I missed the last two days of the creativity challenge, as I was on the previously mentioned road trip.

Blog posts are just better with pictures, and since I didn’t actually take any of San Francisco, you can look at the cover for Spellwright instead.

Friday was focused on getting up to the Bay Area, catching up with Michelle, and getting to a reading by author Blake Charlton, which I enjoyed tremendously. I was very pleased to make Blake’s acquaintance in person, having known him for a short while online.

Blake is an incredibly engaging speaker, and possibly the smartest guy I’ve ever met (no lie). His novel Spellwright promises to be as thoughtful and entertaining as the author himself.

Saturday I saw parts of San Francisco, appreciated some art, and enjoyed Michelle’s company. Much wine and sushi was consumed. Today we slept in and were just anxious to get home. It was a fine and worthy trip.

I wish the timing had been different, though, because I was really a little bit off my axis for most of the weekend. I think this is because last week was such a wildly unusual one–a very dark and unhappy one, in fact, due to very late hours on the day job and insomnia, but it was punctuated by a couple of sun-bright flares of Awesome. I felt like I wasn’t really capable of giving those flares the attention that they deserved, coming as they did in the midst of the rest.

After that I didn’t have a chance to feel normal again–to process the good, put the day job behind me and counter it with these other things that are so important to me, to just get grounded before we left for the weekend. This left me feeling very off-center, full of self-doubt, worry, and unanswered questions for most of the trip. Just bad timing, really.

So I got home and immediately did what I know to do: focus on the work. It helps. Every time. I brought my best to it and earned my keep tonight. The self-doubt and questions remain, but they’re a lot quieter when there’s a manuscript in front of me and a list to check off, and the knowledge that someone else’s tomorrow is a little easier because of what I did today.

Tomorrow, it’s back to the day job, back to the Creativity Challenge, and I hope back to normal, because I’d really like to check out those flares again.

Cheers.