Today starts 16 glorious days off! I’m off from today until January 4th, when I’ll return to the classroom. I’m exhausted at the moment. Too much to do and too many things to think about. Most of the time over break, excluding the holidays of course, will be dedicated to working on the biography. I sent off my fellowship application yesterday. I’m hoping to spend two weeks in Austin in June so that I can get a good part of the book done.

One of the things I’m doing after Christmas is a rather radical holistic diet. Everyone who knows me knows that I have a ton of allergy and asthma problems. This diet removes all processed foods, all chemicals, and all carbs from the diet for a period of 3 weeks. For me, that means no diet colas, no sandwiches, no bakery goods, cookies, etc. Sigh. However, it’s replaced with a high protein diet that is supposed to cleanse the system. Then little by little foods are re-introduced to see if they cause me problems. In addition to the other allergies I have, I might have some food allergies as well.

Anyway, it will be an adventure. I’m just happy to have a new hope in improving my overall health. For a long time, it had seemed as if I was just in a maintenance status.

Plus with the advent of my 50th year on this planet, I want to do a few different things that I’ve never tried before. Holistic health and strict no-chemical diets are only something I’ve read about — now I’ll be trying them. I think as a writer (and as a person) that you need to expand your thoughts and horizons, to be open to everything that goes on around you. Hopefully in 2010, I’ll be writing to you about other new things I’m trying. For now, this one is enough. Who knows what a diet-cola-free blog will sound like?!?!