De retour

Ahem.

I didn't mean to disappear so summarily, and so soon after "reviving" this blog. It was a busy few weeks. To wit: I visited family for about a week (which was grand), then was home for a couple of days, then took off to deliver a talk in another part of the country. Then got back, almost a week ago, admittedly, and have been trying to re-enter the tattered remnants of my "sabbatical" ever since.

I shouldn't put that in quotes, but I feel like I lost the thread of my sabbatical two months ago--for various reasons, including the Strep Throat That Would Not Subside, And Then Came Back Just Before I Traveled. But really, I have managed to accomplish one or two or three things. To wi---Oh, I can't use that phrase twice in one post. Such as:

• writing almost 15,000 words of a chapter of Book 2: 15,000 words that aren't half bad, I think;
• semi-partially-sort-of revising the total mess that is the first chapter (which will remain a total mess until I'm much closer to being done with the whole draft);
• submitting, and having accepted, an abstract for an article for an edited collection (now, to write the article!);
• writing and delivering a paper which (a) was pretty good and (b) really helped me think through the chapter that I've been writing, as well as the surrounding chapters;
• taking up the cello again, after twenty-two years off;
• reviewing Latin, although I pretty much stopped doing that six weeks ago (must restart!); and
• writing about 6,000 words of a non-academic book--a small start at something that it might be fun to finish.

OK. Not entirely what I hoped for, but not bad. My declared goal for the semester was 20k words plus some revisions. Of course, I had secret dreams of writing 30k words, and, with three weeks to go, I'm at 21; bear in mind that, by having secret dreams of 30k words, I implicitly had secret secret dreams of 40k words (an impossibility, if even seven of those words were to make sense). Does anyone else do this? --set goals, with secret ambitious goals underlying them, which only masquerade the impossible and terrifying goals beneath?

Anyway. I should read something, or shower, or something. I'm back.