I have a long post running around in my head about sustainability and small schools… but I’m just too tired to write it.

(Sorry I’ve been away… I’m coming out of the February blahs and will be writing more this week.)

Sunday night, my body reminded me of just how painfully human I am, as I got absolutely clobbered by the flu. I don’t get sick all that often, so it’s not a bad reminder during this planning year to take care of myself… and certainly a look at the last few months suggests that there hasn’t been a ton of that going on.

So tonight, as I take a break from working on staffing issues, I’m enjoying a few little things.

First — an added bonus of moving back to Philadelphia is that I can now watch Penn basketball on Comcast, and tonight my alma mater whooped Princeton 60-41. Any time Penn beats Princeton, it’s a good day… to be able to watch it, all the sweeter.

Second — we’d been fiddling around with my workspace in the new house. I have a little sitting room on the third floor, and we realized that a desk wasn’t going to work. But hey, I use a laptop, who needs a desk? We played with a little coffee table and a low chair. Bad for the back. We moved my favorite comfy chair up here. Better, but typing on your lap all the time actually isn’t that much fun. So Amazon.com had the answer… a laptop cart that could be pulled next to the chair. So now, really for the first time since I was living full-time in NYC, I have a comfortable work space at home. In fact, this is a lot more comfortable than any work space I’ve ever had. I’m so happy about it, that I put up a flickr photo of it. (Although, I already have moved the cart to the other side of the chair… comfier that way.)

And I’m blogging about this because I think it’s important…. not that I now have a comfy work space… or that my alma mater won a game (although those are both cool), but because as we all blog and work and teach and try to change the world, it’s easy to get caught up in all that… and it’s far too easy to forget to enjoy ourselves in simple ways. Not every big idea happens as quickly as we’d like. Not every big battle ends up as a winner. And not every Quixotic adventure ends up well. (Hey, Don Quixote doesn’t fare too well at the end, remember?)

So as we all write and teach and work and stay, as Jim Pederson says, busy, we also need to remember to step back every day and enjoy small victories and little joys. We have to remember to do the things that replentish us and bring us joy. With luck, that will give us the energy to tackle the bigger questions….

Tomorrow.

Very much still surrounded by boxes, and there are a few hundred things we need to do the house, but we’re in… we have internet connectivity, and a return to blogging is soon to happen. On Monday, I’ll try to post information about our curriculum summit coming up next week. Until then, I’ll be unpacking.

John Pederson is right. Busy is the new fine.