LABOR DAY

Okay, here's what's happening.  If I've been neglectful of The Buddha Diaries, I have wonderful excuses.

First, the novel.  I decided at the beginning of the summer that I'd do a quick run through of what I thought was a final draft.  So much for that plan.  As it turned out, I spent virtually all my time from mid-July until the end of last week making what were serious changes and, I hope, improvements.  I "finished" at the beginning of last week, printed out a hard copy to read through--and still found things I needed to change.  It's done now, though, I'm happy to say, and ready to put through the process to make an actual book of it.  After which, I'll prevail on friends, family, readers, social networking associations and so on to help me put out word and, kindly, to buy a copy!  More of this later.

This work was happily interrupted for a week in August by the arrival of my son and his family from England.  A great joy!  I wrote about it briefly on the blog, as I recall.  It was a special treat to bring all the cousins together for the first time.  Little Luka, who lives here in Los Angeles, will soon be three years old, and had never met his three English cousins--Alice, Joe and Georgia.  Lovely to see how well they all got along.

So... come Thursday of this past week, with ten days still to go at our Laguna Beach cottage, I decided it was vacation time.  Kick back, take walks, do some reading, some crosswords, watch a little TV, that kind of thing.  No pressure.  Thursday night, on the way to bed, I read an email reminding me that I had committed earlier in the summer to write a catalogue text for a Cuban artist, Roberto Fabelo.  Could I send them the essay "as soon as possible"?

Well, back then I had requested at least a week of notice, preferably more.  I had requested my usual good faith retainer.  I had requested images to work from.  Since then, not a word, no retainer, and no images.  "As soon as possible" seemed like a tall order when I had none of these things.  A few frantic telephone calls and email exchanges later, I at least had images in hand.  And under extreme pressure coming from the other end, I foolishly agreed to a Monday deadline.  That would be... today.

Long story short, I worked like a demon on the text on Friday, Saturday, Sunday... and finally got the essay in the mail late Sunday afternoon.  I hope they like it!

Now, Monday, I'm looking at a week ahead with no pressure, no deadline.  I'm calling it "vacation."  But here I am, today, writing in The Buddha Diaries...

Best to all my friends out there.  Thank you for bearing with me.  Have a good week...