20150423.0711

I am not so optimistic about completing the freelance work today as I was yesterday. Reading went more slowly than I had anticipated, in part because there were other things that needed doing (getting food is somewhat important), and so I was not able to begin work on the writing in earnest. How much I can get done today will depend on Ms. 8's nap schedule; at fourteen months, she is active and mobile enough to need more or less continuous attention, and I cannot give it her while I am sitting at my computer and doing the writing the freelance work requires of me. Strangely, I can attend to her more or less decently while I am reading, and I still have some catching-up to do in that regard, so this will be a combined reading and writing day.

Yesterday was a combined day, as well, as I spent it reading, writing, and teaching. The first, as noted above, was directed primarily at the freelance work. I was able to finish plowing through the 860+ pages of the novel I will begin to write up shortly, which pleases me, although less than it might have had I been able to do it faster. Writing had me post yesterday's blog post to this webspace, as well as a post to another webspace with which I am concerned. (You should go read it and leave comments. Submissions are welcome.) Teaching, of course, was as it is expected to be, although it was one of the days that worked better for the students, so that was nice.

Really, the idea that actions are discrete and independent from one another is somewhat fallacious. We are all doing several things at once; we can hardly do otherwise. Whether we are aware of doing them and consciously guide the processes is a different matter, of course; few attend carefully to their breathing for long stretches of time, yet they breathe consistently, and the inner workings of the mind can only be dimly perceived despite being ongoing. The idea that the tasks to which we attend are not inherently intertwined falters upon closer examination--particularly among such activities as reading, writing, and teaching. Reading requires writing but typically precedes it in skill-set, and teaching informs both, directly and explicitly or not.

But I perhaps do ill to wax philosophical in this way; my ideas in this line are as yet ill-formed. It is better to have a structure in place, and to have a useful shell hanging from that structure, before attempting to apply polish and, through much work of putting on and wiping away, bring about a gleaming shine--only to see that shining fade against the world and need reapplication again and again. At present, I have only the members of the frame, and they are not yet welded together in their proper places. (I do think I have a useful metaphor here. I wish I had had it when I was teaching more automotive students than I now am.)