"The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agly." I'm with Eddie Izzard: I don't know what kind of plans mice are laying down or how good their best ones are, but I can say that my plan for today went agly. It wasn't a debacle, by any stretch of the imagination, just quite radically different from what I intended.
First, that early to bed early to rise thing? Not happening. I did indeed set the alarm for 8, but I woke up a little after seven and thought, "nope." I turned the alarm off and slept until 9:17 (to be precise). I told the house cleaner not to show up before 11:30, and I didn't get out of the house until after noon (she still hadn't arrived, so that part worked out well). Because I had to have my taxes done today, I only had about two hours to work before heading off for that appointment--and as it happened, the two library books I took with me didn't have a whole lot in them that I needed to say anything about. One of them turns out to be something I'd like in my own library, but it's not terribly useful for students, especially not in terms of The Left Hand of Darkness in specific.
However, I did run across references to two early SF stories by women that might be useful for MDC130 (Science, Culture, Technology). I've already found PDFs for them, which are downloaded to my newly created materials file for that class. But I'm going to just let them sit there, unread, for a while. I still want the majority of my focus to be on the sabbatical, not prepping for next semester--which I could do pretty much full time between now and September, if I let myself.
I had intended to get the proofreading done, but that didn't happen. No harm, no foul: after I saw the tax accountant, I sat in--OK, I confess--a Starbucks (mea maxima culpa) and noodled around with another chapter of my project until it was time to meet Paul for dinner.
So, it wasn't the day I envisioned, but it was a good day nonetheless.
Tomorrow probably won't be tremendously productive either. I have a social engagement around noon, which will slice right into the hours when I'm usually most productive--but ah well. I'm telling myself this is a good fallow period, time to let everything quietly restore and begin to germinate. I am also paying attention to how I look at my productivity: what would "productive enough" actually look like? When I say I didn't get as much done as I'd hoped, how much had I hoped--and how realistic are those hopes? Self-monitoring is one of the unexpressed purposes of a sabbatical, so I'm taking full advantage of the opportunities to do that.
Now, however, it's very very late, and I should be winding down for bed, not getting wound up about work, so I'll sign off before I hype myself into full-blown insomnia.
I will say, I live an unbelievably blessed life. Zero complaints, just gratitude tonight.
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