June 10, 2023

Something I thought about:

• I got overwhelmed this week and ended up with more items on my to do list than I’d started with, so I had to take a step back and reassess. Moving a family internationally on top of the usual is complicated! I’m trying to plan much more carefully now with limited tasks per day and scheduled breaks. I’d stopped chunking tasks and was trying to do everything all at once again, which never works. So I’m back to grouping types of work and aiming to complete chunks rather than attempting to move every item forward a little bit at a time. I’m posting this here as a reminder.

Something I did:

• So much paperwork
• Sorted and weeded many of my belongings and worked with the child on his belongings. We made a lot of progress!
• Doctor’s appointments
• A lot of errands which made planning tough — I was off schedule with all of the running around.

Something I read:

• Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds
• As Brave As You by Jason Reynolds
• To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness by Robin Costa Lewis
• This post on Sylvia Plath’s visual art is terrific. Reminds me of Elizabeth Bishop’s painting, of course.
• An interview with Ocean Vuong. I love this:

I’ve always believed, both in fiction and poetry, in Wallace Stevens’s ideal of imaginative writing coming from a “supreme fiction”. That is, that the poem is an opportunity to turn from memoiristic transcription of information towards a kind of ultimate artefact, charged and changed by the imagination.