Ornoth

My meditation practice has been in maintenance mode since moving to Pittsburgh in 2015. But helping establish a new group and delivering my first dhamma talk has injected some energy.

The new group that’s starting up is organized by two women whose backgrounds include Thich Nhat Hanh, IMS, and Tara Brach. They sent out feelers looking for like-minded Vipassana practitioners, and got enough response to form a small practice group. Typically eight to ten people show up from a total pool of a couple dozen. I think we’d all like to see it grow into something more substantial, but that’ll take time and effort. And none of us are authorized dhamma teachers, so right now it feels very reminiscent of my old kalyana mitta (spiritual friends) group back in Boston.

CIMC meditation hall

A fair number of us—myself included—have long attended a Wednesday evening meditation group led by Rhonda Rosen. So far the two groups seem to be complementary, in that Rhonda focuses on Goenka’s guided meditations and Q&A about practice, while the new group seems more philosophical and a bit less secular.

At the first meeting, we talked about our individual goals for the group, and I think I summarized mine pretty effectively. What I am looking for is the opportunity to learn from other local meditators, the chance to invite distant dhamma teachers to visit Pittsburgh as guests and learn from them, the opportunity to share the learnings from my own practice with others, and to help build a venue where all of that can happen. And I emphasized that for me, the biggest thing I’ve missed since moving to Pittsburgh has been dhamma talks, where experienced teachers expound on the philosophical teachings of the Buddha.

Thereafter, we’ve met weekly for brief meditations—both sitting and walking—followed by some kind of dhamma talk and discussion.

As I said earlier, our biggest challenge is that none of us are teachers. So we’re sharing the responsibility of preparing material to present, whether it’s readings or recordings or original thoughts. Predictably, we began with the central tenets of Buddhism: the Four Noble Truths. I was asked to lead an evening discussing the Second Noble Truth: the Origin/Source/Cause of Suffering.

Treating this as my first proper dhamma talk, I spent some time gathering notes, and found that although the subject was far-ranging, everything fell together nicely with obvious segues. I put together an outline and ran through it a couple times in my head. Ample client facilitation experience as a consultant, plus the sessions I’ve led in my old kalyana mitta group, all gave me confidence and kept any nerves at bay.

Unfortunately, I set myself a very ambitious task: explaining how the sequence of events in the Buddhist psychology of Dependent Origination give rise to the pain of desires that ultimately cannot be fulfilled, along the way touching on kamma, ignorance, the Three Characteristics of Existence, the Four Divine Messengers, the Five Recollections, and the Eight Worldly Winds (Buddhism is *all* about lists), then closing by revealing the often-unexplained link of why silent meditation is the chosen tool to reach the goal of alleviating suffering. It was pretty much the Grand Unified Theory of Buddhism According to Ornoth.

Although ambitious, I think the idea was really worthy; but with so much ground to cover, the execution wound up being a bit strained.

After the talk, the verbal feedback I received was all very positive. The two founders were both effusive in praise, as was one of the new practitioners who admitted an intellectual inclination. But two longtime practitioners and the three new practitioners were all silent during the Q&A, which tells me that my own impressions about overreaching myself were probably correct.

Specifically, I tried to plow through way too much material for a single dhamma talk. I didn’t need to go into quite so much detail, nor be so technical. The delivery wound up being a lot more intellectual than I had hoped, and I think I lost some of the attendees as a result. Although that probably happens at every dhamma talk to one extent or another. Still, I should tighten up my material and make more effort to keep people engaged in future talks.

Giving such a long talk—40 minutes plus a few minutes of Q&A—was surprisingly tiring. But I’m really proud of the ideas I presented, especially explaining the mechanics of how and why Buddhists use silent meditation to address the suffering we all experience.

Preparing and delivering my first dhamma talk was novel and fun. But more importantly, I found it deeply rewarding to share some of my insights in hopes that they might help others along the path—whether experienced practitioners or relative newcomers. It was very satisfying, despite my inexperience in a teaching role.

Of course, the one thing that cures inexperience is practice. So it’ll be interesting to see whether I will enjoy and grow in proficiency in that teaching role, and to what degree my knowledge and experience can be of meaningful value to others. I look forward to that exploration.

It wouldn’t be the most entertaining use of your time, but if you’re truly curious, I’ve shared a written transcript of the talk. And if you’re truly masochistic, here's the 44-minute audio MP3, although be forewarned that the audio quality is low.

