Overload

Well, I am freaking out a little bit. My mind is on overload and I need to focus and route my thoughts accordingly.

I have learned how to do that relatively well but, every once in a while I get a bit concerned that I have so much to do and way "too little time".

I am two thirds of the way done with my middle grade chapter book and already my mind is planning the next -not one, not two, but three- projects that are pushing forward and budging into the patiently waiting 'to do' line that has formed in my head.

My current project, an historical fiction MG novel set during the industrial revolution will be done within the next month or so.

The next one is a nostalgia, non-fiction, book that my husband asked me to do. The subject is a place near and dear to both our hearts. Little did he know that I already have quite a collection of essays together and, that I had already planned to do the very same thing.

The second, is a novel set in the Adirondack Mountains of New York state and it is the story of a woman reaching midlife and her self discovery that could, either cripple her, or allow her to soar. Any of this taken from my life? Perhaps, but I am so much more "together "than she is that I could have coached her through alot of her trials and saved her the angst! ;)

And the third is a memoir about my mother. Oh... that's nice... but boring... In fact, not at all. My mother was a woman before her time. An early feminist so to speak. Before Gloria Steinam, there was my mother. For many years I, like so many others-at the moment my daughter included-thought that mothers were born old and quite, ah, stupid. I did grew out of that opinion but I looked at that change and attributed it to the fact that I had grown, matured, become gracious. How self indulgent of me. But I was full of myself and proud that I recognized I had been judgemental. So since I had become a mother, I would give my mother a break ,and try to become a comrade of sorts in the legion of motherhood. It wasn't until my mother passed away and I sat and read the numerous journals she had written for my daughter, her beloved little grandchild, that I recognized my mother was not only very bright, but strong beyond any belief I had allowed myself to ponder. She had told me many stories and I, always living twenty minutes ahead of myself, rarely listened. I was busy. I was a successful business woman. I was a mother. I was everything to everybody. I had to keep moving. What I never did credit my mother for, was raising me to believe that I could acheive anything I wanted. That I need not do only what was expected of me because of the gender I was born.

So, now that I have collected my thoughts and routed them accordingly, I had better get busy and finish my current project. Perhaps I will move my third project to the forefront so I don't pass up another opportunity to acknowledge the woman who made me who I am in an era before there was a label for it.