Ever have one of those weeks when you just can't seem to get ahead?  Unopened mail accumulates on the table, you're out of necessities before you go grocery shopping, dishes pile up, projects around the house go unfinished (or unstarted).  Before you know it, you're cranky all the time, you wake up in the morning feeling like you barely fell asleep, and even your morning coffee isn't satisfying anymore.

Needless to say, creative work suffers under these circumstances.

Last Monday, I finally placed my darkroom supply order.  When a shipping confirmation informed me my package would arrive at the office on Friday, I immediately reconfigured my goals: by the end of the weekend, I would be making prints.

Then the flu hit our house.  While I somehow remained immune to the debilitating fever, headache, and fatigue the virus delivers, I sure didn't miss out on assuming all the everyday household chores; picking up discarded blankets, clothes, and juice glasses all over the house; and caring for my sick husband for six days.  Not to mention a week's worth of restless sleep.  My dreams of a functioning darkroom evaporated long before the FedEx man arrived.

I managed a number of accomplishments over the weekend, including a trip out to Home Depot, but I should have realized earlier that it just was not happening.  What began as an exhilaratingly ambitious goal had become an absolute impossibility.  Just like getting this morning off to a positive start because let's face it: starting out a Monday morning dead tired after an unproductive weekend just doesn't bode well.

That brings me to this evening, and just not wanting to post an entry to this blog.  And you know what?  I think it's just fine to be real about it.  I'm done mourning my weekend as if something died because life got in the way of an already-unrealistic goal (yes, I can be dramatic, all the time).  It's time to go to bed at 9:00 and get up in the morning ready to pick it all up again and keep going.  After all, that's what it's about in the end: the picking up and going, not the everything getting done on schedule. 

Tomorrow morning I'm going to wake up and eat my egg and cheese sandwich and go to work with a smile.  Then I'm going to come home and work on light-proofing the darkroom and setting up an enlarger table, and maybe by the end of next weekend, I'll be making prints in the new darkroom.