Back in December, one of the teachers at the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center sent me an email, inquiring whether I would be willing to volunteer to periodically read the announcements before their Wednesday evening dhamma talks.

This was ironic and fitting, after something I’d done the month before. During the feedback go-round at the end of the 9-day “Sandwich Retreat”, when I got the mic, I made a joke by reciting the familiar (and grammatically flawed) opening lines of the standard Wednesday night announcements. Since all the teachers had been watching, I suppose it was a manifestation of kamma that they’d soon single me out to “volunteer” to be an announcer when the need came up.

You might ask why I chose to do it, rather than tell them no. Over the past year I’ve really stopped going to the Wednesday night programs, and with my new job a 45-minute train ride from the center, I had a ready excuse.

On the other hand, it’s an easy way for me to give back to a center that has helped me quite significantly. Plus, after 15 years in consulting and 10+ years running DargonZine Summits, facilitating and speaking in front of a group are things I am very comfortable with.

Still, it would give me some interesting material to practice with, from nervousness and perfectionism to vanity and the ego. Plus it would earn me some respect as a leader, both by other practitioners as well as by the teachers. And it would certainly provide food for thought regarding my relationship to myself and the social environment, since I’ve always had a dualistic relationship with receiving attention and praise.

So given that the only material loss I’d face is some “me time”, I think the benefits of doing the announcements are worth pursuing, at least for the time being.

Once I made that decision, it surprised me that the people at the center didn’t schedule a training session for three months, until mid-March. But when they got in touch with me I blocked off a Friday night and left work early to get to Cambridge in time for the orientation session…

… which never happened. The guy who was supposed to train the two of us simply brain-farted and blew us off, not even remembering the meeting until more than an hour later, despite having called the other attendee the day before to ensure she’d show up. This is a person who has also either flaked or simply ignored my previous attempts to volunteer for the center’s tech committee.

I was ripped, but I had the presence of mind to examine the reasons why, rather than simply let my emotions run unchecked. When I tried to map my reaction to the needs, desires, and assumptions underlying it, I came up with several elements.

The two expectations I had of the administrator were competence and consideration. In the former case, I expected him to do something he committed to. In the latter, I expected that he wouldn’t waste my time, since I’d blocked off one of my rare free nights for this training. Of course, I often have to remind myself that I cannot expect other people to have the same zeal for competence and consideration that I do, and this was one of those instances.

However, lest you conclude that my passion for competence is completely positive, I have to admit that not only did my perfectionism cause me to have unmet expectations of someone else, but my high expectations for myself magnified my frustration a whole lot more…

You see, while the training was scheduled for Friday, I was already signed up to do the announcements by myself the following Wednesday. So by blowing off our training, the administrator had triggered my own concern over doing a good job the following week. And I generally don’t take well to anything that comes between me and an audience’s perception of me as a fully competent individual. So underlying my anger was my own anxiety, since his bungling might make me look like a fool a few days later. And that was the real issue.

For the next few days, my mind continually returned to how I was going to respond when I finally saw that administrator, mentally practicing a cutting response to an expected apology. Ironically, our homework for Narayan’s Long-Term Yogis group was exactly that: to observe repeating thoughts and try to let them go. Thanks to that homework, I had the presence of mind to avoid picking those thoughts up and running with them, which was very beneficial.

At the same time, when I did think about it, I realized that it was an opportunity to examine my reaction to being owed an apology by someone. My default reaction to an apology normally is to minimize and dismiss the offense, even though I’d remain angry internally. My usual preference would be to avoid bringing it up at all, to avoid any possible confrontation or unpleasantness. It’s an interesting thing for me to work with, since it’s one of the few situations where I have difficulty being my normally assertive self.

In the end, as I walked into the center for a rescheduled training session on Tuesday (the day before my premiere performance), I decided to throw away all my rehearsed lines and just respond to his apology with whatever response came to me at the moment. That was great, although it still wound up producing my usual self-effacing dismissal of the problem. Oh well!

So running the Wednesday evening talks involves a bit more than just reading the announcements. The announcer is also responsible for audio, which includes the mic for the teacher, as well as hearing-assist devices and their base station. We also record the talks live onto CD, so the recorder must be manned and media capture and levels properly set and monitored. And at the end of the night, one has to set up the room for the following morning’s sit.

