Last week was moody, hard to get anything done moody. About all I managed to accomplish were the bare minimum parenting and house tasks. Oh, and I started going to the gym again. Then on Friday, things felt better, as if a cloud had passed over the sun and moved on. Saturday brought a professional event when Howard and I accompanied Brandon and Emily Sanderson to the League of Utah Writers Round Up in Park City. I’ll admit that I felt apprehension about going. Some wisps of worry clung from the week prior making me think that my departure would result in some unspecified disaster at home. The feeling also came as a foreshadowing of the larger worries I have about leaving my family for a week. Yet I put on my professional clothes and went anyway.
Everything was fine. Even the hard bits were fine. Gleek and Patch had a major argument and resolved it for themselves. When I arrived home all was happy. Of course the next two hours involved conflict piled on conflict featuring Gleek, who picked that evening to push on the limits and then repent of all wrong doing she has ever committed. Yet despite how exhausting those two hours were, they cleared up some significant emotional turf for Gleek. Hard does not always mean bad. So I am both reassured and I continue to be concerned.
The sun continues to shine today. I feel normal. This is evidence that last weeks moods were primarily driven by thyroid imbalance. I hope to spend this week in calm preparation for my upcoming absence.
The LUW Round Up probably ought to get its own entry. It is a smaller event and more literary focused than most of the events we attend. I liked being at an event where genre fiction was not the primary focus. They had classes on Creative Non Fiction and Poetry. I was able to attend portions of those classes. But my favorite part was getting to present. It reminded me (again) how much I love teaching and presenting. I need to be doing more of it.