it’s also a bit empty. When I was at the World Bank, we’d go places and do things. There’d be meetings and trips and emails flying everywhere. As a writer, there’s none of that, so you either become resigned to a quiet life, or you start causing trouble for yourself in an attempt to make your own excitement.