So how did my first session go? For the most part, everything went off flawlessly. I only made a couple minor hiccups while getting through the announcements. On one hand, I was a little self-conscious about having to wear my reading glasses in front of the crowd, but on the other hand, it blurred everyone’s faces out when I looked up, so although it looked like I was making proper speaker eye contact, I didn’t have to actually register people’s faces, which made things a bit easier for me!

The biggest challenge I faced was when one of the attendees (a woman I know, actually), laid down in an aisle and closed her eyes while listening to the talk. It wasn’t long before the inevitable happened and she began snoring loud enough to distract the people sitting around her. Since she was (thankfully) right near me, I coughed loudly a couple times to try to keep her from dozing, and a couple times she snorted uncomfortably enough to wake herself. In the end, we were saved by the bell, but next time I’ll be sure to bring my keys, so that I can accidentally “drop” them in such a situation to startle the person into wakefulness!

The night included one final irony… The speaker that night was Winnie Nazarko, and the title of her talk was “Perfectionism”. Kind of appropriate, since perfectionism was the topic of our most recent Kalyana Mitta meeting; it has been the subject of my own recent contemplation of late (something for a future post); and it was the foundation of my desire to do a perfect job on my first night running the Wednesday evening dhamma talks!

So that’s how it went. I’ll probably do 3-4 more Wednesdays between now and September. While I’m pretty comfortable with the idea of running the show on Wednesday nights, I’m still pretty stunned to find myself in the position of being one of the primary public faces of the center. But it’s gratifying that they feel comfortable that I would do a creditable job in that capacity.

So it’s been a couple weeks since the 2006 Dargon Writers’ Summit, which this year took place in Cincinnati. What follows is a highly-hacked up version of the summary I posted to our discussion list.

Typically, I’d say this posting would only be of interest to me, but you might be interested to know that this year I went into the Summit with the intention of resigning most of my responsibilities.

Having run this writing group since 1984 and long having considered it one of the most important activities in my life, my departure represents a major, possibly shocking development. So you might want to read about that. But I won’t get into the details of it until near the end of this missive.

So here’s the story. Note that the original email this is based on is addressed to the writers themselves. The original email text is indented, with comments outdented.

Last Wednesday afternoon Daf, Rena, and I arrived at Liam’s and went to dinner at Longhorn Steakhouse. Rena made her way to her hotel, while the rest of us played a quick game of “You Have Been Sentenced”, an educational sentence-building game designed for a bit younger audience, before crashing throughout Liam’s many guest bedrooms.
 
Thursday the four of us drove a couple hours into the Kentucky Hills. Daf and Rena went to Natural Bridge State Park, where they took a chairlift up to (or perhaps only down from?) the top of a ridge and hiked across the massive stone bridge and around the area. Meanwhile, Liam and I went to nearby Red River Gorge for a 6-mile hike along one ridge, then down into a valley and up another. It was very steamy, hot work, and we were glad to get back to house, exhusted, for a shower before meeting up with Jim and snagging Jon at the airport to complete our complement of six for this year’s Summit. Sadly, there were no new writers joining us this year.

Ironically, we drove through Lexington KY. The only time I’ve been there before was for the 1991 VM Workshop. I returned from that trip to find my wife moving out prior to our eventual divorce, so the area, though very pretty, has very mixed emotions associated with it.

The hike was really spectacular, and I enjoyed it a lot. It was just right: enough exertion so that you knew you’d had a workout, but not so much that we were limping home in abject pain. I was impressed with Kentucky when I was down there in 1991, and came away just as impressed this time.

I was disappointed with the meager turnout of just five other writers, but one can’t expect much, given our rapidly-dwindling numbers. It was definitely nothing like Austin, just three years ago, when we had a dozen. The chronic absence of any new (unpublished) writers was another major irritant for me.

Supper was at Knotty Pine on the Bayou, a nice but rustic Cajun place near Liam’s. Pretty good stuff. Returning to the house, we had a bit of a scotch tasting, mostly thanks to Daf’s plunder from his 2005 Scotland trip, then proceeded with a game of Summit favorite Settlers of Catan before crashage.

I pretty much confirmed my preference for Talisker as a full-bodied, smoky whisky. Nothing else came close.

Friday a few people slept in, while the rest of us got a very substantial breakfast at a place called First Watch. Then it was back to the house for the Summit working sessions. Friday’s sessions were designed to be all focused on writing (as opposed to project administration stuff).

Jon, our impulsive guy, was twice warned not to order a huge plate of pancakes, but decided to do it anyways. He probably ate about 2/3rds of what he received.

