something I am grateful for today

In years when our department is overbooked, my summer workdays are filled with panicky, angry emails and panicky, angry and/or crying phone calls. In years when our department is underbooked, my summer workdays are serene and almost ghost-town-like in their quiet.

This summer our department is underbooked. I am especially noticing it right now as I do not answer the phone...

unexpected thought

I just commented on someone else's post elsewhere, and in my comment I described myself as “a (former) curmudgeon”. It wasn't until the characters had left my fingertips and entered the monitor that I stopped to realize:

for most of the decades of my life, I had an image of myself as bitter, depressed, pessimistic, and a curmudgeon. But today, I no longer really see myself as any of those things.

Oh sure, I have the odd moment still. And someone like Sharon might give me a look and go “What do you mean?! You still do this and this and...” or somesuch. But even if my current self-evaluation is not rigidly accurate: I think the fact that I have this new self-evaluation at all, means something.

Maybe something as simple as “we don't have to always completely be what we were”.