England is a very long ways away from you when you live in Seattle. I’m used to being in different timezones for everything of any importance. My online school was based in New Hampshire, as was my literary agency, so I’m used to being three hours behind the curve. England is eight hours away though, which is the same as a good night’s sleep. If I go to bed at midnight, folks over there are getting up at eight a.m.

Intelligentia is over there now, spending winter quarter at Oxford. It’s so strange not to be able to text him every poetic thought that flits into my head. It feels like a real shame that he won’t be here for a lot of the big events of February, not the least of which is the release of The Young House. When Dr. Derosa was published, he stayed up that night with me, waiting for it to go online at 1am. I actually fell asleep after we had finished listening to Dark Side of the Moon, and Intelligentia had to wake me up when the moment finally rolled around. There are few things as odd as being roused from a light sleep at 1am by a dear friend prodding your face with their digital watch.

You may have noticed, at this point, that I refer to most of my friends by their Latin virtues. This is because it’s my blog and I get to call them what I want to. Also, in many respects, these names are how I think of them. It seems more genuine than the virtually random names they were assigned at birth. I think everyone should be rechristened, joyfully and frequently.

I’ve been in a sluggish state, almost as if vicariously enduring Intelligentia’s jetlag from the past few days. He’s off and away for the time being though, so I ought to return my attention to my reading, writing, and publishing. It’s hard to fight the human inertia that builds up when you take a holiday and have to spring back from a break (particularly when there’s no real work-place or work-people to physically return to.) Once I get moving and get a little momentum though, I’ll have all the forward-moving inertia I need to propel me through the next few months.

Does anybody else feel this way, that it’s hard to snap between work and leisure? Are there any other work-from-homers out there who have trouble convincing themselves they really DO have to get up in the morning and get cracking? So few of my friends have a path anything like mine, I feel utterly isolated in my life choices some days.