Nap: an essay.

Came home from work a little earlier--a rescheduled meeting or two--and sat (lay) down to read the novel draft of a student (I am 75% of the way through and so far: goblins, fairies, dragons, trolls, mages).

And then I fell asleep. O blissful blissful afternoon sleep, shoplifted from the very last hours of work, while the light comes in the window and I dream of whatever an afternoon napper dreams about.

In conclusion, the people, "afternoon nap" is a paradigmatic instance of the good.

The end.

Writing writing writing writing writing: a report.

Here are a bunch of things I would rather do than write, if I am to judge by my performance today:

1.  read the rest of an Irish detective novel that I started last night.

2.  find the book I'm supposed to be reading for my reading group.

3.  take a tiny nap.

4.  check my e-mail and all the blogs and aggregators a truly shocking number of times.

5.  check when The Closer and Trust Me are going to be on tonight.

6.  Twitter.

However:  I did finally bring myself to do it.  I circled around it first by making a revision agenda: what poems in the manuscript are pretty close to finished, what ones are in need of a stiff revision, what ones still need to be fleshed out quite a bit.  Then, I started in on one of them, making notes and looking at the feedback my group gave me, etc. etc.  Also some notes for a new poem or so.  Even the detective novel ended up feeling like not a waste of my time--something about the writing in it, and the way sex and death and curiosity and persistence intertwined in its plot, kept me going while I wrote and wrote and wrote.