I’ve now been here for ten days. The mania has started to set in.

Today, I went online and started searching for editing jobs, unpaid or not. It’s not that I can’t live without the money, but I think my body is beginning to suffer from the lack of stress that used to augment my blood-pressure. I can only assume that the replacement of “too much to do and not enough time” with “not enough to do and too much time” (also way the hell too much heat) is hazardous to my health. Like a kindergartener, I suffer from overstimulation and inadequate restraint on my creativity. Left alone to  my own devices, I fear everything. The lack of structure, the absence of that slow, methodical plodding of day-to-day tasks that I once cursed for their soul-sucking monotony…is it possible that I may have started to miss them?

It’s possible. But maybe–as I suspect–it’s not so much the urgency of those constant and demanding tasks, but the sense of importance that goes with them. Maybe that’s what I miss. The feeling of purpose. Of being necessary in the greater scheme of things. Integral. Essential.

I realize it’s only been a few days. And I know that eventually, I’ll be able to settle in and finally bask in the peace of quietly pursuing my literary goals. But right now, I’m just missing the grind.