This past year, a Sabbatical: a year away from the ordinary of the past twenty years of teaching and bureaucratic ballyhoo, has been a study in patience.

To conceive of a task which is much larger than usual, too grandiose for conceiving in the ordinary; to prepare, to think out how to do it so it could actually come to be and to be done, requires much patience.

A task, a goal, a doing, a getting done; to begin, to prepare, to gather the task in mind in such a way that it can be broken down into the parts that can be done today before the part which must be done tomorrow; or next.  And the question of the order of the parts is never all that clear or obvious, as they may become aspects of a larger plan.

Think slow, slowly, so the learning of today is not wasted on tangential assaults; so the study of today is more toward strength than from fatigue. Withdraw, rethink, ask myself what is the task; now, knowing just a bit more, what do I need to do next; what is that for?

Do I do too much today; too little? What is the task? Days and days of detail, minute moments, doing after doing of the same thing, repetition for repetition’s sake as the task seems to become vague, and loses its vision in technique learned too early to be sustaining for its own sake.

Do it well; do it well…Do it again…Do it well!

What to keep in mind so that doing it well
Continues to make sense toward some finished…product, doing,
which retreats into the time well beyond each doing.

Each day, what can I do that needs doing and can be done? So glad that so many days are open and potentially available for these tasks and goals. Unblock today, toward a tomorrow which may hold new promise and visions toward a fulfilled completion.

A retreat from the ordinary…a study in patience.