Socializin' and a Scattered Post

Sitting at Kavarna sipping a medium Dancing Goats coffee with 1/2 'n' 1/2, and can't hear the music because the place is packed with chattering people. So far I have not even read my email as I keep seeing and stopping to catch up with so many friends I haven't seen in awhile. On this Thursday of the winter break (I am totally driven by the school and holiday schedule), it seems the most natural thing in the world to make time to look friends in the eye and casually chat with them--work be damned. But, finally,  the tide of friends has rolled out the door, and I'm ready to buckle down (knuckle down?) and work on The Book. I never did get the huge surge of energy I was expecting to offset the extreme lethargy of the week's beginning, but at least I'm on keel again and moving forward more than sluggishly.

So it's December 29th. There are only two more days left in this month and this year. Why does that fact carry so much weight? I understand the hard stop in time for the fiscal year end, but there's more to it than merely a money break (after all, it's not like I could go out and buy something, give something, do something that would make an appreciable difference in my bottom line at this point). I feel a need to either get a whole bunch of stuff done (not too likely) or wipe off the to-do list and start fresh next week/next year with nothing carried over. Sadly that last option is not too likely either. I guess I need to resign myself to seeing time as a flowing constant without the human-imposed, non-real-deadline-oriented/purely temporal breaks.

But we're programmed to see these invisible breaks! We eat and drink to excess at the end of *every* year, and we commence dieting and exercising at the beginning of every one. Sure, we sometimes start the diet and exercise thingies at other times of the year, but they are usually more event-driven--need to wear a swimsuit in public, attend a wedding, go on vacation, whatever. I can't think of a single other time of the year where we do something solely because it's a certain day of a certain month, and the time of year has no connection to the earth or seasons or anything else. Some people do things on certain days for religious reasons, but that seems more proscribed than ingrained in any case. But enough about why I am compelled to break time into these completely unnatural segments. Why ever I do it, I do it. Time to move on.

What did I really do this past year, and what am I hoping to accomplish next year? Those are both questions big enough to deserve their own posts, so I have broken them out and will publish them tomorrow and Saturday. The rest of this post will zoom back in on the little things that any normal, not-the-end-of-the-year week would bring.

When you get going in ninety different directions (as I am occasionally wont to do), things will inevitably fall through the cracks. Two weeks ago, the day after I got back from my trip to Austin, what fell through the cracks was remembering I had been called for jury duty. The State of Georgia Superior Court of the Stone Mountain Judicial Circuit was NOT amused. I got a letter last week that included the words "contempt", "fine" and "jail sentence". I called them today abjectly sorry and am rescheduled for January 3. Dekalb county has a system whereby you can call the night before you are scheduled to appear to see if your block of juror numbers is needed. Given that I am juror #1 for my day, I am pretty sure I will be called. They probably save the first block of numbers for people who previously didn't show up--the way an airline will save the first block of seats on the plane for special people. It's good to be special. :-)

I was hoping to have the monthly KGRC meeting on Wednesday January 4th to finalize plans for our next quarter, but I have a strong, sneaking suspicion that I am going to be chosen for jury duty, and it is going to tie me up for awhile. I hope not more than a week as I start a jewelry-making class on January 10th at 10:00 am for which the first class is mandatory... Nope. Not going to borrow trouble. Things will unfold as they are meant to do.

And that's enough of a post for today. Happy Merry everyone!