Okay, so I'm still alive and so are my family and friends, that's a big win. What should I have accomplished? Well - starting a new book, that's the big thing. Or a series of essays, or even one essay. Instead I've been reviewing the number of essays I've already written and wondering what should happen to them. I have no idea. So why write something new? No idea. I bought a year's subscription to Medium, an online magazine that accepts submissions, and have no idea how to proceed.
However, good news. Someone has rented the apartment downstairs for August, and now someone else for October on, at least for a few months, possibly for longer — a couple who sold their Cabbagetown house to move to the country and now miss the neighbourhood and the city so want a pied à terre in town. Could not be more perfect. Let's hope it actually happens.
So that's a huge relief.
Here I sit writing to you - I who have barely been outside these walls for weeks, no, months. An occasional sortie to the grocery store, that's about it. I did go to the veg garden first thing this morning with Q tip in hand, ready to pollinate my female squash plants, only - they're all male! I found one female flower and she had been devoured by something. It's a fraternity back there. I wrote to Backyard Urban Farm Co. and will book an online consult with them about squash and raspberries.
And while I'm at it, the birds have refused to eat the seed from my feeder for weeks. I cleaned it out and put in fresh seed - nope, they would not come back. It's like the Little Free Library - you attempt to do something for your neighbours but it costs. The Library, incidentally, is fine - the guy who used to steal all the books has moved on. But the missing birds - why, I ask, WHY?
Okay, so I've kept myself fed, and the house more or less clean, and I do exercise every so often, and the house runs, and the piano gets practiced a bit, and emails get answered, and yes, I'm teaching two courses via Zoom and working now with three editing clients. Picked my first perfect cucumber today, and many beans. But still - it's a whole day, 12 hours or so. What happens? I read articles about productivity all the time. But I am not productive.
I do, however, check FB and Twitter regularly, and the papers and the New Yorker. I am up to date with what's going on in the world. I think.
Oh, and yesterday I took a webinar from the Writer's Union of Canada about taxes for writers, which turned out to be taught by Tova Epp, a writing student from long ago, a lovely woman whom I remember fondly and who had lots of good advice about taxes.
In a few weeks I will be seventy. Is it time to roll the bottom of my trousers? Will the mermaids sing to me? I think being more productive involves lifting my bum out of this comfortable swivel kitchen chair with its view of the garden and going upstairs to my office. Aye, there's the rub.
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