I have a confession:

I like working on my thesis. It doesn't feel like a looming burden. It feels like a fulfilling break from all the zooming around.

Mind you, I still don’t know what the hell I’m doing, writing a book. I’m focusing on my current job, which, here in pre-thesis, is to read lots, write lots of poems, send them to my advisor, get them back, revise them. The whole making-them-perfect part and putting-them-in-some-kind-of-order part is a speck off in the distance, no doubt approaching much more quickly than I can perceive now. I return again to my comet analogy: Before I can even say, “Why, what’s that dim light? Is that a co—” the deadline-comet will smack me in the head at full speed, I’m sure.

Its summer, right? This weekend I saw a play, went to a party, watched the Twins win, rowed for 2 hours, had dinner with Voix, went shopping with Jess and still managed to work on thesis for about 4 hours and fall asleep on the couch watching a movie. The whole thing was fun, but thesis was a nice calming breath of relaxation in all that.

Not writing is scarier than writing at this point. I mean, it’s kind of like doing laundry. There comes a point when there’s so much damn laundry to do that you keep avoiding it, when really, that makes more laundry pile up so you REALLY start to avoid it and before you know it, you’re buying new underwear because you don’t want to face The Pile.

Likewise: The more hours I go without getting ideas out the more will pile up for when I do sit down to write and I feel like it’ll get all jumbled around into a big stinky mess instead of being neatly folded in stacks or rolled into little sock-beans and lined up in a drawer. There’s a backlog of stuff that I’ll lose if I don’t go get it down. But lo—there is a full time job to keep. There is a man to drink wine with on porches. There is the Mississippi to row.

Unlike laundering jeans and spending an afternoon handwashing unmentionables and rolling socks into little beans, which I do not like, I love writing when I get to do it. Time flies by, I get good ideas, the poems look better than they did before. Progress happens.

People bitch about Minnesota winters (myself included), but there comes a time after summer where you long for a nice spell of fall thunderstorms. You get to sink into a chair and just stay inside and stop going. The end of summer is one big sigh, but right now we are in the middle of it. There are no thunderstorms--just the loud call of sunshine/refreshing beverages/backyard parties. And, of course, the comet, just a little smear off in the distance.