Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Sometimes complicated schedules work out

From 10/7/10 to 10/30/10, I’m on the road. Organizing even a single school visit can be time-consuming, let alone 56 talks over three weeks, but ultimately, the scheduling for this long time away from home worked out rather well.

Somehow I managed to book six school visits in three adjacent states (Connecticut, New York, New Jersey) during six consecutive school days. I call attention to this because these were all unrelated visits that were booked at various times over the past six months, and thanks to flexibility on the schools’ part, I was able to book them in a way that would minimize my backtracking: the three Connecticut schools were in a row, then the New York school, and finally the two New Jersey schools (both of which happened to be in West Orange). One of the Connecticut schools and the New York school were ones I’d been trying to book for a while.

Bonus: A good friend who lives in Philadelphia and whom I rarely see just so happened to be speaking at Yale one town over from my first Connecticut school visit and two hours after it. Plus two old friends were parents of kids at the New York school, and both came to a presentation.

What’s more, this time frame also overlapped with the Rutgers University Council on Children's Literature’s One-on-One Plus Conference on 10/16/10, the day after my other New Jersey commitments. I was one of the participating author mentors.

Finally, that night I become a teenager again, on some level, when I attended my high school reunion in Connecticut. The next morning, I flew to Houston for two more weeks of presentations.

Whirlwind, yes. Yet I was thrilled how the schedule came together like a puzzle you thought you were missing a piece for but ultimately assembled intact.

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