Lockdown: The writing life?

Sunday soundtrack: Rush’s a Show of Hands (1989). It’s the next Rush album after Hold Your Fire, and it continues the band’s long tradition of releasing a live album after every three studio albums. It’s a killer live album, probably the group’s second-best to the date of its release, after Exit…Stage Left. I had it on repeat most of the day.

Sunday was pretty much a repeat of Friday and Saturday, with me sitting at my desk trying to write the stupid story and getting through it one painful character at a time. But it’s 3:53 in the morning and I got it done about an hour ago. Not done-done, but first draft done. I have no confidence in it, so I’m prepared for major revisions, but at least it’s a completed draft. A start.

I also wrote my monthly one-minute writing tip for the staff newsletter, and I’m working on my monthly film review for the same newsletter. Got midway through The Banker (2020, depending on how you mark these things), which is an Apple TV+ exclusive. So far, so good. Samuel L. Jackson does a surprisingly restrained job, and ohhhhh Nia Long, my sweetheart.

One of my sweethearts.

It’s been a long, frustrating, three-day weekend. Sometimes the writing is just impossible. Sometimes it’s like opening a vein, I swear. Sometimes it’s like I don’t know what the heck I’m doing. Sometimes it takes three whole days just to write eight short paragraphs.

I’m off for the next couple of days, though, so I guess Monday and Tuesday will be my weekend. I’m considering taking Friday off as well. Somebody’s got a lot of vacation saved up, and somebody’s brain is pretty fried.

For breakfast, I had a slice of pie. I didn’t mean to; I just wanted to get through the crossword quickly and have an easy breakfast so I could get to that story. Ha. Ha.

At lunch, I took a break from staring at the same two paragraphs all morning, and made burrito filling. It came out great. I had a couple of burritos for lunch, then whenever I got the munchies during the day, I picked up a spoon and had a bite of the filling. Maybe not the healthiest thing, but I guess better than Oreos or chips. I had a couple more burritos for dinner because it was convenient.

The negative consequence is that now I probably don’t have enough filling for a week’s worth of breakfasts or lunches, which is what I had in mind.

Mostly short text conversations today. Ali and I talked about Ahn Trio. Or really we talked about talking about them. Sylvia and I mused about whether or not it’s a good idea to have so many potato chips in one’s residence at one time. JB gave me a War and Peace update. Jenny and I had a long conversation about Bloody Wednesday, about layoffs in general, about passive-aggressive emails, and about learning to be a Super Bitch. She was a development executive for a couple of prominent nonprofits, and now she’s running her own consultancy, so we’re in the same business, probably $100,000 apart.

I’m exhausted. I’m going to bed. Hit me up in comments if you want my contact info so we can trade texts or DMs.

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