You know, I'm having a hell of a day.

Six different projects dropped into my lap this morning, all in the extreme end of real estate law and the difficulties arising therefrom, and one of my co-workers left to pick up her car from the shop (and don't even get me started on THAT) and mail messages, containing more problems, won't stop popping up in the middle of my screen and my phone keeps ringing and ringing and ringing and when I can't take it any longer I pick up the receiver only to listen to loan officers and escrow officers and attorneys who don't know the first damned thing about the difference between what's LEGAL and what's INSURABLE try and tell me that I don't know what I'm doing and and and and . . .

Now understand, my industry is a vastly complicated one, but it's one I know well. The city planning attorney for a major suburb in the Seattle area has me on his rolodex for particularly difficult questions involving land usage and sub-division requirements. I know what I'm doing, which of course makes it more difficult to listen to people who don't know the first thing about the issues spout off about what they HAVE TO HAVE.

In my profession as title officer for a title insurance company, I have to be one part lawyer, one part land surveyer, one part customer service representative, and ten parts stoic.

It's the stoic part that gives me the most grief.

All I have to say is I'm so glad I have my fiction and this journal upon which to fall back. There's something . . .well, something just right about putting words to paper (or pixels to screen). It's as if there can't truly be happiness unless there's writing.

And I wouldn't have it any other way. When I worry about submissions, I write and forget about all the other stories for a little bit while I create a new tale. When I'm worried about money, I write and get to pretend that I'm rich. When I'm feeling self-conscious, I write until I know that no one, nowhere, could have put my story to paper any better than I just did.

And it heals me.

(Heavy sigh.)

Sometimes, the things you need are right at the tips of your fingers.

Joseph Haines, signing off from The Edge of the Abyss.