I am trying not to beat myself up about the fact that I’ve reached the end of another month and still not finished Grace. If you’d told me this would happen at the end of November, I would have given up. Quit writing, started looking for a real job… maybe I could become a paralegal. That’s always sounded sort of interesting. Or sell insurance? That’s never sounded interesting, but maybe I’d be good at it.

My friend E thinks I should quit beating myself up in general. Not just about writing but about ALL the things. I ate gluten last week at Universal because I was at that stage of sugar-crashing where I could feel myself turning mean. We were getting rained on and the lines were long and I needed to eat ASAP, so I had a chocolate muffin because it was expedient. Later, since I’d already eaten gluten and not particularly enjoyed it, I had pizza. Might as well go for broke. However, broke(n) is how I’ve felt all week. Like I’m coming down with the flu. I’ve had a load of laundry in the dryer for two days and the thought of folding it just seems so overwhelmingly exhausting. Yep, gluten-reaction. I know it’ll happen, and yet I eat the gluten anyway. And before I start being mean to myself and/or whining about that, I’ll stop. I should start feeling better tomorrow, so yay, something to look forward to.

Forty-five minutes ago, when I was walking the dogs on a truly beautiful morning — the sun was rising, the sky was streaked with gorgeous deep pink clouds and a half-moon was still brightly white in the deeper blue sky — I had so many things I wanted to write about. Packing and traveling and memories of the past, books I’m reading, choices I’m making, so many thoughts overflowing my brain. Now that I’m sitting down at the computer, not so much. So maybe I’ll open my most recent file on Grace and stare blankly at it, instead. Yesterday’s writing was definitely progress — probably not quite enough momentum to push me all the way through my rewrites, but I’m getting there, I hope.

First, though, I’ll tag this post “boring.” Sorry!