Death is your gift

In the last year, there have been probably a dozen posts I've started, got a paragraph or two or three into and deleted because I couldn't figure out a way to tie all the random thoughts together. This was going to be one (and maybe it should be), but maybe it's okay to open the window on the jumbled stuff in my head, too:


I've had a mighty productive morning, considering I am still wearing pajamas and have brushed neither my teeth nor hair.

I read a couple short books (Maurice Sendak's My Brother's Book; Neil Gaiman's Make Good Art; and The 13 Clocks by James Thurber); got my W-2 and promptly filed my taxes; shredded a bunch of stuff that's been sitting around for literally YEARS waiting to be shredded; organized the recycling (including all the shredded paper) to be dropped off at the EcoMaine trailer; put away a bunch of stuff in the storage area downstairs; sorted through a bunch of stuff in the junk pile on the kitchen counter. I found this CD I'd labeled "Death is your gift." I recognized it as a line from Buffy (which, coincidentally, I'm rewatching on Netflix right now), but I had no idea what was on it. I shoved it in my laptop and recognized that it's a mix of songs I had a hard time listening to around the time Mom died and afterward as well as other songs that remind me of loss. It's actually a great mix:

1.  View from Heaven - Yellowcard
2. Hope There's Someone - Antony and the Johnsons
3. I Will Follow You Into the Dark - Deathcab for Cutie
4. Ghost on the Dance Floor - blink-182
5. A Lifetime - Better Than Ezra
6. I Miss You - blink-182
7. (Coffee's for Closers) - Fall Out Boy
8. Shake it Out - Florence + the Machine
9. How to Save a Life - The Fray
10. Paul's Song - Jessica Campbell and Bullet
11. Lay Me Down - The Frames
12. In the Sun - Joseph Arthur
13. Heartbeats - Jose Gonzalez
14. Winter - Joshua Radin
15. The Cave - Mumford & Sons
16. Forgiveness - Patty Griffin
17. Breathe Me - Sia
18. Everything'll Be Alright (Will's Lullaby) - Joshua Radin
19. Life is Beautiful - Vega4

Last week, I started this plan to baby step my way to getting Ramona's books out into the world. And I made fabulous progress. The only real thing I needed to accomplish this week was a draft of a query letter...which I still haven't done. (I did at least finally get myself settled on some new ideas for a new book and a collection of short stories that finally feel like they are taking root in my brain, so that's a nice relief. I was starting to think Ramona's stories were all I had in me.)

And as I complete these concrete tasks that make me feel some sense of productivity and accomplishment, which makes it feel almost okay to avoid the query letter, I catch the line from blink-182's "Ghost on the Dance Floor" that always stops me -- it's like the universe has left me without a place to go.

Do other people feel like that? Because I do. All the time.