After a quick thank you to Grub Street, you may have noticed that I'm still alive following my "sorry but busy" post from earlier this month.

I have not had much time to write or do any type of work, because moving into our new place has raised some optimization problems that required me to call in the cavalry--in this case, my mother, who will be flying out tomorrow to help. Our new apartment has a lot of features and, unfortunately, some bugs. (Thankfully not the real kind). 

However, this also means that I have to juggle working with entertaining/enabling/unpacking/cleaning/troubleshooting new apartment. I'm determined to squeeze in work and upkeep, especially since I have a busy work-heavy June and doing even a bit this week will lighten that load.

Anyway, I've been sharing personal and some interest-related posts to Facebook and others on Twitter, but Facebook doesn't seem to like posting links from Weebly very much (ie, it hides them in the news feed). So, I'm here, and probably posting even if you don't see notifications.

After the news that my publication in the current issue of Grub Street went live, I didn't expect any follow-up. Although I learned at AWP that lit mags love to meet people, especially readers, donors, and authors/artists, I also heard a lot of stories of fear. The writing life seems to include a lot of anonymity, even after being published at a cripplingly low success rate.

So I was pleasantly surprised when I received two contributor's copies and a lovely handwritten note in the mail.​ The copies were expected, but, a lot of the time, I receive those with no more aplomb than I would if I had simply bought the magazine and not been published in its pages.

Although Hapax will not publish in print for now, I hope to treat our contributors and submitters with similar courtesy, respect, and humanity. 

I have a lot of travel coming up, but I hope that my schedule will sort itself out soon. Lately, when I stare at the blank blog post screen, I have no idea what to write. That's not a function of having run out of things to say; rather, it's a testament to how drained I am. I know I have a lot of cool concepts that I'd like to explore, but also that I don't have the energy to execute them.

Of course, in a world where you're supposed to post regularly, that lack of mental energy has become a source of stress in itself. However, I hope to turn the corner soon. I spent two hours yesterday researching travel plans and a lot of time brainstorming and writing this week's blog posts, only to come up empty on both fronts.

So, I hope your week is going better than mine, and that once I emerge from this mid-May madness, I can recapture my blogging pace.