Back to Work

When you are your own boss, how do you complain about management? I haven't had an outside boss in quite a while. I am the boss. Of me. I get to determine what I will do and when I will do it. It's heady stuff. Until you need to blame someone and there is no one to blame.

So I decided I needed a break. I had "things to do" and "places to go." So I took some time off. In fact, since my bibliography has time stamped items in it, I know I took 20 days off. I'm not sure what I really did in three weeks time, but I know what I didn't do. I didn't write.

Oh, I wrote a blog entry or maybe even two. I wrote some flash fiction. I wrote a few lead articles for my Wednesday RGQ issue, since I volunteered to take on another free writing assignment. What I didn't write was any history essays.

I baked eight types of cookies. I went to visit family in Florida along with the regular visits to Hilton Head. I decorated the house for Christmas. I continued with my hospital volunteer stint. I did lots of stuff.

My old laptop was trying to die. And rather than wait until everything was lost and computers were once again full price, I got a new laptop. That meant I had two days of setting up a new laptop to get it to where it was once again functional for me. I had to install the programs I wanted. I had to update the things I needed to update. I had to delete the preinstalled stuff I didn't want. It took two days.

Much of that time was spent downloading the games I play on the computer. I had many, many games. I have some games once again installed. I really didn't play all the games I had on the other computer, but I played lots. I have been doing that as well. Playing games.

I find it relaxing to play games but I always look back and think what I could have been doing instead that would have been far more productive. I know I could have January completely finished instead of only one-quarter done if only I had been writing instead of playing games.

The trouble is the boss didn't make me. The boss let me slack off for a while. I gave myself a free pass. And now I feel like I'm behind. I'm not really behind, but I'm not as far ahead as I like to be.

So today I got on the Wii and then the elliptical. I got showered and dressed and sat down to write. I know all about an ice storm that hit Canada and the northeast US in 1998. I know about Prague Spring and Alexander Dubcak's efforts to bring freedom to Czechoslovakia. I learned about Marie Montessori and a horrible fire at Mercy Hospital in Davenport, Iowa.

And I remembered why I enjoy doing this. I love learning. I knew about Montessori schools, but not as much as I know now. And I had never heard about any of the other stuff. I suppose I knew about the ice storm, but it didn't really register. I was in Ohio and unaffected.

Now I know things. They aren't Earth shattering things and I lived quite well before today in spite of not knowing them. But my life is now richer; my experience of history is broader. And if I'm going to broaden something, I would much rather it be my horizons.

Ah, the glory of being back to work.