I’ve been telling myself since very early this morning that today is NOT Monday–it’s Wednesday.  No matter, it’s been a functional Monday.  First my secondary monitor was displaying everything with a distinct blue (very blue) tint–not good.  I need the extra display for this project.  Then MSWord crashed several times–I’m embedding the index in MSWord documents.  Did the Office Diagnostic thing…better.  The I got a phone call that said I had to go sign something on my grade rosters that had been missed.  Back again.  MSWord crashed again…error report…suggested fixes completed.  Finally, to work.

This is a fun project–excerpts from The Polar Times starting in 1936 to date (with a hiatus between 1985 and 1993) to go into a book. The challenge is making my entries reflect the excerpts–so that it’s a useful source of information about what is in the book–not what might be in the entire article–that will come later in the cumulative index.  A lot of the excerpts are from newspapers, so sometimes it’s a challenge to decide how to word the entry.  I know, I alluded to this in my last post–but this morning was being especially challenging, especially since I’m having to do a lot of serious editing on my first pass through these documents.  There was lots of pacing, type it, delete, it; rephrase it….

No amount of coffee was helping so I decided that maybe I needed a break.  I’ve been at this pretty steadily for two weeks except for this past Friday.  I was thinking that it was a run-away-from-home day, if I could think of some place that I wanted to run to.

That problem solved itself–a friend called to say she needed to go plant shopping for one of her clients.  Did I want to go along?  I readily abandoned the computer and went.  After an afternoon of wandering through Durham Garden Center and Niche Gardens, it no longer feels like a Monday.

The compromise is that I’ll be up extra early in the morning, but I think I’ll have much less trouble finding the right words now.  Sometimes some time away is necessary–and that can sometimes be difficult to do when you’re working freelance, and from home. I’m glad that I did decide to “run away from home” today:  I’ve reread the entries that I made this morning, and done some editing, and I think I’ll be more efficient in the morning.

I came home with a lovely plant–and Indian Pink (Spigella marillandica) which I look forward to enjoying in the garden.  I had a relaxing lunch with my friend before we went to Niche Gardens, and just strolling around there and looking at all the plants and landscaping was so invigorating, but still relaxing.  Now I need to find some part shade to plant it so that on shorter breaks I can still enjoy it.

Now–time to think indexing again!  (As I finish this, I’m listening to some vigorous thunder approaching–which reminds me that I have to see about improving my surge protection for the computer…another of the things you have to think about for the home office, and the laptop needs a new battery) and…sometimes it’s necessary to run away from home for a bit.