"It's almost as if the desire for community is a nostalgic one; and the reality, with time's winged chariot hurrying near, is that one longs increasingly for simple affections, for space, and calm, and time to work. What contradictory beings humans are." Novelist Claire Messud to Boris Kachka.
sometimes i think it is like having to shift a pile of sand....one......grain.....of.......sand.....at.......a.......time.
"time to work" is what i never have enough of....i work from task lists and sometimes i worry that i'm more consumed with the maintenance of these lists than with getting anything done. for every item falling from the list, three more join my personal topos of inevitibility. it's a classic over-scheduling. but, somehow i get tons of shit done and the boss-types like it and the church-folk like it.....but i can't help noticing that if i did less then what would be done would be more complete. i cannot overlook the corner cut by necessity (time's running out!). it's a faint, nagging voice kind of thing.
recently cut corners:
- delegated the production of graphs for a report to a subordinate---the graphs are accurate BUT needed refining....taking advantage of the fact that the report was for someone(s) who are math-averse and math-weak i simply said,"good enough!"
- scrubbed the floors of my house but pretended the baseboards didn't exist....any attention they received was coincidental.
- sent a specimen to an outside laboratory since i was short-staffed and didn't have time for doing an elution study.
- used a form-letter to send to some cousins....i wrote one letter then edited the headers to produce three letters. i justified this by considering that these cousins i don't really like so much.
- i've not ironed the first shirt or uniform in more than 90 days.
- switched to skimming-mode when reading a book for the BookEnds book club....i could get away with it because that group doesn't tend to do any "deep" reading. no one would notice my lack of attention.
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