Saturday, February 23, 2008

Always call the busy person...

I'm constantly amazed that, though I don't think I can find one more minute to do one more thing, I can and do "find time" to squeeze one more task into my already task-filled day.

Last night, I read/graded a set of essays, and was finished fairly early. I also read some assignments from my one "small" class (7 people) and thought, "Oh, I have time to work on my paper/someone else's thesis project/knitting/reading." But, then I did the wrong thing. I checked my email and discovered a frantic message from a friend asking me to edit/read her essay that is due Monday.

So, two hours later, I still had time to work on a few other projects, but I didn't get to them as early as I thought I would. I stayed up until nearly 3am this morning, squeezing in a few of the things I wanted to do--work on the one remaining sock of a pair, read some Jane Austen, work on my new online class I want to teach in the fall. I lost track of time, yes. And I woke up, initially, this morning at 7am and forced myself to go back to sleep. I got up around 9:30am and immediately began working. I need to stop this!

In the children's book series, A Series of Unfortunate Events, one of the characters, Violet, says that time is the one thing we can't invent more of. She is so right. So I guess what I'm trying to do is fill up the time as much as possible with everything I need/want to do. You know, "make the most of time."

Today, I've already graded Wikis, conducted an online chat, and mopped both the kitchen and the bathroom (long overdue!). Now, I'm going to take a bit of time to work on one of my projects--writing a paper--and then I'll grade a set of essays. I'm drowning in paper, so I need to clean out the stacks and add to the burn/recycle pile. I burn the junk mail, and recycle the rest. But, then again, I may not get to that, which is fine with me. I need to stop working every single minute of the day--smell the roses, you know?

Tomorrow... well, I'll deal with that when I get to it!