Checking In

So for the last few weeks I've been going through one of those predictable cycles in which I have lots of things I'd like to blog about and so many obligations to fulfill that by the time I have the time to write I don't have the energy.

My paying job has its ups and downs (or is that flats and downs? or downs and further downs?) and is involves a lot of tedium. It's not that my day to day tasks or inherently boring. It's more that I just don't care. I'm not sure if it's the nature of the management (amateurish) or my office (bleak) or the topic (depressing), but* whatever the case I find myself spending much of the day counting the hours until I can go home. Oh well, this is what happens when you go looking for a paycheck rather than a meaningful career. Maybe next time I'll learn. Probably not though.

In terms of my own research, I've finally sent a draft of my very own version of The Paper That Will Not Die to my collaborator. I proceeded to do a dance of heroic joy around my desk, screaming "Freedom!" like Mel Gibson in Braveheart. Well, I imagined I was doing that anyway. Then I looked at the other six papers I have lined up to work on next and sighed.

I'm making excellent progress on my novel, which is approximately 4 chapters from a completed first draft. Now if only I hadn't noticed that I had developed a writing tick and then obsessing about it. I use "but"** as a conjunction far too often, or rather I started wondering if I use "but"** too often, and now I careen between using it when I shouldn't and not using it when I should. I always heard that writers were a bizarre species of unhinged introverts with a pathological obsession with grammar. I just never thought I'd be one. To make my writing time even more enjoyable, I have a well-developed case of whatever you call that syndrome where you think everything you write is crap.

Political news these days is depressing, and non-political news is even worse. In the face of the dreariness of public life, after a great deal of encouragement from my lovely spouse I've resumed my personal involvement in electoral politics. To be a bit more honest, BH declared that I was totally miserable about my job and needed to do something I enjoyed, and then offered me as campaign manager to a candidate I'd been advising here and there. And of course I'm glad she did it. It's not a paying gig, but*** it's a start. I'm hoping maybe in a year or two I can land a full time staff job or something. We'll see.

No I haven't given up on my series of posts on education policy. Yes I have one outlined. No I have no idea when it will be finished. Yes I feel bad about it.

My allergies have kicked in again and I'm taking allegra. I was extremely excited to discover that it's available over the counter, but**** I seemed to have made a slight error. Allegra-D was so expensive that I bought a generic sudafed separately from regular allegra. Now that they're so much less expensive I've started taking them as one pill again. Oops. When I take the stuff at night I wake up after a few hours and don't get back to sleep. When I take them in the morning (like today) I feel incredibly groggy (and bloated) all day. So either way I'm exhausted all the time. Wheeee.

And that's my life. Oh, and I just noticed that 9 days will be my 7th anniversary as a blogger. Holy crap.



*You'll realize what this asterisk is for in a minute.
**These don't count
***Is one "but" a paragraph too much?
****I'm really becoming convinced I have a problem.