The Long Hiatus

My nose is getting raw. No, it's not allergies; it's that grindstone. I've been inordinately busy.

I just finished a long article on community choice aggregation in Marin County. What is community choice aggregation, you say? It's a way that communities can take power back from the big utilities that supply our energy. In our case that would be Pacific Gas & Electric Company.

Communities can form their own energy-buying consortium and buy energy directly from the suppliers. This comes in handy if you want to add more renewable energy to the mix than PG&E can give you. Making the change is a several-year process, and since the law (AB 117) that allowed CCAs in California only went into effect in 2003, Marin is only the second community to seek a CCA.

I've never been invited to write a 2,400-word article. Mostly I have to squeeze the details--however complicated--into 800 words or less.

A few months ago I joined BNI--Business Networking International. Each local chapter includes one person from each business category. They didn't have a writer, so I joined. It's expensive, but I've gotten nearly enough business from them to pay back my fees, with some big jobs in the offing. All this has made my free time very scarce, however. Tomorrow I have to work on a brochure for a client, arrange interviews for the next Sonoma Seniors Today, and prepare a 10-minute presentation for my BNI chapter--something that each member does once a year or so. Tuesday I'm meeting with a woman who wants help writing her book proposal. I have to call another lady about her book.

I'm not complaining. I just took out the last of my savings to pay living expenses. I need the money. It just takes some getting used to. And there's so much to do--my Web page, my writing blog, my own brochure. All that "business" stuff I've been avoiding all my life.

But today....

I went out in my bathrobe to set up the solar oven for the bread I'm planning to bake today and water the corn and squash seedlings in my new garden bed in the back yard. Later I will make tortillas and put together a batch of burritos using the beans I cooked yesterday in the solar oven. Why do I make my own tortillas? So I can add the forbidden ingredient--lard!--that is now omitted from all commercial tortillas in favor of some flavorless vegetable shortening concoction. Don't tell my clean-living friends.

Tomatoes have sat too long in their containers and must be planted today. The compost that's been sitting in the driveway for weeks has to be moved to the back yard for another new garden bed. My own compost heap awaits turning.

I have a knitting project to finish before a June 7 baby shower. A solar oven workshop to plan for June 22.

These are the things I crave to do much more than sitting before my computer churning out marketing copy. But life is about compromise.

Okay, I'm still in my bathrobe, writing in bed. Time to get up and get the bread started.