There were times when I was working on The Second that I wanted to give up. Too much introspection, too deep a dive, too far to the finish line were some of my hurdles. Ha! Now those things are in the past. With the book complete, I have to change hats and try something new.

So you may not know this about me, but I’m pretty into details. I found one space out of alignment in a 72,000 word document. It got corrected. In the past two weeks I uploaded to two publishing platforms known to drive new authors to extreme levels of frustration. Error messages lurk everywhere and it’s not a simple task. Platform number one, IngramSpark, reminded me of playing an escape room game. Each time I hit “Continue” I held my breath. In the end, I got a big “Congratulations” message and gasped, then danced quite a lovely impromptu Irish jig around my home office.

I learned late in the day that today, March 30, is World Bipolar Day. Being currently in remission, every day feels like a celebration. I feel it’s important to mark the day by being open and forthright, something that’s not always been possible for me personally. I hid my illness for years, or at least thought I did, by not acknowledging it was a part of my life. We’ve come a long way in de-stigmatizing mental illness but parity with physical maladies is still not common place. I’m not going back to the old days of hiding and denial. It feels pretty great to equalize the pressure between my inner world and how I present publicly.

Things are getting pretty exciting in Book-land. The cover is ready. I also sent the finished files to the interior designer this morning. We’ll work together to get a printer ready version and an ebook version queued up so everything is ready for the launch in June. We’re eighty-eight days away from going live.

I think this is my daughter, but the image perfectly captures how I’m feeling today. I could belt out my rendition of Ethel Merman’s “Everything’s Coming up Roses” and it would be congruent to my current state of being. The photo shows a tiny woman (which leads me to believe it’s my daughter and not me) performing in the Lake Harriet Bandshell in south Minneapolis. Granted, the crowds are not there. But can you feel the possibilities? The throngs are coming and the rehearsals will be worth the effort.

A huge portion of the country is frozen over and Minneapolis is no exception. The StarTribune issued a challenge to get outside for thirty minutes a day for thirty days. While it sounded invigorating, I respectfully declined to participate. I walked to my mailbox last night and I felt like the Tin Man before Dorothy found the oil can. I logged maybe two minutes in the cold, and the other twenty-eight were not going to happen.

It’s times like this I wish I played the drums. Or the trumpet. After twenty years of fits and starts, promises and deadlines in the dust, my book will be published on June 22, 2021.

One of my pet peeves is when speech writers or journalists seek to define a word by opening with a dictionary entry. I truly hate it. But the word “aught” is special. It literally means everything or nothing, depending on the usage. For my purposes, describing 2020, it is a big fat zero. Most of the time, that is.

One of my pet peeves is when speech writers or journalists seek to define a word by opening with a dictionary entry. I truly hate it. But the word “aught” is special. It literally means everything or nothing, depending on the usage. For my purposes, describing 2020, it is a big fat zero. Most of the time, that is.

Today is the highly productive, Tuesday after Labor Day. It also marks five years since I was released from the psychiatric ward after treatment for a manic episode. It wasn’t the first time, but hopefully it will be the last. I’ve accomplished a lot since then but I’m most pleased with maintaining my emotional sobriety.

I hesitate to write about how I’m feeling during quarantine. I want so badly to be positive and upbeat, bordering on Pollyanna-ish, but my outlook is being tested as of late. Work on editing my memoir has settled into the doldrums. It’s not for lack of material. It feels like I’m in mile twenty-four of a marathon and I’ve hit a wall. Not close enough to get the final kick, yet far enough down the path that I can’t quit.