Too much to handle in October?

Have I set myself up for failure in October, by taking on too many things?

Possibly.

The reason for that is that October is my quietest month at work. The students have come back, my colleagues are very busy, so no one has time for my training courses and webinars. Although I am preparing some behind-the-scenes improvements, it is not as busy as the summer period, when I had no holiday at all. On the personal front as well, things start falling into place after the back to school frenzy. So the plan was to take some days off, but just stay home, rest, tidy up my study, focus on reading and writing.

The reality is…

I’ll be visiting my parents in Romania toward the end of the month (apparently to discuss funeral arrangements and elder care issues, so that will be fun!), plus it’s an opportunity to get some of the boys’ paperwork done so they can get Romanian passports. I also have additional paperwork to prepare and check, as right after we return from Romania, I will be appearing in court for financial settlement in this never-ending divorce case. [For all the wimps who shout ‘Get Brexit Done!’ and cannot handle 3.5 years of Brexit negotiations, they should try 4-5 years of divorce negotiations!] I’ll also be helping out a friend by looking after her children while she is away on a business trip, so cooking for six instead of three and four different schools to handle instead of just two. The last of the admin type issues I’m tackling this month involves something more joyful: it’s still secret and very early stages, but let me just say it might involve a translation of books from Romanian type project.

Joyful though my cultural and social events are, I seem to have agreed to an awful lot of them this month: from the Kenneth Branagh Awards at the Windsor Fringe Festival, to films, plays, opera, taking my son to Duke of Edinburgh Awards-related events, quiz night at my son’s school, the very last university open day (I hope)… as well as trying to go to the gym regularly.

Last but not least, my cup of joyful reading is in danger of running over too. Switzerland in October is a-go, I’ve already read the first (disappointingly un-Swiss) book by Pascale Kramer and have now embarked on Ramuz. Then there is the 1930 Book Club, for which I am very tempted to re-read Camil Petrescu’s Last Night of Love, First Night of War, a Romanian classic. I might feel differently about him and the book now, after reading how he behaved to Mihail Sebastian in the late 1930s. October is also the Orenda month, and I cannot go past it without picking up at least one (or two) of their most recent books! I am also continuing to read the ‘one entry a day’ readalong for Uwe Johnson’s Anniversaries on the Mookse and Gripes site and am trying to stay clear of the temptation to reread Proust in preparation for Backlisted Pod’s Christmas special. The #EU27Project needs to finally conclude at some point. Plus, that pesky library keeps pestering me with some China Mieville, Iain Banks and Nicola Barker books that I also want to read…

What I absolutely must do, even if it comes at the expense of anything else on the above list, is edit my poems and start putting them together for a chapbook. The need for artistic ‘selfishness’ has become obvious, as this article on the dangers of kindness points out.

Why can’t I learn to relax like Zoë (pronounced Zo-eh, with trema, as my boys keep pointing out, rather than Zoey)?