Well, tomorrow is the day. Tomorrow I will hand over my next book, “Sardinian Knotted Embroidery”, to my printers’ Australian rep. I’ve never actually done a face to face hand over before. Usually I parcel it all up and send it via courier. It’s a bit new for me, but it will be nice to spend some time talking about book printing with the printing fellow.<\/p>\n
This time, writing the book has felt like a very different process for me. The most important difference is that I am not stressed. I’ve been working solidly, with very long hours, but I’ve been much more pleasant to be around. I think my family has appreciated this!<\/p>\n
I’ve done a lot of pondering about why my stress levels are so low this time. I’ve come up with a few possibilities. <\/p>\n
My husband thinks the cruise writing retreat was a huge contributor, because I knocked over so much of it and got a lot of thinking, writing, planning and problem solving done, without the pressures of everyday life. (And I’m all for him thinking that, because maybe then it will happen again?!)<\/p>\n
I think that a main contributor will have been the fact that this time I brought my laptop out to the living area of the house and worked out there, instead of being stuck away in my office. It meant that I was able to continue to feel a part of family life.<\/p>\n
But I think the biggest contributor has been that this time, I’ve got my diet sorted out. Ever since we came back from Ethiopia about four years ago, I haven’t been quite right. However, about a year or so ago, my daughter (with the same issues) and I started on the low FODMAPs diet<\/a>, on the advice of our doctor. It has made a huge difference, and a very positive one. An unexpected consequence is that now I feel that I am now much more even tempered, and more expectedly, I am just generally in much better health.<\/p>\n So now that the book is so close to being complete, I have very mixed emotions. I feel extreme happiness (I walked around the shops while doing the grocery shopping today with a huge smile on my face), and yet also some sadness. I’ve enjoyed this book so much and now I have to say goodbye to it. All good things must come to an end…<\/p>\n However, even though the book files will have gone off to the printer, there will be a lot of promotional stuff to do.<\/p>\n