The after period(s)

[desayunoencama]

I think that one of the problems I tend to have is that after a high of some sort (like winning an award, selling a book, etc.) I feel the period after as a hard let-down. That is, I normalize to the high, and I don't deny that I live a pretty good life and I've been having a bunch of nice things going on: an award last week, an award the week before, I'm being flown to Slovenia on Saturday for a poetry workshop and three readings, things like that.

So I'm not at all complaining about the ups, but more about my problem with realizing (or at least, not forgetting) that the ups are not my life, it's the periods in between that is my real life, and the ups are the (happy) aberrations.

So the in between periods are not actually slumps or downs, they're my normal life, even though the contrast makes them seem lackluster and dull. It's not that I'm not doing things or that nothing is going on, it's just that the things that're going on are not as spectacular as some other recent things. But that doesn't make them any less valuable or important or etc.

I think this is also hitting me now since I've just turned in the book I was translating and am sort of in between big projects.

Yes, I have a bunch of anthologies that I am working on, some of which are long overdue. Maybe I have editor-block to some degree, instead of writer's block. I do need to be in the right mindframe to deal with certain projects, and to have enough of a block of time to really deal with it or it's easier to just put off until I do have such a block of time. (If you've been waiting for a reply from me, my apologies, I will get to everyone, and hopefully sooner rather than later...)

I did get a call from a publisher today about a possible translation into English of a short book. We'll see if my rates didn't frighten them off...

But meanwhile, I'm in this sort of limbo, not to mention I'm in the post-book slump, since this big thing that had taken up my past few months is suddenly missing from my life, no matter what other obligations and etc. I do have on my plate.

I got the text of a webpage to translate today, and even though they sent the text to me with all the flash/HTML coding and asked me to translate within the code, which is making my eyes crossed, I've been happy to work on that since it's a finite and completable task. (I may even finish it tonight if I give it one last push, or I may just leave it for tomorrow morning.)

I'm also in one of those semi-disconnect periods in terms of reading. It took me almost a week to slog through Nick Hornby's YA novel SLAM. And while I have plenty of unread books at hand, there isn't really anything I'm especially looking forward to reading.

And I need to figure out not just what I might want to read NOW, but it needs to be something I finish before I leave for Slovenia, since I'm not going to take a book that I'm nearly done with on the trip with me.

My flights are via Frankfurt, so I will have layovers and so on, meaning I need to select a few books for both the outbound and the return trip.

And for trips like this I generally try and choose books I won't necessarily need to lug back with me, so I can swap them or give them away or something en route and thereby make room for something new that I find whilst in the destination. (I also don't travel with books that I share with various friends, like the many different mystery series both Sara and I read, so I can later loan them to her, which also limits my choices of what I can take with me that is still worth reading.)

Hmmmmm....

I do have some credit at the second hand store, so I may swing by there this week to see if anything catches my fancy to take with on the trip.

(I'm in the mood for a good series mystery or few... or a new Miles Vorkosigan novel! It's been forever!)

Comments

[sararyan.livejournal.com]

"I normalize to the high." I love this sentence, it's exactly right. Like when you're a guest at a convention and people are excited to meet you, and it's all super. And then you go home and there's a lot of laundry and the cat has misbehaved.