Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Finding focus anew...

I'm finally back to working on my long-overdue writing project: three chapters in a booklet on Nature and Technology in History. Something I took on almost four years ago with a colleague, the project has been something each of us has had problems completing because of busy schedules, personal changes of life, or, in my case, simply inertia.

I'm not quite sure what finally prompted me to actually break my personal logjam over this. I know that figuring out what to do with retirement has been an emotional struggle over the past four months, and certainly I could have put more energy into this project during that time. Maybe my Caribbean sailing adventure opened up some space to return to intellectual things, but I think it's been the two-week bout with pneumonia out of which I'm just emerging that has helped me find some focus.