This week I finally finished my work project. The deadline to the publisher was Wednesday 9/1, and I got manuscripts to my boss Sunday night. Yesterday we did a bit more work cleaning up, but I think that should be it, unless the publisher comes back with changes.
I’m excited to get back in the swing of things in terms of my own writing, but it’s a bit scary too. My work project was very straight-forward. My own writing less so. But I have some pitches and submissions planned. I just have to do them. Also, the Nervous Breakdown! I didn’t post at all last month, and I have tons of reading to catch up on there, The Frisky, and elsewhere on the interwebs.
This weekend MB and I don’t have any plans. We’ll just hang around the thankfully quiet city, work on our projects, take walks, see movies. After a week of chilly weather, we’re hot again, though not as hot as last time. I think it’s supposed to cool right back down tomorrow.
My folks are in L.A. now, helping out with my grandmother. MB and I fly out there late next week, and the week after off to Seattle! After that I probably won’t want to travel for some time.
Wow, this is a really boring blog post. Okay, two things:
1) If you’re my Facebook friend, you know about the disturbance in our building last week. Because my blog is public, I can’t go into too many details, but let’s just say it was Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? meets Cops at three in the morning. It was very strange and kind of scary. This same individual this week was heard hammering and drilling at again in the middle of the night.
2) This week I learned that a teacher from my high school died. Not just died: killed himself. Threw himself in front of a train.
I had one class with this teacher, and while he didn’t change my life like he did other students, it’s still incredibly sad and disturbing. He was very active in the school – a dynamic teacher, soccer coach, adviser to various clubs.
He was in his early 50s, which means he was YOUNGER THAN I AM NOW when he taught our class. That just blows my mind.
It’s especially strange because my class just had its 20 year reunion (which I obviously did not attend), though I was lucky enough to hear all the dirt, including that this teacher was still teaching at the school.
And then just a few weeks later, the terrible news.
3) I know I said “two,” but I have to end a nicer note. I went bowling yesterday with my co-workers. Wow, I suck! I’m also out of practice. But I did make a couple of strikes, including during a time they were giving away T-shirts. So I won a T-shirt! That’s bright purple. And which I’ll never wear.
I just had my 20th reunion too and found it sad to see a growing list of dead schoolmates. One of them committed suicide too. It’s terrible, its a hollow death.
The person who commits suicide no doubtable feels inside to commit the act and all the loved ones left behind feel hollow too. They’re always trying to fill their void with answer to the question “why?”
That’s awful. The suicides are always the ones that you remember forever. A kid who graduated a year after I did killed himself in college.
Like Reverend Pony said, all we can wonder is why?