The past few days have felt unreasonably busy. It feels like work! It reminds me of before I retired when I was literally busy all day every day. My blog archive is full of posts like this one that describe feeling constantly overwhelmed trying to manage multiple projects on top of my regular job. But it turns out that retirement is pretty much the same.

I’ve written already about how my regular days are generally surprisingly busy anyway. On top of that this week, I took my son’s dog for a few hours while he had an appointment. Moreover, his dog has been having a digestive upset which is requiring treatment. Finally, we also had to take my mother to the emergency room that kept us up until 3am one night this week. Thankfully everyone is okay: the dog is responding to treatment and my mom seems alright.

I’ve been spending a lot of extra time on SFWA. I attended the Writing Date, in part to get some writing done, but also to promote the Board Kaffeeklatsches I’ve been running afterwards. In addition, we’re rolling out a major update to the SFWA website and I’ve been spending a lot of time wearing my Infosys Committee hat, trying to help track down bugs and support the work. (Note, as the cobbler’s children run barefoot, we haven’t gotten around to updating our own page yet. 🙂 I’m also involved in interviewing for a staff position: I’ve been spending a lot of time reviewing resumes and this week we interviewed four candidates.

In addition to the Writing Date, I also ran my own weekly writing group, Straw Dog Writes, and attended “Bearded Writers.” It was nice to get some writing done! I’m working on a new story that is a follow on to Bearly Believable. And I have a few other stories I can work on when I’m stuck on that one. Plus my regular Wandering Shop Stories writing. (I also finally got the pitch I’d written to propose a round-up about Wandering Shop Stories resubmitted after the first try didn’t get a response).

Finally, we’ve been having a car problem. We had a tire with a slow leak a few weeks ago. After checking, we decided to buy new tires (since the old ones were wearing out and winter is coming). We got the new tires installed and one went flat again. We took it back and the shop found that it was leaking along the bead — the rims were old and rusty. So they cleaned it good and remounted the tire. Then it went flat again. This time, they realized that it was actually leaking through the rim. There is a weld seam that appears to be rusting through. We swapped out that rim for the one with the spare. But then another one started to leak. So we bit the bullet and decided to buy new rims. But the tire place was having trouble finding new rims, so we contacted our regular mechanic and, after a significant back and forth among both parties arranged to order the rims from him then take them to the tire shop. Now we’ve provided boat payments to both our regular mechanic and the tire shop. We’re still having an issue with the GPMS sensors, so the saga isn’t over. But, to keep our sixteen year old car on the road, it’s probably all still worth it. Eventually, we’ll have to replace this car, but that day is not today. (Knock wood!)

I also did a few other fun things. On Tuesday, I attended a Zoom panel discussion by UMass faculty reflecting on the election. This was pretty interesting. Then, on Thursday, I actually went to a seminar in meatspace about What Makes The Lord of The Rings Great. This was really interesting and will have some impacts on my writing.

The weekend promises to be still busy. On Sunday, we have the SFWA Annual Meeting. But maybe next week things will settle down. Maybe. I can hope, anyway.