GROUNDHOG DAYS – MONSTER PROPOSAL – MEMOIR ONE FINISHED – THE COVID TRAIN LEAVES THE STATION – WORKING WEEKEND TO LAO OCEAN
It feels as if I could simply take the text from my October diary and cut and paste it here. Although possibly I have become spoilt over the years with “variety”, the fuel of my motivational engine. For the most part my days were a Groundhog Day repetition of morning cycle, work and homeschool zooms, afternoons work and evening exercise with Christopher at the field. I should not be complaining should I, not at a time such as this.
I have been engaged with a MAMOTH work project, developing a huge, complicated proposal that if successful, will provide funding for 5 years of good work on my Protected Area. Pretty much every night and all weekends have been taken up with this task as it needs to slot in over and above the day-to-day management of the program. This certainly has contributed to my feelings of being on a conveyor belt of deadlines and zoom meetings. This too will pass through. Did I already say I should not be complaining?
My first memoir project was finally completed this month, and I received all the completed document files for the e-book and print versions, including a media pack of images for the marketing process. Marketing process…….
I decided that the least I could do, after all the efforts that went into the project, was to have a few copies of the book printed at our local printer. It came out better than expected. I so badly want to load it up on Amazon for sale, but the sad reality is that if I do that, it will be still born, just as my Oman Oracles book was. Without a significant marketing strategy, no one other than my few friends and family would even hear about it, never mind finding it and then choosing to read it, why should they? I must think carefully about this one.
COVID 19 hit Lao hard during this month, and even in my small village, small red squares of cloth depicting a “COVID house” could be seen on many locked gates close to me. Strangely through, even as cases rose, the country started to open up, markets and restaurants, then provincial borders as well (All except my NP province of Houaphan which remained locked down) In spite of the continued lockdown of the Lao international borders, the long-awaited Lao / China railway was opened on schedule, allowing international access to Chinese and Thai passengers across the borders. I guess it’s going to be difficult to justify this concession for too much longer, so possibly we can expect some level of border lockdown relaxation in the near future.
Towards the end of the month, I was able to take my motorbike on a road trip up to Vangvieng town and then on to Greenview resort on the Lao ocean for a weekend of working in a more peaceful, uninterrupted environment.
Next month is December. What happened to the rest of 2021?