Back at work after four months away. Gerber daisies in Free Minds red on the table. Sweet card from Amelia on my keyboard. Warm hellos. Bookcases. Voicemails. Smart people doing work they care about. In preparing to return, I have focused on time — when to rise, how to preserve a rich slice of morning for writing, lunches packed before bed. But already, a few hours into work, I was reminded that it isn’t just time. It is head space. How to have room for poems and revisions and essays and wandering trips through language while also thinking about students and evaluations and grant budgets and syllabus construction? This is the question that waits to be answered this year.

January 5, 2015