obsession --- a user's manual

Sometimes I feel like a hurricane has passed over my CPU --- yeah, that thing in my brain that processes stuff and then moves on. Anybody who knows me well knows I'm obsessive, something that some writers get away with because they're writers, but it certainly becomes tiresome not only for me but for many people I come in contact with.

For example I think I have written at least five SOS e-mails about my Extended Critical Essay to Kathleen, the administrator at Spalding who kind of keeps an eye on the third-semester students who are writing these essays. Well, those of us who are doing fine and not falling down and having self-doubt attacks are pretty much left to their own devices, though Kathleen (maybe someone else too???) checks the MLA formatting when we're done.

I have not heard back from my mentor since she told me she was going to contact Kathleen about the sorry situation my ECE was in. I'm hoping the reason I haven't heard anything is that my mentor has other things on her mind. I'm hoping there's nothing "going on," in other words. I have a paranoid friend who's always trying to figure out what's "going on" --- once she got all upset because Emeril the chef was making a chop suey sandwich --- she thought somebody was sending her a coded message.

OK so I have weird friends, but that happens to people who are themselves a little "different." My first residency at Spalding I definitely gave people a taste of "different." This semester's anxiety and obsessing are less surreal, more just plain pathetic.

I had a dream in which I received an e-mail from Kathleen that said:
"Who the hell do you think you are expecting all of us to drop everything and pay attention to your minute difficulties with your ECE???"

I do believe this is the message I deserve to receive, though it is not, of course, what I want to hear. Mainly, I just want to finish writing the darn thing, so I can be a poet again.

Oh yeah, I wanted to tell Amy Watkins, whose e-mail address I don't know, that I finally read her poem called "untitled" that she pasted into the comments section on my blog --- great poem, Amy. Sorry I didn't see it earlier.

---Harriet