(click to enlarge) Happy St. Francis Day! Statue: Francis of Assisi (d. October 3, 1226), Laudes Creaturarum , better known as the " Canticle of the Sun ." Prairie dog: Donovan, "Brother Sun, Sister Moon," from Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1972).
Okay, so in retrospect, that was more than a little bit manic last week. Kinda like deciding to start exercising a little bit every day and then trying to work out four times a day and/or every chance you can get. No wonder I crashed and burned. And yet, oddly, I do think that the experiment worked. Because, truth to tell, even in the midst of the flames, I did learn something.† Several things. One, and perhaps most importantly, it is possible to find a half hour a day for writing, even on what might otherwise feel like wholly impossible days. And, two, doing so curiously means that the days themselves feel less impossible, less pressured . But, three, and this is probably equally important as one and two, this does not necessarily mean trying to finish a piece of writing (no, not even a blog post) in any one segment of time that has somehow miraculously opened up. What it means is allowing oneself to come back to the writing ev...
This feels a little manic. I probably shouldn't be trying to write again today. Three posts in a day is more than enough. But I have found yet another twenty minutes that I never knew I had, so here I am, writing again. It's like finding a treasure in your sofa when all you thought there was was loose change. Suddenly, I have all the time in the world for writing. More than enough. An abundance! I am overflowing with time, just like the Virgin Mary overflowing with graces. It is as if I have stepped into a whole other life, one in which there is actually enough time to do everything I ever dreamed I might want to do. And then some. I have not only written three (and counting) blog posts today. I have walked into campus with the Dragon Baby (i.e. exercised--she walks fast on those little legs! Especially when we go past the vet's). I have spent two and half (or thereabouts) hours finishing preparing for class....
I've been complaining a lot for a while now about feeling like I have reached the limits of what I am going to be able to accomplish in life, most viscerally (and vocally) in fencing , but more seriously (and melancholically) in my career, particularly my research . I have various theories about why I've been feeling like this: * delayed post-tenure depression brought on by the opportunity at long last to spend a year off actually working on my research; * fatigue brought on by working so hard this past year on my research, coupled with despair over the fact that there was no way I was going to be able to finish anything like a full draft of my next book in only a year, particularly since I was more or less starting from scratch on the research; * anxiety at the thought that my son is now a teenager, which means that he will most likely be leaving home for college within the next five years, leaving me without a reason to get to campus in the morning other than to work on my o...
Check it out: Psalter of the Virgin Mary has a new look! Plus several new tabs . And now over half of Book VII from John of Garland 's Epithalamium . More to come! Subscribe today! Or, you know, pop in from time to time.
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Thank you for taking the time to respond to my blog post. I look forward to hearing what you think!
F.B.