Well, I didn't finish both sections that I wanted to finish. But, I did finish the first section on manhood in relationship to family. It was like pulling teeth to write that section. Some days, I have a lot of words -- a lot of ideas to follow those words. Then there are days like yesterday, where I can sit all day in the same place, staring at the screen for hours on end, frustrated and thoughtless. And where everything I write looks inane and pointless, so I delete it and start again, and then that too, looks inane and pointless. But, I got some stuff down on the page. We'll see what it looks like today. Could be crap, could be brilliant. One never knows. (and, of course, there is never anything in between.)

In those moments of seriously down time, I must confess to having surfed the web a bit and played more than a reasonable amount of solitaire. It makes me wonder if, ala Bridget Jones, I should record my "solitaire units" as a measure of how much I'm actually playing. A good friend who is also dissertating has confessed to having a bit of an obsession with solitaire as well. I sort of suggested we make a pact to delete the programs from our respective iBooks, and she said, "yeah..." with a half-hearted kind of response, and then I think we both thought about it and seriously decided that neither of us was ready to take that step yet, so we carefully and quietly let it drop. Does this mean we have a problem?

And, also, if I'm really telling the truth (which I DO NOT want to do -- far preferring to keep my failings to myself, thank you very much) around lunchtime I took a couple of hours and watched some Buffy. Guilt, guilt!! Oh, the shame of not working every single instant! (But, it was season 6, my favorite...) Spousal Unit has suggested that without down time there can be no up time. He's very zen. And, I know he's probably right, but that doesn't relieve the overwhelming guilt of having not been completely productive every single instant yesterday.

Unrelated rant -- I'm re-reading Dune before I go to bed at night and for the first time am disappointed with it. I have read it a number of times before and I would have placed it in my top 25 favorite books of all time, But, somehow, this reading I'm finding the dialogue stilted, and the action boring. I'm not sure what this means about me and my state of mind right now, but there it is.

Day 1 Wind-up: Pages written: 2, Sections completed: 1, Solitaire games: ~1 hour, Buffy time: ~2 hours. Exercise: Huh?