Tuesday, January 06, 2009

I am the captain--no, make that the James T. Kirk-- of my fate

As I sat at my desk today, not wanting to go out (if you saw the weather here, you wouldn't, either), I looked around the study.

Extreme left on the bookshelf: books for teaching.
Near left: books for project I've been working on.
Nearer left: shame pile of a book for review.
Piled high on the left-hand side of the desk: books and journals I've just finished using.
Above the desk: books for another project for which I'm making some minor revisions.
Right side of the desk, both on the desk and on the floor: file folders in wire holders.
Two lamps, one on either side of the monitor.
Straight ahead: computer with writing and .pdf articles on it.

Then it hit me: this feels like the command deck of the Starship Undine, and it has a mission to get as much possible done before classes start. No wonder I'm treating incoming email as if it's the Tholian web.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

OK, I will think of myself as a space captain and things will work better. We did actually envision ourselves as superheroes and so on in my very competitive undergrad and grad programs - and it did in fact help. I had forgotten all about that until I saw your post!

Anonymous said...

Singer/songwriter Bob Schneider has a great song called "Captain Kirk." The first two lines are:

"I wanna be like Captain Kirk / Get up every morning, love to go to work ..."

And why not? If you were truly the captain of your own starship, wouldn't you love your job?

Anonymous said...

"If you were truly the captain of your own starship, wouldn't you love your job?"

Well that hits it on the head.

undine said...

Profacero, I'm going to try the superhero thing.

I hadn't heard that song, Bittersweet Girl, but yes, that'd be a job to love. I keep thinking some days even Kirk probably didn't want to open up the window or space port or whatever and meet the day, however.