I just finished the second (and last, so far) Forsyte Saga, on Masterpiece Theatre.

Good God. Just gets tragicer and tragicer.

Liked the way it ended, though. And I needed my heart ripped apart by somebody else's problems. I have this thing, that bothers me a little, where I have trouble breaking down about my own problems. Have to wait till somebody else to cry about.

Having a great couple weeks, just a bad day today. Going great guns on the book proposal, and it's invigorating, just incredibly taxing. On top of my day job. And my agent wants it right away. And she wants a drastic change, which I'm 90% sure she's right about, but it's still a huge shock to the system, and a little disconcerting as well that I could have gotten the point of view completely wrong--did get it wrong the last time I attempted this book, which maybe accounted for a big part of the struggle. And there's so very much to figure out about this book so quickly, and to capture so eloqently in the proposal.

And then there's the shock to the rest of my life. Looks like I'll have to spend another year in Denver, or more likely shuttling Chicago to Denver. Letting go of NY for another year is a bit traumatic. I was so ready to move on. And this split life: can't keep up with friends in Denver, hard to have time to get to know new people in Chicago. I get one to two nights in the city, maybe two weekends a month. This weekend was kind of a bust. Had fun for awhile Friday night, but didn't meet a single new person this time, didn't connect as well as I'd like with any of the old ones . . . wasted way to much time Saturday doing nothing, too tired to go out, staying with my sister whose cats kept me sneezing and my eyes burning, sunday working my ass off on the book proposal rubbing my eyes . . .

And there's this guy there that I like just a little too much, who kinda likes me back, just not nearly enough, and it's just going to drive me insane eventually, I think. Thought I had him out of my mind, but of course I was kidding myself.

Why do I always do this? Always the wrong guys for me. I need to just enjoy them for what they are. Next week I will again--I'd been doing so well on that one the past month. Guess it's all just coming down on me this week. I'm post-partum over the big Columbine story I'd been trying to birth for four years, and now I've got the daunting task of the much bigger job ahead of me of creating an entire book.

Ever try to write a book? It is hard! So much harder than it looks. I know, I wrote about 3/4 of my memoir in grad school, and then I did a complete draft of the Columbine book and several rewrites the first time, and God, it sucked all the life out of me. But it's two years later, I learned immensely from it, and I had a nice long rest away from it. Pounding my first little pitons into that mountain already, and the first mad rush up is the easy part--I am moving at lightening speed at the moment, I just know what's up ahead of me. So damn daunting. And so solitary, I can already feel the loneliness encroaching.

So that's it in a nutshell. Not enough rest, not enough sleep and way too many allergies the past few days left me tired and worn out and my emotional immune system wide open to that most devastating of enemies. Loneliness. Nails me every time.