Rule of Life

You're not having fun until security shows up looking confused.

Those of you who were concerned about the danger of English-to-Greek translation exercises propelling me beyond the measure of Golden Mediocrity, rest assured that:

• I spent twenty minutes copying out and translating the wrong set of sentences
• The sheet of paper I was working on caught a pool of salad dressing on the table, leaving a healthy grease spot in the upper right corner
• I arrived fifteen minutes late to class to turn them in.
• The sentences came back with their fair share of red ink, but
• I got those bad boys done.

This morning I will be vainly striving to catch up on my flashcard repetitions (I have 400 to get through).

I'm trying to start journaling in the morning, but my entries always amount to cryptic variations on "I feel like crap" or "I feel pretty good." Any advice?

One of the lives I wish I were living

is the life of this guy. He spent some years spending enough less than he earned that he can now live on withdrawals from his savings that total less than the interest (about 4%). He is retired, before the age of forty (except now for half an hour a day of copy editing), and spends all his time doing what he wants, and (this is the really cool part) what he wants is to volunteer his skills to add value to the world.

Every time I read this blog, I think about how inefficiently, slavishly, and selfishly I spend my time. Not that I want to accomplish anything as extreme as Jacob; I think setting myself up as a professional academic will have very nearly the same effects as would achieving complete economic freedom and then doing what I want. But I do want the level of self-mastery Jacob seems to have, instead of letting everything be dictated to me by outside demands (which in some cases include demands stemming from my past decisions, in case you were thinking of bringing up the Grackle as proof that I already have this self-mastery). I'm afraid of finding myself in the situation where I've worked to place and resenting the demands of the position (as I already often resent the demands of being a student) instead of living the life.

So, today, my focus is on bringing the love back to "love of wisdom."

F(l)oo(re)d

My wife has noticed that since Buggle was born, her tolerance for dropped food has increased. I found this interesting but I didn't seriously think that the threshold of sanitariness could get much lower for an inveterate five-second-rule-stretcher such as I am. But I don't think that a year ago if someone had knocked a salad off my lap, I would have picked up every single piece of lettuce and sliced-side-down tomato off the carpet, plucked out a few balsamic cat hairs and enjoyed the salad as though nothing had happened.