Seasons

This is the final weekend before things start to get hectic at work — earlier than is typical in August. The next month and change involve a lot of reshuffled days to meet with search candidates, onboarding workshops, and networking events as my job moves from quiescence into the hyperactivity of Fall Mode.

This morning, I awoke at 4:55 AM to a kitten pawing at me, so I fed the cats and went back to bed until 7 AM. I made gluten-free pumpkin bread, brewed green tea and prayed to the Sun and who crowns it, ran the robot vacuum, put away toilet paper, transformed the toilet paper’s shipping box into a cat hideaway using a box cutter in the hopes that my cats will use it to resolve the remaining mouse under the stove, showered and prayed, figured out how to use up fennel in a delicious rosemary-fennel-chicken combo that had the added benefit of using up the remainder of a tomato that has been in my fridge for nearly a week, processed the fennel fronds for a dish tomorrow, and made zucchini butter.

Last night, after arriving home, I had combined leftover tempeh with some sautéed chard and mushrooms and wrapped them in rice paper to have with a dipping sauce. I finished reading a book — making it 18 out of 20 towards my 2024 goal, a great place to be before the busyness hits. I tried to mentally block out when I was going to finish putting down my thoughts for things I want to write here and when I was going to finish the final edits for A Matter of Oracles so I can upload it and set a publication date, as the cover art is done. The place on my leg where the doctor had had a biopsy slice of my skin done throbbed, my period had come a week early, and the heat advisory plus the looming busyness of the coming season plus the period meant that it was no longer looking advisable to meet up with a friend farther down Metro-North.

I’ve been listening to Cal Newport’s Slow Productivity during my commute. The paragraphs above must be an odd juxtaposition. The book is about how to focus on fewer things in order to do quality, high-impact projects in sequence rather than a lurching shamble all at once, prioritizing effectively, and not allowing busyness to invade every sector of one’s life.

A while ago, I scaled back on KALLISTI to focus on other things because The Soul’s Inner Statues said a lot that I needed to say, and I wanted to be more targeted. Writing The Soul’s Inner Statues so quickly gave me burnout because the process was too intense to be sustainable. I wrote for hours every evening after work when I was drafting it. The process was immersive. I found it heartening to be reminded while listening to Newport’s narration that the decision that I have made to scale back and take a more targeted approach to projects is good even though I’m still in a strange, doubled situation. Coworkers think I’m easygoing about our work reorg when I just don’t have ambitions beyond performing my job well so I can have enough mental energy for personal projects and study after work and on the weekends. A lot of my prep work right now is directed at being kind to myself about what I know will be challenging, as my energy levels cycle wildly during the busy season. What is usually challenging for me when I’m lower-energy is meal prep and making sure I do restful activities like slow yoga or playing with my cats instead of pacing to burn off restlessness when I get home from work. (Restless energy does not mix well with needing to get things done or with contemplation. This is why I try not to look at the news or get involved in conversations before praying in the morning.)

For personal projects, beyond my study commitments, I’m going to do one project at a time in order of priority. Religious essays will, as they are wont to do and as is my custom, percolate in the back of my mind until they come out in one complete draft that I sit on for a few hours or days to make sure that what I have written is coherent. So I suppose that my One Project is A Matter of Oracles for now.