I need to set some goals, but not today

Finally, after a week of one  long meeting after another, I've entered a brief season of Nothing much. 

What do I need to do today? Nothing much.

What big plans do I have for next week? Nothing much.

What do I think about the College's new strategic plan? Nothing much.

It won't last, of course. I have some pressing summer projects--both at home and on campus--and I'll have even more if a certain grant gets approved. The new strategic plan will have an impact on the training sessions I need to organize for the fall semester, so at some point I'll need to attend to its demands, and I need to put together a senior capstone class on a topic I've never taught before. And of course I'll want to do some fun things this summer too, like see the grandkids and get out in the canoe and plant things (if the rain ever stops).

So I ought to get to work putting together a plan of action, but just for today, I'd rather not. For one thing, I recently looked at the goals I listed on my annual review last fall and realized that every single one of them became impossible after certain funding and staffing changes were announced, so I'm a little sour on the whole goal-setting process at the moment. And then this week I spent an absurd amount of time performing assessment activities so the College can measure how well we're achieving learning outcomes in a class that has recently been cut from the curriculum, so the whole looking-back-and-evaluating thing feels like an exercise in futility.

That kind of exercise wears me out, so I'm looking forward to a whole week with only one meeting on the schedule--with the company that's going to hook our house up to the new fiber-optic cable recently installed all up our street. Yes: for the first time ever, high-speed internet will be available at my house, along with television service (!!) and reliable phone service not eternally filled with static, all for less money than I'm paying for weak, unreliable service right now. 

I could spend the whole rest of the summer so enthralled with my new tech capabilities that I don't get anything else done, but that doesn't sound like me. Before you know it I'll be busy planning and writing and meeting and digging and mowing and sewing and reading, but just for today the only thing I really feel like doing is nothing much.

And if I can do that outside under the blooming tulip poplar, so much the better.