Contentment & Motivation

It has been a relaxing few days. The storm that has consumed my time for the past few weeks will again come with full force tomorrow. Tonight I am enjoying an all too brief calm, sitting on my sofa with my girlfriend’s legs on my lap, my laptop on top of them. I am content. This is today - tomorrow will be different. Much different.

My responsibilities as an instructor are complete. There are still a handful of assignments due, but the 60 plus semester end papers have been graded. At three to four double spaced pages each, it was a labor-intensive task, but also a labor of love. I was surprised, actually… pleasantly so. Although the over-use of semicolons and other basic grammar issues were common, the thought and the insight that went into their work was obvious. The majority of my students took the assignment seriously and it showed.

With my role as employee for the university fulfilled for now, I must concentrate on my role as a student. There is so very much left to do and little time to complete it. I have to view this seemingly insurmountable mountain of work in manageable chunks. Viewed as a whole, it is much too overwhelming. Viewed one day at a time, it is doable. But it will require sustained effort for the next two or three weeks.

But right now, I have a sense of completion. I have served my students and served them well. Tonight I will take solace that I am on the right track – I am in training to serve and if nothing else, that is motivation enough.