I'll Get There Eventually

This is the part of the cycle of preparing for the release of a new book when I feel overwhelmed by my "To Do" list. I look around my office at the mountain o'paper to sort. Correspondence to answer. Way too big a number in the "Inbox" of my e-mail program indicating the number of unread messages. I see things I need to pack and send off in the mail. (The salt and pepper shakers I thought I had already mailed to my aunt, the book I promised to send to the mother of guy who sat next to me on the plane, a set of stickers for a godchild...) The new manuscript -- for next year's book -- doesn't have enough pages in it and seems like a disaster. (This would incite panic if they hadn't all seemed this way to me at several points along the process.) The distance between today and the publication date seems to be rocketing toward me, while I seem to be climbing a slope that some giant is tilting at an ever-sharper angle beneath my feet.

I've just glanced up at a quotation in a little frame on my wall. "Let nothing disturb thee, let nothing affright thee..." All right. Marginalia from a saint's breviary. Good enough for me.

I'll take a deep breath, another step, and I'll get there eventually.

Good luck with your own steep slopes...

Photo above by Allen Conant, who says of it, "This is a service rail line used to winch supplies up to the Lake Agnew dam in the Eastern Sierra Nevada mountains in California. It is often used by backpackers and hikers as a shortcut up the Rush Creek trail. It is much longer and steeper than it looks here!"