Semi-hiatus coming up

The reverse cowgirl has teased me in the past that whenever I announce that blogging will be light for some upcoming period I usually follow up with an unusually dense flurry of blog postings. There are two reasons for this.
One is that announcing that I won’t be doing much blogging seems to relieve some internal anxiety of “should” pressure and somehow frees me up for the kind of lighthearted blogging off-the-cuff that we all know and love.
The other reason is darker. Generally I announce light blogging because I’m facing work-related deadlines that do not really permit much discretionary time focused on anything but work. The appearance of a string of blog posts after such an announcement thus reveals my nature as a procrastinator. It often means I’m avoiding the work I should be doing and finding escape in mind-numbing web browsing and impulsive posting.
So we’ll see how things play out this time, but – similar to announcing one’s plans to go on a diet – once again I am making a kind of promise to not do much blogging for the forthcoming month or so. I have major deadlines coming up over the next few weeks, culminating in a kind of writing frenzy in mid- and late-May.
I also have my annual pilgrimage to New Orleans for the Jazz and Heritage Festival in the near offing. Next Tuesday (the 22nd) I leave Oakland and I won’t be back till the 29th, a week later. I plan to do no work (except maybe one conference call) while I’m away. I need a break. It tends to rejuvenate me, and it doesn’t work nearly so well if the vacation is punctuated by bouts of stress and crushing deadlines.
The effect of this, though, is to pile the workload higher and deeper both before and after the trip. This means, for example, that I have two chapters of my current book project due by or before this coming Monday, as well as drafts of two other writing projects also due that same day. Guess I’ll be working through the weekend, huh?
Then, when I come back, I will have to engage in a breakneck sprint to complete my book project on time and keep up with my other writing and consulting engagements. I don’t envy the me of a few weeks from now. Experience tells me it’s going to be hellish, not least of which at home, where domestic life always suffers during such crises. If I had an alternative I’d take it, but these commitments are money-driven and like most I am subject to material needs and wants.
Now, it’s quite possible that I’ll upload some kewl digital photos taken on the fairgrounds or around N’awlins during my trip. Those will tend to appear first at my personal X-POLLEN blog and then subsequently here at RFB. But no promises of that.
But if you see a lot of posting over the next few days, or regular blogging during the first three weeks of May, it’s a sign that I’m falling off the wagon and getting myself into a particularly ugly jam. For my sake, hope that I don’t do much blogging for the next month.