Non-Pandemic Poem and Other Signs of Settling In

This morning, I was listening to an archived interview on Fresh Air; back in 1992, Terry Gross interviewed Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, who just died.  Martin and Lyon are famous for founding Daughters of Bilitis, one of the first lesbian activist groups in the 1970's.

They talked about gay and lesbian life in the pre-activist days, the days of deep closets.  I thought of my college days in the 1980's, in South Carolina, where even in the larger cities of the state, people weren't really "out," the way they are now.  I remembered a lesbian bar called Traxx (or was it Tracks?) because it was just this side of a railroad track.  From the outside, it looked like a house in a working class neighborhood. 

I thought about the 1980's in the U.S. south, which wasn't quite the do-it-for-ourselves 1970's, but it also wasn't the information age explosion either.  And then, I wrote a poem, a poem that had nothing to do with our current pandemic!

In the years to come, how will I look back on these days?  Will I be amazed at my sketching productivity?  Will I wonder why my progress sending out poems and manuscripts ground to a halt?  Perhaps I will say, "My life was not so very different once the virus got to the U.S.  Why did I stop sending out my work?"

Let me remember that March (and so far, most of April) was more like the days leading up to an accreditation visit than like my normal work life--not any down time in the office (in fact, lots of panicked demands from a variety of people), sleep disruptions, lots of intense tasks that left me unable to do much in my off-hours time.

A few weeks ago, I got a poetry acceptance--2 poems, in fact, accepted by the journal Adanna.  Hurrah.  Usually I'd send the response to the journal right away.  This year, it took me a week.  And then it took me even longer to withdraw the poems from other journals.

Let me remember that this slowness was common, at least amongst the writers that I know from Facebook and Twitter.  I had a goal to submit a book length manuscript to two places a month.  I missed out on March.  Let me forgive myself for that.

My sleep disruptions seem to be settling a bit.  Let me also hope that my work patterns will settle soon.  So far, I've done more work with spreadsheets (and redoing spreadsheets) than I ever thought possible for this English major.

Today is the day that I would have gone to the Create in Me retreat, if these were normal times.  I feel some sadness about that canceled retreat, but the thought of traveling right now is just unfathomable to me.  I'm glad that we had no choice in the matter.

Let me be happy that I can still be creative on my own.  Let me rest in the assurance that there will come a time again when travel and retreats will be possible.