The transition from writer back to mother and wife is not going smoothly—I’ve ground a few gears along the way and was afraid I might have dropped the transmission at one point yesterday. Transitions aren’t easy for me anyway, but this one was a bit harder than I expected. I keep seeing images of The Convent superimposed over my life—faces at the table, the view out my window, my happy little desk with my happy little laptop—I can’t seem to be fully here yet. I don’t want to be fully here yet.

I want to go back to that space—that space where I was free to write for hours on end without interruptions, where nothing at all was required of me, where all that was in my head finally oozed out my fingers onto paper and I was free of it and it of me. I liked that space. I liked the person I got to be there. There is no space here. What am I going to do about that?

There is much work to be done. Next on the agenda is creating a macro or master document, then printing the manuscript in its entirety. Then the first round of revisions begins, and then a second printing, this time to give to a few trusted friends to tear apart, hopefully with grace and a great deal of tenderness. (Any volunteers?) While they rip my baby to shreds, I will create a formal book proposal, and then I will do another revision and then send the proposal and a few sample chapters out to the wolves to be devoured and eaten. Sounds like a good time. Remind me again WHY I wanted to do this?

I need to go to bed. Tomorrow we hit the ground running—43 hours of clients to make up for being out for a week. The past week already feels like a distant memory—remember that time, like, three years ago, when I went on that writing retreat? I should really do that again sometime.