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March 1, 2005

In your perfect world?

We're about a week and a half from the bill filing deadline today. We will all work straight through until then. This weekend is part of the regular workweek for us - and "regular" is a term I use loosely; regular for us now is considerably more than an 8-hour day. For the most part there's a tremendous feeling of teamwork, and when it's all said and done there's a real sense of camaraderie and accomplishment (there are, of course, exceptions to this rule; certain instances particular to certain people that involve definite feelings of antagonism. No group is perfect.) And I enjoy writing - I really enjoy trying to make something complicated simple and clear and organized. I'm definitely better at that kind of writing than I am the creative kind. So I really like my job.

Ideally, though, I'd like to do less of it. I'd rather have fewer bills to draft and feel like I had more time to do it. The bills we draft that get filed have our initials on them, and it can be embarrassing sometimes to have your initials on something you know you didn't have enough time to do well out there for all the world to see.

Ideally I'd work maybe 20 hours a week on my own terms. I'd go in when I felt like it and finish things when I'm done with them.

Pretty soon the nature of our work will become a little different: flashes of really intense work at odd hours or long stints on the house floor with flashes of intensity. But there will be lots of time to sit around and think. Sitting on the house floor staring out into space - um, I mean, listening intently to riveting debate - or sitting in my office waiting for documents to go through or people to call me with information. So I'm going to have plenty of time to come up with my ideal life. And then when session is over I may actually have enough comp time to live my ideal life. So I need to figure out what that is.

I think my ideal running schedule would be meeting the girls in the morning for an easy 4 and then meeting a workout crowd in the afternoon twice a week or so.

And I want to try golf again. Wendy and I took a series of lessons last summer and I think I could really enjoy it (although I can see how it might drive an impatient person like myself to the brink of insanity.)

And pjm's posts on geocaching have piqued my interest in that; I saw last week that UT informal classes have an intro class (I'm aware that may be dorky, but at least I know it's there.)

And then I'd like to go hang out with my brother in San Francisco for a while. Hopefully by the end of session he'll have moved into the house that his friends are fixing up that's right near Golden Gate Park - y'know ... one of those houses you naturally associate with SF, like the one at the start of that show with the Olsen Twins? And while I'm there I'm going to hit one of those trail runs that Liz talks about.

And maybe I won't run with the girls *every* morning; maybe some of the mornings we'll row on the lake instead (there's a gang of UT rowers at the table next to me - the same table that Andy Roddick was sitting at just Monday.)

And I need to learn to be a better cook.

And I want to read all my reading matierials - my NY Times each Sunday and the magazine each week; my Newsweeks and my Texas Monthlys.

And I'm going to get my money's worth from Netflix.

I saw last night that there's a subject line on the RunTex forum about the Running New Year; it's a string talking about the idea I wrote about back in January - that post-marathon is my new year. Unfortunately with session here I really can't get started on these things until June. So I have a loooooong time to come up with more resolutions.

Posted by jenandmats at March 1, 2005 7:41 AM