Mission Accomplished

It's been lovely, having a quieter week on the academic front.

Of course, a quieter week still included a couple of stacks of grading along with some reading, planning discussion questions based on that reading, doing my taxes, and writing 10 pages of that conference paper that's due at the same time (early May) as my other final papers for my courses.

But still, I managed to take some time off--even had Thursday and Friday completely off, and today I managed to create ten pages of rough draft for the conference paper in less than 5 hours, which is a lovely thing.

I like this, as it feels like I'm getting good habits that might be somewhat reliable and maintainable in later times. I've pushed through a time of difficult something-or-other with my writing life (both academic and otherwise), and it's lovely here on the other side, where I can predict fairly well what is accomplishable in a week (even if some of it might take a trifle bit longer, some things will take less than I feared) and go on to do it in a relatively efficient time period, but without sacrificing on quality.

This bodes well for the summer, in which I will have to balance my writing, research, and studying tasks in my "spare" time, and even later on, when I will be working on my dissertation in my "spare" time. This reminds me that I've been looking forward to the end of my coursework for a reason--once I find something I want to write about, whether it's academic or creative, I greatly enjoy doing it, and when the mojo is there, I can keep the flow going even while I pause to enjoy the tasks I'm doing and fully appreciate the times in-between when I can balance those writing tasks with other life things, including just enjoying the world and the people in it.

This is a good thing. I'm quite thankful that it's been granted to me, just now.