Warning: The problems I’m about to describe are first-world in nature.

I have myself on a self-imposed deadline to finish a writing project by the end of the year, and almost every day this week I went straight to the Promenade Café on Balboa Street in San Francisco and wrote for 3-4 hours. Monday and Tuesday were great; I wrote about sixteen pages between the two days and was generally happy with the result. On Wednesday my alarm went off and I could barely stand up. I reset the alarm, slept another hour, then headed out. On Thursday I took a day off, but today I was back in the trenches, and I am not kidding you when I say that I can feel every single tendon and nerve in my neck, back, and shoulders. It’s true that I have problems with these parts of my body in general, and it’s also true that those problems have been unusually active for the last 6-8 weeks – but still. I’m shocked that about 20 hours of writing over five days has knocked me out like this. The past five days have exhausted me more than all of 1992 put together.

But enough about me. Promenade is lovely, not least because its entire back wall is given over to books. The café sells the books as part of a partnership with Green Apple Books – long a Postcards from Purgatory favorite. The selection is awesome, the books are in good condition, and they all cost a flat rate of $5, which is quite a bit less than good-condition used paperbacks usually sell for at Green Apple. I bought these four this morning to celebrate the end of my first week of early-morning writhing – oops, I mean writing.

I’ll be back with a review sometime soon. Have a great weekend, everyone!