Post-Deadline Euphoria

I shipped the big editing project, caught up on sleep, and today I am as light as pollen. (It's warmy and breezy spring here today.)

It's a delicious feeling, to have just gotten a huge amount of work done. Back when I worked for The Raleigh Times--a now-defunct afternoon newspaper, and my first job after graduation--I had this feeling many days. Because the work I did in the morning was in the paper in the afternoon. Not many kinds of work give that immediate relief, celebration and feedback. Writing novels certainly doesn't.

I find it nice--no, more than that--to have this feeling periodically. Like the pollen, I'm pure potential (a rare feeling in adult life.) And like the pollen, today I'm just drifting on the breeze.

That's crucial before re-immersing myself in the details of work.

Once in my 20s, I finished a batch of stories for Family Circle magazine and felt, not light, but so burned-out I couldn't imagine lifting a finger to a keyboard again. The day that work was done, I decided I was going to Mexico the next day. By myself. No reservations, no definite return date. And I told the editor that I couldn't be reached. I wound up in Isla Mujeres, "the island of women." I slept a mere 20 hours my first day there, and when I finally emerged from the room, I found someone had put flowers around my door.

I stayed a week, rode a bike around the island, snorkelled, ate, improbably, in a French restaurant on a porch. The woman who owned the place came out and sat down with me and said her 30 year-old son was coming in from Paris that afternoon. Would I have dinner with him? A blind date set up by the guy's mother. I was flattered, sort of. I don't think he was, though. He seemed jet-lagged and irritable mainly, but we got through dinner.

I came home from that trip feeling good. But it only lasted a few days. It became clear to me then that I was facing some decisions about career direction. I think it took that interim, and it's not "working," to help me see. So I'm in favor of time off, sometimes taken grudgingly, whether it feels good or not.

Today it feels good. Now I shut down my computer and go outside and play.