Well, neither respite nor nepenthe, technically, but there’s no harm in wishing. Unless you own a monkey’s paw. I should probably be explicit about that.
We’re in the home stretch here at Central. I’m taking a break from grading at the moment, and I stand a fair chance of wrapping up my class tomorrow morning. Most of my colleagues and students have already vanished (exam week ended on Thursday, and while Friday involved a significant meeting, I assume that most folks scattered to the four winds shortly thereafter), and Mount Pleasant is a little more spectral than usual. I still have a solid week of administrative business to attend to–the fall schedule awaits me, alas–but only one more scripted meeting this semester. My Christmas shopping is finished, and all gifts are wrapped and mailed. While there’s not much real downtime ahead for me–the pile of books I need to read in order to prepare for the spring semester actually stacks up to my knee, and I’m 6’4″–I think I’ll be able to squeeze in a few hours of decompression each day. The reading will probably bleed into those hours, but in existential terms that tends to be a gray area.
As usual, idea generation outpaces execution. Realistically speaking, I’ve got six long projects I’d like to tackle and myriad bite-size efforts that could use my attention. With some luck I’ll be able to use my break to finish up one or two short pieces and put a few others into (or back into) circulation, and I should have the wherewithal to begin principal research on the project I’m scripting for the summer. My summer plans have been somewhat complicated by the uncertainties of July/August teaching (there’s a class I might take up in the second summer session, which will involve some spontaneous preparation around spring break if I have measured time aright), but it all looks manageable in prospect. And when I say “manageable” I really mean “tragically futile and deeply depressing,” but I’m not one to quibble over semantics on a Saturday morning.
The nice thing about administrative work (and when I say “nice” I mean “tragically futile and deeply depressing”) is that my view of the horizon is generally obscured by all the objects ready at hand. There may be other things worth seeing out there, but I suspect it may be best not to think about them overmuch.
