CATCHING UP WITH MYSELF
"Catching
up with myself": This is what I once answered to an incredulous interlocutor who
asked some version of, "well it's all well and good to live out there in
middle-of-nowhere Italian paradise, but what do you actually DO there?"
Not
one ever to get bored (thanks to my busy head), I had to think for a minute
about how to respond. That's when the "I'm catching up with myself"
popped out. That kind of made sense to the high-powered, sempre-busy Ivy League
colleague who posed the question.
To
catch up with oneself would probably be a pipe dream for anyone who lives and
works at our university. And when I return there after having taken baby steps
toward my catching-up goal, I happily climb back on my work treadmill and put
my nose to the grindstone. Of course it doesn't hurt to be surrounded by
challenging bright young minds who figured they'd caught up with themselves
just by being accepted to the school of their dreams. But it doesn't take long
to realize that the catch-up game will be a lifetime task. (See
Over
the next 8 months during which I will have relinquished my job benefits to step
off my work treadmill, I'll see what it feels like to work at catching up.
And
while we're on the subject, my iPhone is threatening to explode. Yes, it has
about 5,000 photos on it, many of which are awaiting the blog pieces to go with
them. Ditto for the NOTES section of the phone, which seems more indulgent and
less threatening. I don't think those alarming warning messages that say,
"your phone can't be backed up because your storage is full" are
coming from my NOTES.
Nevertheless,
it's probably time to do something about both of them. My tech-savvy husband
thought the solution would be to put all my photos on the limitless Google-plus. But technodunces like me haven't "caught on" to the retrieval
technique that would allow me to just confidently erase all those photos that
are weighing down the poor, groaning phone.
So
instead of waiting for the Muse to show up and miraculously write and
illustrate those stories-in progress, I may just post them in whatever stage of
readiness they are, and see what happens.
I've
written before about the tension between living life and writing about it. Odd
new things catch my eye all the time, as proven by what happened today while I
was rummaging around my underwear drawer.
Maybe
the time to do some of that catching up with myself is NOW?
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