Things Due Now, Things Due Later

Do any of you find that while things that are due now are impossible to face, things that are due later draw you with irresistible allure?

I have so many things that I need to do NOW: read for my Rousseau class, read Fulbright applications from my mentees, review books for Children's Literature, review a book for the Children's Literature Association Quarterly, organize some huge and wonderful event on life writing for the Prindle Institute (who could possibly face a task presented under that description!), revise a novel, write an overdue paper, and decide what paper I want to submit to the annual meeting of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics.

Am I doing any of those things? No. Instead, my brain is seething with ideas for a paper on Eleanor Estes's Pinky Pye, for next year's Children's Literature Association conference in June in Boston. That paper abstract isn't due until January. All these other things I listed above need to be done by mid-October, or should have been done last month.

All I can think about is Pinky Pye. I'm rereading it, as well as Ginger Pye, to see if my paper idea is going to pan out. Guess what: it is! I'm making notes, I'm drawing connections, I'm searching for relevant articles, printing them out.

This is very bad, of course. But I really couldn't help myself. And all those other things: they will get done - if only because they have to. But right now, Pinky Pye is polishing up her little white paw, and speaking her one little meow word to me: "Woe."

Oh, Pinky!