20150922.0630

Today is Hobbit Day, of course, with it being Bilbo's birthday and Frodo's. Praise the Ring-bearers; praise them with great praise! Eat a dinner heavy with mushrooms! Eat supper afterward! May the hair on your toes ever fall out! But even on such a day and amid all laud and honor, work continues, and if the writing I must do does not extend so far as the One Book that no longer rules them all (nor should, as I argue in my contribution to Fantasy and Science Fiction Medievalisms: From Isaac Asimov to A Game of Thrones), it is nonetheless a fair bit to do in a day and while watching over a darling little girl of some nineteen months of age. So I will tend to it soon.

As I work on such work, I find that I find myself somehow adrift. There was a time when I was solidly anchored by my work and a few pop-culture pieces on which I focused extensively. That time has long since passed, and I find that I am pulled in many directions with differing degrees of force. If it is true that we are what we eat, then I am in some measure taffy--I rather like taffy, although toffee is better--but even so, I do not feel at ease being thusly tensioned. There are tears forming already, as I can feel, and there are some few places where the hooks have pulled through, leaving pieces hanging loosely--or the hooks have fallen from the walls and dangle as what enmeshes them attenuates and separates from the rest, diminishing it. Things I have loved are ending; other things are popping up and distracting me from what remains of what I have loved.

Some points of stability remain, of course. I can count upon the love and esteem of several people, which is to my credit, and the opprobrium of others, which is unavoidable, given my work. There is too damned much for me to do today, as is usually the case, and so some of what I would hope to do in the day will not get done today--although it will get done. And if it is to get done, I'd better do it--which is something that tends to be true. It is not to say that much is not done for me, either for pay or from love, but there is much that gets done by no hands other than mine, much that can be done by no hands other than mine, and that is as it has been and should be.

If there are no tasks which can only be done by me, I am not of much use. And while I know that the work I do can be done by others, it cannot be done by others in the context where I find myself; it cannot be done by others for those for whom I do it. There is some comfort in that, that there are places in which I am irreplaceable. Now, if I can expand upon them and ensure that they endure...