Reminder: before I start this self-indulgent post: I am reading tomorrow night at Queen Anne Books at 6:30 p.m.!

This has been a summer full of fun and flirtation with a current of sadness underneath. It’s been a summer of worry and tension headaches and trying to settle into the identity of published author. What does that mean? How do I promote my book and write another one at the same time? Hold down a demanding full time job?

Many new things have started, which are exciting, but transition is hard. Even when the new things are better, you long for the old, comforting things.

I am thrilled my book is out in the world but this birth has brought with it a whole slew of worry and insecurity. Let’s not even talk about the jealousy that comes with being a writer (Anne Lamott says it all so much better than me anyway) and the way you hyperventilate with each of your writer friends’ successes. (Soon they are going to be fabulously succesful bestellers sipping margaritas on their own private island while you waste away in a dark office like Bartleby the scrivener, returned unto the obscurity from which you barely emerged after writing your first -- and only -- book.).

I miss, just a tiny bit, the days when all I did was work and write and hope – when I wasn’t a published author and didn’t worry constantly about how my book was doing, and when would I write a next one, what is my Amazon ranking, how is so-and-so’s book doing compared to mine (though of course thank you LORD or whoever for letting me get published, don't think for one moment I take it for granted, NO!) I miss, a bit, the lazy days at Club Geeksoft, where my schedule was flexible and my mornings relaxed. My new job is so much better for me – so much more interesting, and dynamic, and glamorous, and fun – but still. I have to hustle and my writing suffers for it.

I miss, too, my ex boyfriend. His intelligence and his power and grace. The way he wrapped himself around me in his tiny bed on cold nights. The way his smile cracked the world wide open. Yet I always struggled for what to say to him (and I am not a person who likes to struggle for words). I could never quite be myself with him, and so I knew, eventually it would end though I tried to believe otherwise because it was so sexy and happy and fun (that last doomed month aside).

I am a person who seeks out change and variety but I'm thrashing through it right now. I could use an anchor. For now, my friends and family and my friend's kids anchor me. Barely. And so does my writing (my next book is 15,000 horrible words in the making.)

I think I can hold on till things calm down in my head. But just in case, check for fragments of my brain lying around tomorrow. They might be worth a lot of money someday -- if my book does well, that is.