My Plate is So Full

Okay, I've been waiting for this moment: son sequestered off on a university campus and I have time to do what I've always wanted to do: read and write all day; not prepare a meal but eat a bowl of grapes in the bed; hang out in the District until I drop and not worry about what time I get home; stay at work and actually get some work done without placing a thousand telephone calls or text messages to check on my son.

So, I'm doing all of this and more. My plate is too full, I have signed on for far too many community projects, agreed to direct too many projects at work; contracted to write too many book reviews and biographical entries; and, pulled down from the shelf too many manuscripts-in-progress with intentions on completing them. I mailed off one manuscript on Monday. And I'm revising a book proposal to mail by the end of the week.

Sometimes I think that I actually married subconsciously to slow myself down. My friends used to complain that "we can never get in touch with you" during the days when landlines and answering machines were the main mode of communication, and I would go for weeks too busy to answer the phone; only coming home to drop in the bed.

But I like it this way. I don't know how to operate unless my plate is full. So if you have received an invitation to the panel discussion on Barack Obama's "Dreams from My Father" that I am organizing for the Book Bridge Project at Prince George's Community College, at 10:00 a.m., on September 30, 2008, please drop by. And if I missed your name in the distribution list, please let this serve as a special invitation to come out.

I'll be helping to introduce Chinua Achebe for the "Fall for the Book Festival" at George Mason University at 7:30 p.m., on Monday, September 22, 2008. I am so excited, and I want to give as lyrical an introduction as my friend and colleague Ethelbert Miller does.

I've been holding down the Library of Congress reading room on Saturdays trying to track down short stories by Marc Crawford, a personal friend of James Baldwin. I actually found one in print in Negro Digest. The story is about a writer who is unable to sell his manuscript. Sounds like the plight of some of us. If any one has contact information for Crawford's family, please forward it to me at michelelsimms@yahoo.com.

We survived the torrential downpour this past weekend. Leaves were strewn everywhere. Fall is rushing in rather quickly this year. I will miss the hot summer days.