turning the day over in my head

I woke up in the early hours of the morning and found it impossible to go back to sleep.  The packers arrive today.  Normally I pack everything, but this time, it felt like a healthier choice to have someone else do it instead.  I lay in bed reminding myself of the various closets that things were tucked away in that needed to be careful wrapped for their journey.  “Stop thinking.  Relax.  Go to sleep.  There are going to be people in the house so crawling into bed for a ten minute snooze is not an option” Which of course didn’t help, just made me feel more anxious and wide awake. 

I tried to turn my mind to other topics, which was good, but didn’t help the sleep-quotient any.  Yesterday had been busy.  Some time ago, my beloved financial advisor informed me that he has decided to retire.  And I am happy for him.  He is in his late 60’s and now he and his wife will have more time to travel and play tennis and he can finish up that book that he has been working on.  But for me, there is this odd sort of longing and loss.  I grew so much, learned so much, laughed so much with this man. 

Anyway, yesterday after around 5 or 6 weeks of burying my head in the sand and pretending that,” No...he’s not really going to retire.” I bit the bullet and marched my reluctant body into the branch of the investment firm in the area I live in and sat myself down for a series of appointments.  At first I felt fine.  I’ve been handling my finances for some time now and have done well enough.  But the more investment advisors I met, the more uncomfortable I started to feel.  All of them nice enough, some seemed perhaps more of a match than others.  But it felt odd to be talking about my personal finances to perfect strangers.  And then there is the question of the fee.  What they charge.  Funny, there I am in an investment firm and when I try to pin down a certain percentage, there is a lot of waffling.  Why would that be?  I am here to talk about handling my money and I want to know what exactly it’s going to cost me.  Why with some of the people, did I feel like perhaps I was being crude or crass to mention/ask this question?  I am using these interviews to make my decision who to go with?  I would think what it’s going to cost me is a very appropirate question.  It is not simply a matter of who I like the best, but also what makes the most fiscal sense. 

The first person I like enormously, but this person was not flexible on the fee and I don’t want to pay a higher percentage than I got with C____.
There was another person who I also was very impressed with, but this person is part of a team.  I don’t know how I feel about a team.  I’m used to dealing with one person. 

When I realized that worrying about was the right person to go with was not the way to go about falling back to sleep, I moved onto another peaceful subject.  My writing.  Ha!  Now I’m really screwed!  Once I’m on to my writing, I can kiss sleep goodbye.

Anyway, my mind was spinning, not with one manuscript, but two.  I went to Christianne’s Lyceum last night and met with the Bibliophiles and the Ravenous Readers book clubs about my (previously named Lucky, but now untitled) manuscript.  Their feedback was enormously helpful!  Both the parents and the teens.  I have a clear direction as to what I need to add and accomplish in the rewrite.  I am so grateful for their insight, encouragement, enthusiasm and comments. 

It was a little hard at first, to get my head turned around to focus on that manuscript when it has been buried so deeply into The Big Muckle.  I found I really had to adjust.  It was hard at times to dive back into the muck of my/Kelly’s teenage years.  Fictionalized of course, but some of the elements are there.  And to discuss them, to revisit them was harder for me this time than it normally is.

I think the reason it was such a challenge for me was because I’ve been jaunting along, cavorting in The Big Muckle, having such a good time, and I am almost at the end of this rewrite and I didn’t want my head and heart to have to return to another project yet.  HOWEVER that being said.  What help I got!  These kids and their parents are so smart, and now I know what I have to do.

Not only that, but now, I’ll finish tying up The Big Muckle, hopefully by Friday. I’ll do another quick sweep over the weekend for typos and then… Either I’ll start the Lucky/untitled rewrite, or on Monday, or maybe I’ll give myself a week to lounge, tuck into a good book, go on nice long walks.  And then start the Lucky/untitled rewrite the following.  We’ll see.  But if any of you Ravenous Readers or Bibliophiles are browsing this blog...THANK YOU SO MUCH! xxxooo

Posted by Meg Tilly on Tuesday, January 08, 2008 in Chewing the Fat

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