My phone service died sometime on Monday, so it's been out for at least 40 hours now. The last time this happened (in January) I got slightly depressed. I don't have a cell phone, a work phone, or a second line, so I'm isolated. The heavy rains yesterday made it inconvenient to go out and talk to people or use the common phone. My main link to the rest of the world is now the Internet. Intellectually I know the lack of phone service is only a minor problem, but it saddens and frustrates me nonetheless.

My least favorite aspect of freelance writing is the waiting. I've been waiting for RW to send me a contract for the nonfiction piece since Feb. 27th. My best story has been sitting on an editor's desk since Feb. 18th. My request to be on the program at WisCon has been out since Feb. 1st. Despite the writing and critique I did in March, I feel frustrated, as if I weren't making any progress. My new year's resolution was to submit one piece a month, and I'm behind. I feel as though this is because the rest of the world is lagging, even though I have other pieces I could submit.

I'm even getting bogged down in Bettelheim. As a Freudian, he seems obsessed with breastfeeding, bedwetting, and the Oedipus complex, as if these were the key elements of every childhood. But my own childhood memories center around imaginative play, the cruelty of my peers, and fear of failure. A lot of technical language has crept into the text--words like "introject" and "latency."

From poking around on the web, I've come to suspect that the controversy around Bettelheim arose because of his theories about autism. Apparently, he believed autism resulted from "maternal coldness." This is the last thing the mother of an autistic child wants to hear, and I'm sure saying this made him lots of enemies.