Settling In at FPU

Greetings from Fancy-Pants University!

Yeah, okay, it's been over a month since I've posted. But to be fair, in that month, here's what I've done:

• Finished up a last frantic week of research in Blerg City
• Gotten a cut that got infected four days before leaving (shivering in 75-degree rooms? check!)
• Traveled back to Grit City, and moved in with friend for 10 days
• Visited doctor for antibiotics for infection, then got sick with some new upper-respiratory thing
• Spent ten days finishing final good-byes in Grit City; dealt with address changes; mailed 7 boxes across the country
• Moved self (with two suitcases) across country
• Settled into new apartment and new office and new... well, new everything. 

So: busy.  But now, finally, I feel like I'm approaching a rhythm. I observed to someone yesterday that you cna power through 90% of settling into a new home in just a few days, but that final 10% can take weeks. Monday, for example, I had to buy a set of stick-on wall hooks that let me have a place to put away my winter hats and umbrellas. Yesterday, it was the process of getting the detritus of former tenants picked up by a local charity service (I have a severe problem with clutter, and no 1-bedroom apartment needs three tables [not including the desk] and six chairs, not to mention two microwaves) as well as getting automatic deposit set up for my travel reimbursements. Today, I applied for a car-sharing service. Tomorrow, perhaps it will be getting the new phone service set up.

My new office is pretty fancy-pants in its own right.

And, of course, there's the work of organizing the actual work. I was at that yesterday and today, trying to figure out what I had (more than I thought), what I still need to transcribe (again, more than I thought -- depressingly so), and where I'm at with the chapter drafts (not as far as I'd like to be, but a good respectable third of the MS in draft form). I'm hoping to really dive in and start writing on September 1. Every time I try to think beyond that, about how much writing I need to do, or what my daily/weekly pace needs to be to get there, or (gods help me) what the real "so what" of my book is, I start to freak out a little. So I've decided for now to stop doing that. Just put in the work every day, rain or shine. And enjoy the hell out of FPU, which truly is a wonderful, wonderful place.