The Summer of Meh

Knowing summer might slow down in many aspects I couldn’t control, I accelerated work production around here in the spring. That gave me a comfortable cushion to operate with just in case no projects came my way in the off season.

In fact, I thought that would make for the perfect opportunity to start working on my own projects – rather than focusing on stuff for clients.

I cleaned up the coding on my e-books and made the EPUBS flow a little more elegantly. I’d started the process and got interrupted when I landed in the hospital. In my mind I thought the task had been completed.

In the meantime, I am translating some short stories and rewriting some work for a new compilation.

The translation is slow going because some of it was meant poetically and doesn’t quite translate literally. In fact, I may have to drop a couple of stories from the project (perhaps try to add new work to make up for it). Some names were chosen carefully, almost as clues for nerds, but the Spanish translation almost begs not to go that way because the gimmick loses its cleverness. But I also find that I keep using a very rudimentary Spanish to retell the stories, stripped of colloquialism or flavor, and I am displeased with its blandness. This is entirely my fault as I have been neglecting my other mother tongue.

The rewrites are something else. I can’t complain that my muse is silent, but I am also not pleased by her morning-after pronouncements. Rereading the work, it feels as if my muse is sneaking out of my head when I fall asleep, partying like it’s 1999, and then handing me the worst hung-over ideas!

The other day I wrote for hours and left the document open. I napped. I made a salad and ate. I watched the news and shook my head a lot. I reread the work I did and closed the document. When it asked if I’d like to save it, I clicked no and let it go where bad documents go to die. Then I cleared my memory and turned the laptop off to make sure it would never again pop up as a temporary file archive.

At least I got one thing done! Perhaps I ought to look at it as a deserved vacation from everything.

I also wanted to learn a couple new tricks but it’s hard to learn when all I want is to fit inside my freezer (and not just because the ice cream lives there). Nobody writes songs, poems, or even worthy blog entries about summers like this. I officially proclaim it the Summer of Meh.