20140725.0727

One of these days, the date and time I write will line up...

I sent off a book chapter yesterday, which pleases me greatly. It is a relief to have another project done (at least for the moment; I know that I may have more revision to do) and thus a bit of time freed up for other work. Reading, perhaps, or work on another of the many papers that are lined up for me to write even now. (I have another conference paper to write, and I need to send an abstract to yet another.) Or perhaps I might work on some lesson planning, since the fall term approaches with one class I have not taught in a while and another I have not taught.

What I will not do, cannot afford to do, is take the day off. I am tempted to do so, though. The summer heat makes it an attractive prospect, and the work of putting together a piece of writing is work neither easy nor swift (at least for me). But there are too many other things that need doing for me to be at ease with letting them go today. There are other papers to write. There are grant applications to investigate and work on (and I have already missed deadlines for some of them because I was busy with other work). There are jobs to look for (I am not in a bad place where I am, but it is a contingent position, and I would like a permanent). And not one of them can be done if I let myself have a day off.

I have had too many such days already. I have sat and stared at things that do not help me instead of doing the work (or The Work) I ought to be doing. I have puttered about on other things than the papers and reading and job hunt that are mine to do--and I do not refer to keeping up the house or attending to Ms. 8 in that. Clearly, those are things that I am supposed to do, and I do not begrudge them. Rather the opposite, really. But there have been days that I have spent of no account, far too many for me to claim them as needed rest; they have gone past recuperation into other things I hesitate to name. (I am somewhat superstitious, after all.) I have spent too much time listlessly, and now I pay the price for it in missed chances and the need to get more done than I have--and possibly more than I actually can.

Still, past errors cannot be made as if they have not been. Atonement can be made for them, and their repetition can be prevented (or the attempt at prevention made, at least). I have enough of that to do to keep me busy for quite some time; I had best be about it. And maybe it will work out well for me that I do so.