Summer is a crazy thing here in L.A. Just when it starts being over everywhere else—right around Labor Day here in the U.S.—it descends on us like a stinky devil in the night. I used to fight the weather like crazy, crouched in wet bathing suits under strategically-placed fans in the dark, or rushing off to this or that air-conditioned space and forcing the words out of myself. I still resist it almost reflexively, as I do other kinds of reality, like how many things can comfortably fit in the bucket of time I'm given each morning, or how even how long it takes to do one thing well.
Here is what progress looks like: starting to flip out in the coffee shop because you don't have the right program on this computer, because you can't access the photos you have on the drive at home, because LOUD TYPING from the madly prolific writer at the adjacent table. And then somehow, because you have been practicing, allowing yourself to close your eyes, to take a series of deep breaths, to ask yourself a few questions you have learned that help bring you out of your crazy head and back into a your slightly overheated, definitely tired body. You sip your iced tea, you put on some headphones and listen to pretty rain and harmonic sounds, you do the next thing you're able to do.
I had great ambitions for today: a meeting on a new project I've been working on for a while with a dear friend, but that we've had to put on hold; some work on a personal project of my own; some (god help me) "minor" site coding, and of course, an elaborate update for this series. I scaled them back to lunch with another dear friend, a short post about nothing and swapping out my old face for my new one in the sidebar.
Right now, I'm pretty happy with the way everything turned out. And I ain't talking about the sidebar, either.
xxx c