A beautiful sunny day today in Seattle. I took a walk and stole lilacs from a parking lot hedge. I just decided to decline the opportunity to be editor-in-chief of my MFA program’s new journal. It was a really hard decision because if you know me that is exactly the kind of work I like to be doing and I already told the school I would do it back in January. But my health problems since the surgery have slowed me down way more than I expected. I am still going to the doctor twice a week into the foreseeable future, taking lots of medicine and supplements and letting people take blood over and over again (we thought you had this, but no – now we think you have this other thing, which requires a different specialist and a different lab. and et cetera). It’s been a discouraging process, and I like to be busy, like the kind of “normal” life – you know, where long car rides and stairs aren’t things that make you cancel an outing. Sorry to be so grumpy. I keep checking in with my doctor, angry I’m not better, angry that I had to have surgery at all, angry the surgery didn’t go right, angry angry angry. Fix it! I want to yell at her. Fix me!
So, thusly, I figured I am not in the best place to nurture, organize, bring to life a new magazine right now. I do want still want to start my own down the road. Right now I barely have the energy to write and send out work. Doing my homework is a huge effort right now. The one thing I am good at is reading. I’m reading everything – lit mags, books (just finished David Lehman’s newest, which I’m reviewing for Small Spiral Notebook, my friends poems (which always cheer me up.) I’m also surpringly adequate at the kind of writing I do for $$ – marketing and techie stuff, which apparently I could write now in my sleep. Thank goodness for that work, at least it makes me feel useful during this phase. I’m hoping by summer to have recovered enough to be able to do most of the things I was taking for granted back in January. Then grumpy Jeannine will make space for regular, sort-of-cheerful-and-upbeat Jeannine – ie more superhero, less supervillain.