Things on the To Worry About list
1/I have a spreadsheet for what I want to do/see/buy at AWP. I’m worried about forgetting something.
2/Submissions just opened for the next print annual of apt. We mentioned it less than usual (since we’ll be talking to writers about it for three days straight this week). We’ve gotten slammed nonetheless.
3/John and Robin (the other two editors at apt) can’t make it to the conference because of a crazy emergency. By crazy, I mean crazy-inconvenient and crazy-sad and crazy-frustrating. I just want to lift them up with my mind and make everything better, but I can’t, so I’m fretting instead.
4/We’re moving this summer and there’s so much to do.
5/I have three library books due on Wednesday. I’ve read two of them, but have yet to start the third. I will start this evening, but I won’t finish by Wednesday. I cannot renew the book because there’s a hold on it. I have two options: return the book on Wednesday and request it again later or keep the book until I’m done reading it, pay the scant overdue fines, but be a jerk to a complete stranger who’s waiting to read this book. Decisions, decisions.
6/We’ve culled at least 250 books from our collection and now we need to get them to a used bookstore so we can sell them, which makes me feel bad (I’ve never sold a book before), but also pragmatic.
7/The woman who lives above me is vacuuming, but leaving her vacuum running in one spot so it sounds like she’s shaving the floor with an electric razor. I wish she’d let it go, then get sucked up inside it, but then the noise would never end.
8/I need to go to Dorchester and the post office and Back Bay and, despite those things being arguably near each other, they feel far apart and the entire trip will exhaust the afternoon.
9/When I type, my hands get very cold (blood going into the wrist and staying there, I think). I worry about poor circulation and, as a result, I sit on one hand and type with the other. After the typing hand gets cold and the sat on hand gets warm, they trade identities. This can’t be good for either hand.
10/I have an important phone call scheduled for tomorrow and I want to be ready. But its level of importance makes me feel like I could never really be adequately prepared. I am concerned about making a list of questions and then forgetting to bring them when the time comes. I am trying to mentally scale this concern because, if I don’t, I won’t make the list at all and then it won’t matter whether I would’ve forgotten it because it won’t be there to forget.
