Monday, September 24, 2012

HAPPY TOES

Yoga for the feet--who would've thunk it? Yesterday I spent two hours in a workshop led by Jenn Heinstadt of Mindful Freedom Yoga focusing on... feet. Did you know there is a muscle that goes from your second toe all the way to your tongue? Kind of like Route 66 of the body. 

Work-wise, I am in grant-writing hell. One reason I am quiet in the blogosphere. Call me crazy, but I decided to rework an NIH research proposal on chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and depression. I kind of think they're linked--if you take your antidepressant meds, I have a hunch you might improve adherence to COPD meds and have better outcomes. But maybe it's the other way around--breathing better makes your depression better? I dunno, but I have a statistical work-around, thanks to my brilliant post-doc and students.

Did you hear--I got promoted? To Senior Fiction Editor at JMWW? For some reason uber-Editor Jen Michalski trusts me enough to play Goddess with submissions, and with the careful eyes and discerning tastes of the rest of the fiction editors, perhaps I will get more comfy with this role. But I am learning--SO MUCH! Like Submittable never sleeps... never... and, like tribbles, the inbox seems to reproduce over night.

Got a story coming out at Smokelong Quarterly next month. Booya!

Finished up a second draft of THE RUNAWAY, another chapter in THE MINISTER'S WIFE, my project-under-construction. But at 12,000 words, it is almost a novella. I usually have no difficulty in murdering my lovelies, but this time...

Reading THE HUMAN STAIN by Philip Roth. My first full-throttle Roth experience. He is effing brilliant at characterization and, yeah, maybe he is self-absorbed, but who cares if the reading is this good?

What are you writing and reading these days? And please, pardon me if I stick out my tongue--I'm merely stretching my toes. Namaste...

6 comments:

  1. You've been busy! Congrats on the fun new editor position, and on making headway with The Minister's Wife. Yoga, toe or otherwise, would be a huge help for someone with so many irons in the fire. :)

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  2. You do all this, and you somehow manage to do it with perfectly polished toenails. Wow.
    What have I been doing? Er.... um... how does absolutely nothing sound? And I'm doing it with chipped toenails.

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  3. Fantastic news about the promotion and all the writing publications! So cool.

    Commiserations on the research proposal issues, though. There's always something to stress us out.

    And I had no idea that there's a muscle that goes all the way from the second toe to the tongue. That's interesting. Maybe that's a possible reason why the toes can be erogenous? Just a passing thought.

    Jai

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  4. Thanks all, it is all good.

    I do yoga because if I don't make myself go to class, I don't relax. I live life hard, and that has its pros and cons, the main one being not doing anything. Which is central to both yoga and creativity--the non-doing allows one to be fallow and receptive to ideas, images, and the like.

    Cathy, the ONLY reason my toenails are painted is because I had the yoga feet workshop and the polish was chipped and I did not have remover, so I slapped on a coat--the polish is bumpy and still adhered to skin and cuticle. The toe separators, however, do make toe polishing a breeze.

    Nine more days of proposal writing hell. Today I accidentally deleted my endnote library with all my references. That was bad. I owe my post-doc mega. Peace...

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    Replies
    1. Congrats on the editor position - sounds like it will be fun and interesting!
      Yoga for feet...love the idea and I somehow think my feet would too.

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