Respecting Your Personal Limitations
First of all, I'd like to thank those of you who visit the site often enough to have noted my absence this past month and written to me with concern. It has been a trying time, in part because of unexpected challenges that have come along but also because I haven't taken care of myself as well as I should.
In Don Nathanson's excellent book Shame and Pride, he describes himself as "the driven sort of personality that must ignore or disavow exhaustion in order to conclude what we declare to be the 'more important' business of the day." I recognize myself in this description. As I was working on Cinderella, I felt driven to complete and release it before relocating to Colorado for the summer, imposing an entirely artificial deadline upon myself. At the same time, I was finishing up a proposal for my book on shame, in the hope that I could interest a good agent in taking me on. I also wanted to finish that project before Colorado, although there was no particular reason why I needed to wrap it up in May rather than July. Like Nathanson, I continually made "the decision to trade the comfort of sleep for the work of writing." By the end of May, I had completed and released Cinderella, finalized my book proposal and driven myself into a state of exhaustion.