The thinking behind separating project business and writing was to do the writing-related stuff before the surprise announcement of my scaling back my involvement, which would be an immense distraction. I also wanted to set the zine up to succeed as best I could, and that seemed to suggest making as much progress on the writing stuff as possible before throwing the spanner into the works.

I opened the ceremonies by sharing a bit of a joke: a map of Baranur where all the place names had been replaced by anagrams. For example, Monrodya had been rechristened “Many Odor” and Welspeare was now “Ale Spewer” and Leftwich became “Elfwitch”.
 
Next up was Liam with a very informative talk about point of view. He made the important distinction (which I hope we’ll observe henceforth) between POV (first person, second person, third person; omniscient vs. limited, etc) and perspective (which character’s head you’re occupying). Then he went on to talk about advantages and disadvantages of each, and rules for their use. Great stuff!
 
Next, Jim—in his usual animated fashion—gave a great talk about medieval ships and shipping. He described their main uses— transportation, fishing, and warfare—the various types of ships, their methods of propulsion, and what life was like on board. Again, great stuff!

The whole idea of “white papers”, where a writer goes off and does some research and then reports back to the group at the Summit, is fairly recent, but has always worked out very well.

While Liam stepped out to get out lunch, I led the group through an interesting writing exercise called “sausage sentences”. The idea was to write an entire story where the last letter of one word was the first letter of the next, “linking” them together. It was fun, but rough! Adverbs are not your friends! And you can just forget about fancy verb tenses and even pronouns! In the end, some pretty interesting works were crafted, including the ever-memorable “gnarly yellow walnuts”.
 
Finally, Liam shared the results of his and Rena’s research into Dargon’s money systems and monetary values. The basic message was that our intention to make the money systems confusing for the characters in Dargon had simultaneously confused the heck out of our writers, as well! The research indicates that although there were a few notable outliers, people have stayed mostly within the ballpark of rational values, and a few specific tweaks might clarify things nicely for the writers. Liam will do one more iteration and present a summary document to the group which will hopefully set the level for monetary values and sexchange rates so you can use them without fear.
 
With the working sessions over, we headed over into Ohio for the first time. We tromped through the Cincinnati Art Museum, which had a fascinating show of dozens of Rembrandt van Rijn etchings; sadly, no photos allowed. Half the group stayed to plunder the art museum while several others went to the Krohn Conservatory’s Australian butterfly show. Later, we met up and made our way to Mt. Adams, a trendy sightseeing district in Cincy. After a bit of wandering and admiring the views of the city, we had a fine supper at Teak, a Thai place.

The butterfly exhibit was nowhere near as impressive as my expectation had been, and the most beautiful example—this iridescent blue species -- adamantly refused to keep its wings open when being photographed. But it was better than wandering around the art museum for two hours…

The Thai food was pretty good. I had cashew chicken, which was probably second only to that at Boston’s King & I.

Returning home, we made good use of Liam’s pool table while putting some brass tacks down in the Doravin story arc. Things are coming together there, especially in the first section of the arc, which will get the ball rolling. A few of us capped the evening off with another round of Settlers, again running late into the night.

I had really hoped we’d make a lot more progress on the Doravin arc, but it wasn’t to be. I think it’ll get off the ground, but I’m not sure how much momentum it really has.

That brings us to Saturday. Liam, despite his bleary-eyed sleep deprivation, got up and got everyone waffled before the working sessions, which in turn focused on the project, what we’re doing, how it runs, and so forth (as opposed to writing).
 
I went through the results of the Web survey from last month, which I’ll publish shortly. The statements that our writers agree with most are that the quality of writing in DZ is very high, that writers feel empowered to run with ideas for the project, that participating has been fun, and that DZ is a great social group. But we don’t feel that we do a good job achieving our goals, nor that the zine could continue in my absence, or that we could rely on our fellow writers to do what they promise. This last one was a big “ah-ha!”, and is a huge integrity issue that stands in the way of our getting anything done, and is something that frustrates the heck out of me, personally.

Basically, this was a 20-question survey wherein I probed how people felt about the project, and about how we’ve done against the goals I’ve always had for it. The results are disappointing in places, and in other places contradict my own beliefs about where we’re at. At any rate, it was educational.

That was, of course, the prelude to my resignation discussion. I started out with some level-setting, including what I get out of running DargonZine and the accomplishments I’m most proud of, before segueing into the numerous things that have driven me apeshit.

