Thursday, December 29, 2011

Anxieties. We has them.



What shall I worry about today? There are a number of choices. [NB: the state of the world is an ongoing given, no surprises there.]

Will the New Year's Eve dessert -- cherry and roasted almond ice cream for 17 -- get safely shopped for, made, frozen, transported and served intact, in the 37 degrees being forecast for Saturday?

Will I get my column done this morning in time to get to the market before all the cherries are gone? [Not if you sit here writing blog posts about fretting about it -- Ed.]

Will my pathological untidiness and I get the house cleaned up by Sunday when a dear friend is coming to lunch? She has a get-out clause about staying home in the cool, as Sunday will be even hotter than Saturday -- if the definition of a heatwave is five consecutive days over 35 degrees, as I believe it is, then Adelaide is cruising into one as we speak, according to the BOM -- so this one is flexible, but I must clean up anyway as a New Year thing. Just woke up out of a horrid dream about past crimes against tidiness. I see domestic detritus, in my case 95% paper products, as a sort of rabid, feral, malignant, hyperactive octopus that lives in the house and hates me.

Will I get next week's column done on time?

Will my father's 85th birthday be an easy, happy day, and what of my sister's hand surgery two days later?

Will the full afternoon of running writing and editing workshops for cluey postgrads be a success, or have I forgotten how to teach?

Will I be able to get access to everything I want at the library to write my conference paper? Never gave a keynote speech before. Anxiety coming in waves. Is this a good argument? Do I have enough examples and are they interesting enough? Do I even have an argument, and if so, what is it? (All Hons and postgrad students to whom I have ever sternly said 'But what is your actual thesis?' have my permission to snicker at this point.)

Will I be able to find my way to the Aldinga Library to give a talk about the Adelaide book, will I melt on the way if it's filthy hot, and if it's filthy hot will anybody turn up, and will I then be able to find my way home in the dark? (NB not worried about talk qua talk, but give me time.)

Have I got time to read all the books I haven't read yet by all the people whose sessions I'm chairing at Adelaide Writers' Week, and will those sessions all work out well?

Will I get my column done promptly every week in between all this stuff?

Will the ice cream go well? Will the lunch go well? Will the birthday go well? Will the surgery go well? Will the teaching go well? Will the conference paper go well? Will the Aldinga excursion go well? Will Writers' Week go well?

Look at that. Fretting fully booked till well into March.




7 comments:

elsewhere said...

Things seem very busy for the last week of the year.

Ampersand Duck said...

Lordy, I feel for you. Especially when Canberra has been BLISSFULLY cool and most of our thankful thoughts are about the coolness. May it all go well.

I like your editor. I hope she's helpful.

[WV = disterb, which is rather disterbingly accurate]

Elisabeth said...

I know the feeling well. It's easy to get into an anticipatory roll of anxieties. They roll in like waves of nausea, not waves on the ocean, but, like waves on the ocean, anxieties crash and reform almost instantly.

Nothing for it really. To my mind, it's best to hope for the best and soldier on.

I can remember reading about worse heat waves on your blog in 2008/2009, when we in Victoria suffered one of the hottest summers I've lived through during my fifty plus years and yours seemed worse only we copped death dealing bush fires of horrendous proportions.

I remember at the time - before our bushfires, that is - thinking who'd want to live in Adelaide? It seems to get so much hotter there than here. Still you survived those hot days as did most of us here, though sadly not all.

Good luck with it. There's not a lot more challenging than an over heated summer and a long line of responsibilities and concerns within. I'm sure it will all be fine.

Emily said...

Wow! That's one heck of a pillowcase full of worries. Just as well, from reading your "ouevre", that many will have confidence in your ability to tackle each and every. Ice-cream sounds delicious, house sounds like everybody elses. Fathers aren't always around so latter year birthdays are gold for the memory book however it turns out.

Deborah said...

Fretting with you... over family issues for me, 'though not for me and my partner and our children. But for my Mum, and my Dad, and my brother whose life has fallen apart this year, due to his own behaviour and personally, I would have left him long ago. Not a good space to be in.

But. We have tadpoles, to be blogged, and good work to be done.

Also, my dad is enjoying your book very much indeed.

Von said...

So when's the Aldinga Library date and time? If able I'll be there to hear about the book and maybe purchase a copy if you're bringing some.Was about to anyway, so bonus. No need to worry, we're all very friendly down South.

iODyne said...

from a vanityfair.com interview with Nobel winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman. Author Michael Lewis wrote -
'when he looked at his manuscript his feelings about it changed again. That’s when he did the thing that I find not just peculiar and unusual but possibly unique in the history of human literary suffering. He called a young psychologist he knew well and asked him to find four experts in the field of judgment and decision-making, and offer them $2,000 each to read his book and tell him if he should quit writing it.'

get your contact to him now.