20150909.0613

I do a decent amount of traveling, as has been the case for some years now. It is not as if I make my living on the road, certainly, but I am away from home a few times each year for both personal and professional reasons. When I am away, I am away for several days at a stretch; rarely if ever do I simply overnight at a place that is not my home. As such, I am familiar with the panic of packing to head out--will I have everything I need?--and the panic of packing to return home--did I forget anything?--as well as the excitement of leaving and the tired comfort of return.

They are not the only things with which I am familiar because of traveling, though. One with which I grapple even now is the struggle to return to daily routines. In my present case, having gone away with my family over the long weekend just past, I have had to spend time grading in something of a rush; I dislike the task, but the speed with which I had to treat it did not improve matters. Too, I have had to scramble to get my teaching materials in place for classes today, and while I have enough to go on, I do not have as much as I might otherwise prefer. The same is true of other work; I was already behind myself in treating it, and now I have to catch up to get even to that point, which is hardly thrilling.

Matters are complicated somewhat by another freelance piece awaiting me. The client has been good to me and, because I have been in contact, knows that I was away and have some catching up to do on other things; I have made no secret about having a regular job in the classroom, and until and unless the freelance work will be steady enough for me to take it on as a full-time thing, I have to keep some kind of regular work about me. That said, I do not want to miss out on the extra money. The sun shines, as it were, and my scythe is sharpened; I dare not waste the opportunity they present. But that does not mean I am at my ease, that I am not a bit...concerned about all I have offered to do and that it has been accepted that I do.

All I can do, though, is to do the tasks accorded me, and do them as well as I can. My own ethic allows me no less, and the needs imposed by being a responsible family man admit of no other course of action. I can only cling, somewhat naïvely, to the hope that my continued diligence will admit of some stability, some breakthrough that, after one more large trip, will allow me not to have to run around as much, to not have to scramble so to come back to speed, to not have to maintain such a speed as I now do and know I cannot indefinitely.