{"id":7468,"date":"2016-01-05T11:00:25","date_gmt":"2016-01-05T11:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/05\/second-days\/"},"modified":"2016-01-05T11:00:25","modified_gmt":"2016-01-05T11:00:25","slug":"second-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/05\/second-days\/","title":{"rendered":"Second Days"},"content":{"rendered":"\u23f3 Approximate reading time: <\/span> 2<\/span> mins<\/span><\/span>

Second days of sabbaticals. I’ve known only one second day: today. The fifth. As worklike as day one, with the exception that digressive minutiae are more appealing than before–trimming fingernails, sweeping the floor (not that it needs it but for that one speck of mud maybe, which spotted me spying it as the tea kettle took its sweet time steaming from audible boil to pressure-sent whistler). Trim and sweeeeep. Then back in the chair to do office-chair office chair things. Ever nonmagical, more stylistically cumin than cayenne.<\/p>\n

Tried to write with some background music, but that was a Johnny J.R. Cashbust. Too distracting, Cindy. What is truth? No earthly good for getting shit done. For the last sprint, I found some wordless Buddhist harpy strumtracks to cycle through iTunes, and that was enough songburst to get this upticking chapter to–what?–nearly a second section in. Put much finer points on a couple of phrases in the first section (stylistic cayenne!), extending it by 155 words and launched the second section with 906 words (maths: 1061). At daybreak I thought maybe I would blaze all the way through to 1500 and dust the second section off, but no, and it’s fine. Dandyfine. I’m also learning to relax about the goals, trust slow and steady and whatever draftmess piles up one day is suited to smoothing the next.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I regard this now as a banality dispatch, but will post anyway. Oh, okay, so I worked on the book again today. That’s what sabbaticals are for. Nonmagical, butt in chair, putting down words that, truth is, range from geez<\/em> have I been thinking about this for one helluva long time to geez<\/em> I have no idea on earth what I’m trying to say to geez<\/em> this is such an old and familiar friend, this idea, to geez<\/em> is this the best register for warm-accessible reception both by newcomers to the field and by established scholar-colleagues to geez<\/em> it’s happening and its taking shape is not limited to my fingerstrokes\/keystrokes only.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u23f3 Approximate reading time: <\/span> 2<\/span> mins<\/span><\/span>Second days of sabbaticals. I’ve known only one second day: today. The fifth. As worklike as day one, with the exception that digressive minutiae are more appealing than before–trimming fingernails, sweeping the floor (not that it needs it but for that one speck of mud maybe, which spotted me spying it as the tea kettle…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[160],"tags":[2980,763,2981,2978,420,2982,2983,140],"class_list":["post-7468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sabbatical","tag-banality","tag-chapter","tag-dispatch","tag-sabbatical","tag-style","tag-sweep","tag-tea","tag-writing"],"yoast_head":"\nSecond Days - Earth Wide Moth<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/05\/second-days\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Second Days - Earth Wide Moth\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u23f3 Approximate reading time: 2 minsSecond days of sabbaticals. 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Early-day starts, writing from 6-11 a.m. worked okay for a few days. Then a headcold stuffedcold, a couple of blergy-meh days through which I could justify holding close the couch's cushions. So supportive a couch. And into the most recent week, work\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Sabbatical"","block_context":{"text":"Sabbatical","link":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/category\/sabbatical\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10502,"url":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/02\/dam-road-then-what-happened\/","url_meta":{"origin":7468,"position":5},"title":"Dam Road – Then What Happened","author":"Derek Mueller","date":"February 2, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"Napjerks between naps, this sabbatical is some but not all resting pose. A privilege and a luxury of course, I'm profoundly grateful!, the sabbatical is the first for me since winter 2016, a decade ago. 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