Crack is whack.

Peace out, Whitney.

Goodbye, Susan.

Lots of pressure lately to get things done with not enough inspiration to go around for all the balls in the air. 

I'm so excited to be working on something that is important but at the same time I feel anxious because my own creative endeavors are suffering for it. No writing challenges, fluff blog posts, nothing real or of substance.

And then, tonight, playing our first game of a new D&D campaign, I took a minute to check Facebook and was met with sadness. 

Goodbye, Susan, goodbye.

I didn't know her. Which is to say, I never met her. But I did know her, through years of reading her words and occasionally commenting, and then one day recently, like a gift, she commented back. She came here, to my home. She let herself in the back door. She read words that meant something to me, and shared her thoughts. She reached out and touched me. And now she's gone. 

So, take her husband's words to heart. Honor her. Go out and make a difference somewhere, anywhere, for anyone.

Attacked

The sickness still has me in its grips, and I think it's getting worse today. Again today I got no writing done, but I did get a lot of WORK done this evening, you know, actual work for work since I left sick early today to come home and take a nap.

It's getting harder and harder to be there every day. It's getting harder to tell myself that I have to just work so that I can get my bills paid, even though I have the opportunity to come and go as I please - I still need to stay so that I can make a living. In a way I can't wait for NaNo to be over already so that I can do more of that other writing and see if I can make a living off of it or not... probably not, but I am in a pessimistic mood today.

Tonight, Linda dropped Elise off after her gymnastic's practice, and just a few minutes after she left, Gary, Elise's grandpa, called looking for Linda. She never keeps her cell phone on, so I wasn't surprised he'd called. He didn't sound weird or anything, we didn't talk much, I just told him she'd left about five minutes ago and he thanked me and that was that.

Hours later, Mike called me to tell me that Gary had a massive heart attack tonight and I guess it's not looking good. They are trying to stabalize him, and if he makes it through the night, in the morning he'll be having a quadruple bypass surgery. 

We aren't close, Gary and I. It's weird when terrible things happen to people who are close to you, like, their lives are intimately connected and intertwined with yours, but you don't really have strong emotional attachments to them. So it took me a while to feel it - the pain - not pain that I'm feeling over this really, but the pain I know Elise will be feeling if anything happens to him, if he doesn't pull through. Like the feelings I have about my own grandfather whenever something happens to him. 

I'm not ready for death. She's not ready for death, is she?

I occasionally contemplate my mortality.

Today is the first day of August. This pains me so. 

I love the summertime, for one thing. More than any other season, I am happiest when I'm dripping with sweat and can barely breathe from the weight of this wonderful New England humidity. Some would say I'm a masochist for it, and they may be right. I just LOVE that feeling you get when you sit down in your car after work, the car that has been baking under the blazing sun in the parking lot all day. The heat doesn't hit you so much as it envelopes you, traps you and smothers you, and it seems like you can either close your eyes and wither and die or just breathe through it, feel your heart speed up, and roll on. 

But August, usually the hottest month of the year in these here parts, is bittersweet, because it means summer is almost over. Elise will start school again in four weeks, I will be back to getting up at the crack of dawn, suffering through those winter mornings when it's not only freezing, BUT STILL DARK OUT when I rise. 

My August is jam packed with fun - so many fun things are about to go on in the next few weeks, I can hardly wait for them. But then, September will come. I love the fall too, but part of me will always hate it for taking away my sun and sweat. (Sick, right?) 

And then, my birthday. I will be 29 this year.

Honestly, there are days when I am surprised to realized that I'm not actually nineteen anymore, because that is the way I often feel. I think of my age, I contemplate the length of my life, and I am shocked that I am this old. I don't feel like I've done enough yet, I don't feel like I've seen enough yet, I don't think I've loved enough yet to die.

It's not like I think I'm going to die tomorrow - although I could. And it's not like I'm crazy and vain, obsessing over turning 30 like it's going to be my mid-life and deserves a crisis.. But it could be. It could be my mid-life. And I'm not ready to die yet - there is so much more to be done.

I made a list, just as tons of other people have made this same list, and I'm putting it here for reference. And so it stares me down constantly. So I don't give up.

30 Before 30

1. Get my sixth tattoo
2. Visit Steph
3. Eat at Yummy Noodles in NYC
4. Live alone again
5. Date
6. Try 30 new recipes
7. Take Elise to the zoo
8. Make $100 from something I wrote
9. Throw a party
10. Road trip with Alisha
11. Be a size 12 again (this will be the hardest thing)
12. Sing Karaoke with Brian
13. Read Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
14. Go to the drive-in
15. Try a yoga class
16. Get CPR certified
17. Donate blood at least once
18. Teach Elise to swim
19. Find a writing group
20. Meet an online friend
21. Visit the grandparents in Florida
22. Girls Only Bed & Breakfast vacation
23. Blog every day for a month
24. Get a significant raise / Or get a new job
25. Consult a psychic
26. Self-pub that book I wrote in May 2011
27. Sail on a sailboat
28. Go to the dentist
29. Invest in something
30. Forgive myself

The countdown starts today.