20151214.0657

It is the first working day after the semester has ended, and I am already finding maintaining my discipline difficult. I had meant to wake up an hour before I ended up doing so; the snooze button and I had a battle again, and if I struck it far more than it struck me, I have lost the battle by engaging in it at all. There is work I need to do, and since I will be home with Ms. 8 and the Mrs. will be running errands and going to her job, there is only so much time available to me to do that work. Ms. 8 needs attention, after all, and more than I can usually give while doing the kind of work that I do. I have some cushion, perhaps, because I can allow her to watch a select few shows, but I know that I would not do well to park her in front of the television while I do what I need to do--at least not for long. So I need to work early and while she naps--and the former would have been helped by my rising earlier than I seem to have done today.

There is a way in which I can combine some of the writing I need to do with keeping an eye on Ms. 8. A number of children's programs make use of the medieval to support their stories, continuing a tradition that extends in print back before the beginning of the twentieth century and which has been argued by Joyce Coleman and others to go back even into the medieval itself (she asserts that reading aloud served as entertainment for work at home, and that the reader selected was often one deemed to be in need of instruction). How the medieval is presented in such programs is something I have thought I would examine, allowing me both to look at what my daughter will see as or before she sees it and to gather information in support of the writing I do (with insufficient regularity, admittedly) on the Tales after Tolkien Society blog. I may see about doing some of that today, in fact, although I am not yet sure of it.

Such potentials are good to contemplate. I often enjoy spending time with my daughter; I know it is something many fathers do not get to do as much as I do, and I am not unmindful of the privilege I enjoy in being able to do so. (It is not always easy to keep in mind when Ms. 8 throws a tantrum, as toddlers are wont to do.) Admittedly, I do continue to feel some tension among my calling to work the work I work--and it is a calling, as those who do the work know--my obligation to support my family--because I am raised as I am raised, and because I do have higher earning potential and ability at this point--and the domestic and familial. But Ms. 8 sleeps well and deeply, I do need to take breaks from the work, and when the Mrs. works, she earns; I am not given license to be blithe about getting things done, but things do get done, somehow, and in some strange way--provided I am diligent. So I need to regain my discipline.