Today was a state holiday, and I was planning to work most of the day on my MFA. I woke up at 7:30, puttered around a little bit, and then read Auden for a while. Then, I came downstairs to assemble the first draft of my manuscript. I’ve had a running order for the poems for a while but hadn’t actually assembled it all into one file and started reading them together. It’s now 6 PM, and I have accomplished nothing other than some handwritten notes on a table of contents. I stared at it all day. I don’t usually count days like this as productive time towards the degree, but it really was.

Lee posted the other day about how he wishes that one day someone would come into his office while he has his feet on the desk and is staring into space, and the person would say to him, “Oh, I’m sorry to bother you while you’re working.” That was my day. But no one disturbed me.