Frustrating today just building up steam for my third and final draft of The Thing I'm Writing, to have it done before the 31st when it must go out in the papermail. Finished the first edit quickly on Saturday, so quickly it didn't raise a sweat, too easy, but enough to tell me it needed one more yank of the wrench on Sunday. I labored through only one chapter yesterday, then, and it wore me out, so I knew I was doing good work. Had to stop lest weariness lose the music for me. Now today I'm revved up and hankering to get back to it, BUT damn world real world must intrude, and here I go off to a brick building downtown for quarterly meeting where I am the area rep for in-home care providers. They always serve a lunch of diet soda which is poison and pizza which I can't touch due to gluten, so maybe this time I'll carry my own lunch and treat myself to an extra coffee (I've got myself down to one cup, with breakfast only, each day). Or not. I have to leave in 10 minutes and I'm still not dressed, having wasted my morning on breakfast and books.

22 March After days of noncreating, during which I gave up on writing altogether and began sending out resumes to solicit paid freelance editorial projects, I read a great deal and stayed mostly flat in bed between errands and housekeeping and serving meals, laundry, and so on. A second journey to the valley for my followup with the painfulacupuncturist became out of the question because the old car is too poorly maintained to go up and down the mountain anymore without worry, and likewise my old body, which will not sleep before such journeys and certainly not in the hardbed motels, and which breaks down from the strain of traveling around, canceling out any hoped-for benefit. I will buy the Chinese powder formulas, though, by mail, from painfulacupuncture person, as they seem to facilitate kidney function pretty well. And try to see the local nonpainful needleguy, who is less effective and doesn't do herbs.

Meanwhile I eat raw food for my first two meals each day and take enzymes and supplements, and I feel well, like I may come out of the woods long enough to earn some money from the page, maybe even enough in the end to move down off the dry high plateau to a valley where sunlight pounds a dusty soil and perfume wafts from the waspgall oak leaves.