Surrounded by Words

On the coffee table in front of me is a stack of magazines. Well, ten stacks. Due to my compulsive nature, they're sorted so that each magazine has its own pile, which I'm certain to arrange chronologically any time now. I have a tendency to subscribe to magazines but not read them, so I've let most of the subscriptions lapse. I would feel guilty about recycling them without reading them, as though I'm discarding potential knowledge, and wasting the money as well as the opportunity.

On the kitchen table are all the boxes of school books and files I brought home with me. They desperately need to be sorted, and I very much don't want to do it. I know that diving into it will be giving into the fact that school starts again in only a few weeks, and I am not ready for summer to be over yet. I know that getting into the files will make me excited for the school year, but I'm not ready to get excited about that yet. I want more weeks of sleeping in, spending the day in my pajamas, enjoying our home, and being completely in charge of whether I do anything or nothing at all. I know I'm incredibly lucky to have a career that allows me to do this for two months each year, but I also am incredibly ambitious about what I want to accomplish each vacation, and I get nowhere near those goals each year.