Life has kept me busy. Of course, who hasn’t been kept hopping these days? Most folk I know are, well, busy, be it keeping up with work, managing health issues, dealing with their families. When I set myself down in the home office to do some kind of activity on this computing thingy, I find myself doing work – that is to say, working on material brought from the job, spending extra time in an edit doing tweaking, mixing, and such other things as I might fuss over before I send a project out for review.

Lately, too, when I set myself own in this chair to write, I find myself writing for work. My job hasn’t changed, per se, but the focus of some of what I do has shifted somewhat. These days I am writing to document what I do – the great Brain Dump as we call it in my quarterly reviews. With more staff in our department, and, lets face it, the imminent reality of my aging out toward retirement in the actually foreseeable future, it is incumbent upon me to delegate more of what I do to others. I can’t keep doing it all, myself, especially now that I am not alone. Which is nice – but there needs to be a conduit between my grey matter and the tasks our new folks are picking up.

I also get to work more on communications-oriented writing, especially to promote the strategic alignment of our larger department within the division, and the university writ large.

All this is nice, but I need to start carving out time in the new year to write more for myself. To work on projects that have been piling up, one way or another, on the desk here in the home office.

It can be done. Life has been busy, but, let’s be real – not any busier for me as for many others. One person in particular continues to astound and amaze me with her daily output. She writes, each day, for us; for all of US. Her output demonstrates a discipline and ethic that humbles. I type of Heather Cox Richardson, whose substack column, Letters from an American, should be required reading across the board.

Richardson has a new book out; as she’s been hustling around doing the author boogie, she keeps cranking out the daily submissions. Each day I see her name in my inbox, I am awed.

Yesterday’s filing, for Thanksgiving Day, was, as usual, inspirational, and I leave you with her final words from yesterday:

In 1861, Americans went to war to keep a cabal from taking control of the government and turning it into an oligarchy. The fight against that rebellion seemed at first to be too much for the nation to survive. But Americans rallied and threw their hearts into the cause on the battlefields even as they continued to work on the home front for a government that defended democracy and equality before the law.

And in 1865, at least, they won.

https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/november-23-2023

This next year is gonna be the weirdest on record. Fasten your seatbelts…