The Joys of Hermit-age

I have to get out more. The problem is, I don’t want to.

I have RWA coming up at the end of the week. One day. I’ll leave home at nine and be back by nine at night. And yet, the damn thing is consuming my week. I had to get my hair cut today (after four years of no cuts, I looked like Jeremiah Johnson). I have to find some make-up. Hell, I have to find shoes and underwear. I have to get up at 7:30 AM. (I used to have to be at work by 7:30 AM. Those were fifteen bad years.) So I obsess about it. It’s ridiculous.

The problem is, in the past three years, I have settled happily into hermit-age. I never leave the house except for groceries and occasional visits to my daughter and her family, which should be more often, but that’s another problem. If I stay home, I can wear what I want, ignore make-up, put my hair up in scrunchies to get it out of my face, talk to the dogs, make up stories, paint the floors, watch old stuff on TV, crochet, do anything I want. It’s heaven. I’m never bored. If I get the urge to speak to somebody besides the dogs, I have great neighbors who are always ready to chat. It’s nice here. DON’T MAKE ME LEAVE THE HOUSE.

But that really is bad for me. And Friday will be good for me, I’ll have fun, I’ll see people I haven’t seen in years (I haven’t seen anybody in years; see above), plus I love Manhattan. Since I’m not paying for a hotel and since I’m already crazy enough because I have to leave the house, I got a car to take me to and from the conference which is expensive, but so would the treatment for my nervous breakdown be if I had to get up at the crack of dawn, change trains or buses, and then find a cab. Okay, I can find a cab without stress, but not before noon. Noon is my consciousness border; before noon I do not compute, I stare stupidly into space and try to remember my name. Yes, my first speech is at 11. The hypomania should carry me through that one.

So I’m working on projects here, including some for this blog, and I’m writing fiction and obsessively rewriting my Keynote workshops, and I’m baking (banana bread last night, really good), and I’ll get it all on here in posts shortly (well, not the baking), but this week I have oh-my-god-I-have-to-leave-the-house brain, so the next post will probably be Friday’s with the conference stuff. I know, I suck as a blogger.

I’d write more but I have to go look for my make-up. And my shoes. One damn thing after another.