No weekends

Not since dotcomania have I worked as long hours without minding it. Lately, between writing a book and volunteering with Oakland for Dean, I’ve been working 70-100 hours a week, days evenings and weekends, and having a great time at it. Still the tension and stress and anxiety of trying to be “on” seven days a week eighteen hours a day does take its toll. My neck is stiff, I am bursting with pent up physical energy. Desperately need to exercise outside (but now it’s raining) and do some yoga, and rest and relax more, but that’s hard to do without weekends.
Friday evening I was at Kinko’s copying talking-points walking-pieces and stocking up on Manila folders, Friday night I was squinting at Yahoo maps and printing out precinct-walking routes without realizing that custom maps sent to me attached to email was at the time caught in the limbo of my bulk-mail folder spamfilter also provided by Yahoo in this case to my Enronesque service-provider, SBC (in the former Mexican parts of the US, the Texas utilities keep making California utilities their bitch).
Saturday morning I hosted a precinct walk out of my house, and walked part of a precinct myself, in the area I (and only I) call South Lake. I’ve really come to enjoy precinct walks. That same afternoon we had the first serious Oakland get out the vote (GOTV meeting) and came up with a precinct-captain structure and identified some potential leaders to step up. With just a little more structure, enough to delegate reporting and enable people to take responsibility for manageable tasks, the volunteer campaign should run much more effectively. It looks like we have some office space too, not an official campaign office but a place to store material and stage walks and use for meetings. I agreed to spearhead the Oakland GOTV effort in concert with a small strategic group, currently consisting of four people but with a number of others identified whom we’d like to involve at the strategic planning level, some of whom may bring their own established bases of support to the effort.
Sunday morning, I got up and made scrambled eggs a la Jacques Pepin with toasted bagel half for B and then headed into Berkeley for an interview for the book. I expected to talk for about an hour but we sat in the coffee shop for nearly three hours, with my scribbling furiously in my notebook whenever she was talking. She added another layer of understanding to my grasp of my topic and agreed to peer-review some or all of the manuscript, so that was great.
After a quick dinner of the squash soup that B had made Sunday afternoon, I ran back out to attend an outreach meeting trying to connect East Bay for Dean with the African American community in East Bay. We discussed the group itself late in the meeting, when only half the people were left, and there was general agreement among the black folks that the group shouldn’t restrict participation in the group to African Americans but continue being an open group dedicated to the outreach effort and not necessarily an affinity group or lobby. Still the white folk (or “European Americans” as one of the group’s founders is fond of saying) don’t feel comfortable taking leadership roles. I know I want to participate and contribute my energy and support, but I want to take direction in this area, not give it.
That meeting broke up just before 9 so I dashed over to Piedmont Ave for my weekly writing evening with Cecil Vortex where I was pleased to see the Reverend Bill, who was working his way through a stack of Steve Martin and Woody Allen paperbacks, but admitted that something about the tea shop (the lighting? the acoustics?) wasn’t conducive to work for him. One problem might be that Cecil and I are so heavy into politics right now that we sort of grok-lock and start speed rapping and that can make it hard to concentrate all by itself.
I got a little work done on my book that night, mostly framing the fourth chapter and noting some interview that still need scheduling or followup. That was a long day, that Sunday.
Yesterday, Monday, I was exhausted and not that productive. I made some calls and took some calls, did some blogging, and tinkered with the chapter. I was also obsessed with trying to figure out what flavor second-place finish will keep Dean afloat long enough so that New York and California can play a decisive role for once.
Today, Tuesday, I am on tenterhooks and needles. The New Hampshire primary is today, my publisher’s marketing meeting for my book is today, and my next chapter is due (and I forfeit a piece of the advance if I miss any deadlines). I shouldn’t even be blogging right now, except I promised I’d go back to logging at least the important stuff more regularly here in my online journal.