The Dog Days of Summer

August is not my favorite. At work, I find myself having to search for things to do, and this makes the HOT workday crawl. All of our summertime projects in the greenhouse have been completed. Plants have been cleaned up and fertilized. Summer annuals have come and mostly gone and it’s a little too soon for a full truckload of fall annuals. At home, I have more time to work in my yard, but it’s hot as Hades outside. 

Since the pandemic began, I’ve had little to no motivation to get any writing done. I’ve been in a bit of a funk lately, discouraged by the lack of progress on my book. When Tim and I talked about this over dinner last weekend, he assured me that I had plenty of material, probably more than I thought I had. I’ve spent the last several days doing a closer analysis of everything I’ve written, even mining through old blog posts for anything useful. I found lots of stuff I’d forgotten about, including the “novel” I’d started for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) about 7 years ago. I did a word count on all of this material and was stunned at the number staring back at me. 

There are still a few stories to tell and others I need to wrap up, but this word count is very encouraging. I even submitted to a couple of literary journals and an essay competition last week, something I haven’t done in months. I received some pretty nasty criticism of the last essay I published, and even though I know the opinion of this one single person is total BS, that email did plant a little seed of doubt within me. I’m angry with myself for allowing them to rent space in my head again. There are several people in my life that truly matter to me, so I’m trying to focus on their voices. I’m toying with the idea of starting a GoFundMe campaign sometime in the next 6 months to help with book publication costs. I’m just not sure it’s appropriate when there are so many worthy causes that need funding. The jury’s still out on this idea. 

While I don’t like the funk I’m in, I do appreciate the perspective it has brought me. I’m reminded that the only deadlines I have for this book are ones I impose upon myself. I’m competing against no one. I can’t please everyone so I need to stop trying to please anyone. The dog days of summer won’t last forever. Pumpkin spice everything is coming.