Next came “The Discussion”, and I’m as unsure how to talk about it here as I was at the Summit. I guess the short version is that I’m burned out. I have a bunch of specific goals I’ve always wanted the group to achieve, and we haven’t achieved them under my leadership. What’s worse, I don’t think we ever will achieve them under my leadership.
 
I want to actually list what those goals are, so that you can understand where I’m coming from. They may differ from your goals, or your idea of the project’s goals. My personal goals include: making DZ a supportive and nonthreatening and fun environment; helping writers improve their craft; creating a group that values new writers as our most precious asset, whatever their writing level; building a close-knit community; allowing people to form meaningful friendships; building something that people care about and feel they own; building something people will actively contribute to and work to build up; ensuring the project’s survival; advancing my own writing; helping people grow in other ways, like leadership, initiative, and maturity; and providing meaning for my life by helping other people.

Basically, I went through each goal in detail, describing the failures I’ve seen: how we are a closed group and don’t value our new writers, our 2% success rate over the past five years at getting new writers into print, our chronic inability to achieve our goals, and how no one seems to feel any ownership in the zine or willingness to help make it work.

Beyond my concern about how we’re doing against my personal goals, keeping this group moving forward is an immense amount of work, and I’ve exceeded my ability to do that, to the point that I’ve gotten discouraged, resentful, and irritable. It’s no longer fun, and my irritability increases the amount of conflict on the list. As much as I love DZ and as much as it means to me to be its leader, there’s no question in my mind that I have to step out of that leadership role. And I shared that with the people at the Summit, over the course of an emotional (and far too lengthy) diatribe.

For about the past three years, I’ve gone through periods where I considered quitting. Usually I decide to hang on, because I thought things might get better, but now I feel like I have to admit that they aren’t going to get better under my leadership.

I can’t really say much about what it felt like to tell this to these people who have depended on me to run the project since its inception. It was hard. It was a relief. It was painful. It was emotional. I was numb. Putting it all out there, being willing to walk away from my life’s work… Well, it’s a watershed point. It had been coming for a long time, and I had to get through it. Something had to change, and that change was long overdue.

I’m really not in a position where I can or should be the decisionmaker for the zine anymore, so I left it up to the group what they wanted to do next. The cool thing is that I think they responded well to this immense challenge that—for most of them —came out of the blue.

Although I tend to remember the many times the writers have disappointed me by blowing deadlines, dropping the ball, and conveniently forgetting things they had promised, I have to repeat that I was very impressed by how the group responded. They were mature and practical, and accepted my statement of the problem and my inability to continue as leader without question. Then they got into solution mode and came up with some great ideas that I hadn’t foreseen.

So we listed all the things I do and broke them down into four roles: editor, leader, techie, and marketing (the fifth role of mentor having already been forked off as a separate position that Jim presently occupies). Then we looked at what could be reassigned. The majority of the stress in my job comes from being leader/visionary and ultimate decisionmaker, so we decided to take that role off my hands. The ultimate project leader is now Liam Donahue, and he will share that role to some degree with Jon Evans, and I’ll be involved to a much lesser degree, in an advisory capacity. I will continue to perform the editor job (putting out issues), with Liam as the Assistant Editor backup. Dafydd has agreed to share the work load of the techie role, and he and I will work together over time so that he is able to maintain the web site and other technical stuff just as well as I. The marketing role remains a questionmark, but Jon and I have both been talking to former DZ writer Rhonda Gomez, and we believe she’ll be willing to take on some of those duties.

It was kind of a revelation to me that most of my stress comes from the visionary role. Of course, that role also includes arbiter of conflict and ultimate decisionmaker, which makes that person a lightning rod for conflict.

Furthermore, that person is also charged with setting the group’s goals and ensuring that we achieve them, and our constant failure to achieve our goals has left me utterly demoralized.

On top of that, over the past twelve years I’ve tried just about everything I can think of to inspire the group and move the group forward. The perpetual lack of success tells me that my methods haven’t worked, and—since I lack any more ideas about how to motivate people -- it’s time to turn the reins over to someone with more fresh ideas and evergy to try and make them happen.

So let me ask you to pay attention to and work with Liam and Jon. They’re both experienced managers and able leaders and know the project inside and out, and I have absolutely every confidence in their wisdom. The project and where it goes from here is largely theirs to determine. As for me, I’ll remain around. I hope that I’ll be able to contribute more writing in the future and maybe do some mentoring, but we’ll see about that. I’m going to have to spend some time transitioning duties and then see how my attitude responds to this change. However, I’m honestly pretty confident that this change is best for me, for the zine, and for you. I’m excited to see what Liam and Jon come up with.

