SOL28: Missed a Day

            I couldn’t find myself a moment to sit and reflect yesterday, so I’ll do yesterday’s slice today.

            I had my usual freelance copyediting of short book reviews, cleaning up files for the magazine I work for and getting them ready for the next stage by 1 p.m. But there were an unusual number of cases where I had to go back to editors for second go-rounds. In one case, a sentence had four “how”s introducing examples, which I hadn’t noticed the first time because of other questions. In another case, the editor had deleted an entire review because he didn’t know how to answer his supervisor’s editorial question; I offered a suggestion that was accepted, but undeleting the review created a whole mess of other problems that took time to fix. There was more.

            And in the middle of this work, I got an e-mail that the staff copyeditor was out that day because his mother was in the hospital, in the ICU, probably with Covid-19. That stopped everything for me, mentally, emotionally. This is the closest the disease has come. I work from home, so I’m not afraid of being infected. But my colleague is young and just got married, and I hope his mother pulls through and is one of the 85% of older people who get well.

            It was the nearness of the disease that paralyzed my slicing, I think. I would like to have missed this day entirely. In fact, let’s skip this entire year.

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I’m participating in the 13th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 28 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!