I'm feeling MUCH better now

There's nothing like the end of a deadline. First, you feel as if you must be mistaken. You know that can't be enough words, that the plot is wrong, the characters insipid, the theme obscure. Then you go back over the last chapter or two one or more time more just to make sure, and you sit there. You have nothing more to do. You're free.

I keep thinking of that line about if you open a cage on a bird who's been inside a long time, it won't know it's free. Same feeling. No, I must continue to feel obsessed, pressured, frantic, pumped up and high. No. There's no need. It's like coming off the biggest high in the world. The good news is that before you realize you don't need the adrenaline anymore, you've cleaned your office, caught up on correspondence, done your grocery shopping and wallpapered the bathroom(not really. Certainly not in my house). Then, I thought, I'm going to treat myself to a morning in bed. A lunch at a restaurant with a book. A slow meander through the garden center of my choice so I can actually plant something in my garden.

Instead I spent the day in the dentist's office getting an emergency root canal. "Have you been under inordinate stress that caused you to grind your teeth to splinters and provoke mind-searing pain?" he asked. "Why, no. Why should you think that?"

But I'm feeling MUCH better now. I'm off deadline. For at least a week.

I think I'd better put a bite guard in my office.

eileen\kathleen, the evil twins