The interesting thing is that their solution of farming out responsibilities leaves me with the option of staying with the project -- even in an editorial role—while drastically reducing my responsibilities. I think that worked out rather nicely, and it gives me the opportunity to do two of the things that mean the most to me— mentoring and doing my own writing—which I haven’t had the time to do in years.

One of my major harping points has been how poorly we have served our new writers. The Summitteers took up that challenge and completely revised the mentoring system in a way that—to our surprise—received universal support. I’ll leave the details of it to Jim, but the basic idea is to make it easier for new writers to get involved with DZ by giving them the ability to share their existing and new non-Dargon works, then some reduced requirements for getting their first full Dargon stories printed. New writers can start anywhere along a whole continuum of participation levels, with increasing rewards being given for increasingly integrated stories. Everyone thought the idea had a ton of merit, and Jim will be filling you in with more details shortly, but everyone was really excited by the idea. We are even planning to get back in touch with a number of former writers who never got printed, in hopes that some of them may want to try this new way of getting up to speed with the zine.

This was something of a surprise to me. It’s been a while since anyone applied much creative thinking to the project, so I’ll be curious to see how this dramatically new direction plays out. But clearly, if we don’t solve the new writer ramp-up problem immediately, the zine is dead.

After all that painful stuff, Jon took the floor to talk about our financial state and nonprofit status, then gave his presentation on how to manage a project. That might sound like it doesn’t apply to you, but everyone here is involved in little projects, and we have always sucked at getting things done. Several writers have listed these non-writing projects as things that frustrated them to the point of quitting. Jon’s project management techniques, if applied, are absolutely guaranteed to help. The information was straightforward and should help people follow through, so that— unlike today—we can once again feel confident that we can rely on people to actually do what they say they will do.

This reliability bit is a major thorn, and something that really discourages new writers, who might sign up for a task, full of enthusiasm, only to have it unceremoniously dropped in their lap by a veteran. And I’ve always thought this was the most basic form of integrity, so it’s always driven me apeshit whenever this happens in “my” organization.

And yes, these things driving me apeshit is definitely a theme here… Has been for over a decade.

All these sessions will have results placed in the Document Library shortly, as soon as I can collect them from the presenters. I strongly encourage you to check them out, because they were really great presentations that I think will help us a great deal.
 
After spending most of the day on all that heavy stuff, we were eager to have some fun. We moved our dinner reservation up and had champagne (thanks to Jon) and an early dinner at Brio, an Italian place at Newport on the Levee, a touristy shopping area. From there, we went through the Newport Aquarium, which had some really interesting stuff: sharks, avians, otters, gators, and so forth. Afterward we stopped for ice cream at Graetor’s, a Cincinnati original, before heading home. Dafydd showed us his pictures from his trips to Hawaii, Australia, and Scotland, but people were dropping hard, and we went to bed without even managing a single game of Settlers! We’re clearly not as young as we used to was.

The Summit is always a big photographic opportunity, and I definitely plunged in with my new camera. The aquarium was both a particular showcase and a major challenge, since the ambient lighting was kept very low so you could see through the glass. There’ll be some photos posted in short order, and you can also check out this year’s Summit page for both photos and a writeup.

Sunday was departure day, and with no working sessions, people slept in and took good long showers. We got the group photo done and cleaned up the house, then managed a quick game of Settlers before Rena and Jon left for the airport. The rest of us had a quick and enjoyable game of the related Seafarers of Catan before we, too, had to make our way to the airport. Tired good-byes were said, and the journey back home via the evil that is O’Hare was undertaken, carrying with us the precious memories of another wonderful encounter with our longtime friends and fellow writers.

So I got home from the Summit late Sunday night; my flight out of O’Hare had been delayed, and I didn’t get home until after midnight. So that wasn’t a restful night. I’d taken Monday off, but Monday night one of my former writers, Rhonda, was arriving in town for her daughter’s graduation, and wanted to visit. Unfortunately, her flight arrived at 10:15pm, and we were up until about 1:30, talking.

Less than a week later, Janine, another former writer, was in town for a week-long conference. We had dinner together several times, and talked well into the evening. Again, more sleep deprivation!

So June has been an interesting month, as far as my contact with my writers goes. And sleep deprivation like crazy, but at least it’s been in the service of socializing with people I care about, which is a pleasant change.