I took a "selfish evening" for myself tonight.

I had kind of run in circles all day - several things I tried to accomplish (call the plumber and set up an appointment, go to the post office, get the cracked mirror on my car replaced) either took much longer than anticipated or didn't happen at all (the mirror; none of the auto-parts shops sell just replacement mirrors of standard size that you could glue in in place of the cracked mirror; I will have to go to a glass shop for that)

So I thought: I COULD work on work stuff, I COULD read journal articles, I COULD knit on the new neverending project of neverendingness. Or I could knit on Thermal.

I chose to knit on Thermal. (I also did keep jumping up to monitor the laundry - it's supposed to be cold and rainy tomorrow, plus I have to bake a cake, and Thursday night is a meeting, and Friday afternoon I am working with my grad student). I only got about an inch done.

One thing I have learned about myself is that in the absence of measurable progress, I tend to turn on myself. (Heh. That's almost like a quotation I posted a long time ago from a book about community assembly theory - something like, when scientists can't make progress in a field, they begin to fight with each other. Which is sadly true). I do tend to get unhappy and distressed, and feel almost like every day is a clone of the one past (that old Groundhog Day feeling).

I feel that way right now. It's not the active field season, so I don't have soil critters to extract or count (I have data I COULD and SHOULD be analyzing, though, though I'm still waiting for the inspiration of the best way to do it). I don't have prairie plants to assess. I do have my grad student's stuff, but it's HER stuff, not MINE, so that's not quite the same. I probably need to pull out the lichen paper, harass my co-author again (as in, "If I don't hear from you by date X, it's going to be submitted to the journal anyway"). Or something.

I also feel that way about the piano right now. My teacher tells me how much I'm making progress, and how comparatively fast I'm mastering things, but I just don't FEEL it. I suppose it's because I sit down at the piano every day, with more or less the same pieces (still working on the first 2 sections of the Clementi sonatina, and also an arrangement of "Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho"). I've been on both of these for several weeks, and I feel like I've hit a plateau, where I'm not going to make much more progress on them. Oh, she tells me she can hear it, but I can't quite.

I suppose it's like losing weight; you don't see it in yourself because you see yourself every day and it's only when someone who hasn't seen you for some months remarks on how you look that you realize it's happening.

But, meh. I felt like I could feel like I was making progress on something...that I could mark something in my mind as "done" (as you would with a submitted article or abstract) or have the clear sense that I was actually getting better as a pianist, or that I had finished one of my too-many projects. (Yeah, yeah, I know, I finished that quilt top on Sunday, but the happiness from that wore off fast)