My Attitude Toward Sabbatitude

I'm at the middle of the first month of the sabbatical. It's been a great half month.

I've gotten two thirds of my paper on The Front Page into a second draft and have a good handle on the Burkean theory that I want to use in the paper. I've gotten enough Greta Granstedt material to update the Wikipedia and, while I don't yet have a whole concept to guide the writing, I have an inkling of a concept - and bought a great Garbo biography to support the work. It arrived today. On the whole I'm actually well ahead of schedule.

But I'm getting nervous.

Today I returned Shelter Box to Marshal Stanton. I was on time and on point for the Abilene Rotary Club presentation. I went to Lee Becker's brother's funeral. It was a Rotary devoted day. I'm glad to have done it all. (Watch for Shelter Box tent at the Midsommar celebration in June.)

Tomorrow we're off to Omaha for two days. I'll take books and my netbook and I'll work on stuff. But it won't be as intense as it would have been if we had stayed home. I won't get a chance to do any editing on Premiere, which is the object of my next weekend trip to California.

And I'm getting nervous about being away from my sabbatical work. Am I just being un-necessarily paranoid about how I tend to give away my time. I don't think so. I have done it time and again. These months need to be "me time." Not selfish I need to relax and do nothing "me time," but the time I get done what I've been thinking about doing for at least two years.

There's one place where I can actually, perhaps, agree with Ayn Rand. There is virtue in selfishness - so long at it gets balanced with selflessness.