This most recent stretch of time has been intense, grappling with whether it was going to be possible to finish a book worth submitting and then the work pent up from pushing all else aside while in that final push. Now that this stretch is over, or all but, I’ve not done much except rest and cocoon while I try to get the batteries recharged. The good news is that I was able to get through that period, including some efforts that wouldn’t have been possible last year: the benchmarks of progress keep accumulating, and that’s heartening. I’m reasonably confident the book isn’t totally awful and the compensatory techniques I’ve been honing in recent times keep serving me well--and improving. At the same time, recovering from the exertion is taking longer than I’d expected, and still less than I have any right to have hoped for.
While many of the events that had piled up were interesting, informative and worthwhile, there were elements that were disorienting as well, as in at least one of the circumstances, I turned out to be the repository of institutional memory--which made me, if not the old person, at least the one trending in that direction. It reminded me of people I’ve known saying that, at some point in their lives, they started seeing contemporaries in the obituaries regularly, which I suppose is another marker for the passage of time.
Back to resting up before the week starts, with this stray thought: in the night, something woke me up and I got to thinking (no clue what stimulated THIS train of thought) about statements that are completely accurate, without any particular intent to deceive that are at the same time completely misleading. Here’s an example: it would be totally accurate to say we live in the same house we purchased when I was in law school. At the same time, the house that statement would conjure up is pretty far from how we live. Sure, the house was not in very good shape when we bought it, nor has it ever been in the most desirable part of our wonderful neighborhood. We’ve enhanced it a lot over the years and, yet, it was a great house (good bones, as it were) when we got it and it’s a great house now. In some ways, the house it is now would probably be out of our reach, especially if transported eight or ten blocks south--or at least we’d never attempt such a house. The twists and turns life takes are strange.
I am SO looking forward to this summer when absolutely nothing is programmed, other than relaxing and visiting with family and friends.
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