I have a tendency to plan to accomplish more things during my vacations than I can possibly finish, and that is equally true during summer vacation as it is during shorter vacations. This summer my main task is finish editing the Tibet book, but I also hope to write a query letter with outline and chapter summaries as well as selecting which publishers to send the package to. One main chore, ten weeks, sounds easy, huh? Here is my typical schedule for the past two days:

Monday:
7:45: woke up, did my back-stretching exercises, ate breakfast
8:30: edited part of a chapter of the Tibet book
10:00: Jean and I went to the YMCA for our thrice-weekly workout. On the way back we did some shopping
12:30: ate lunch, showered, practiced guitar
2:00: edited the rest of the chapter
4:30: cooked and ate supper, practiced guitar again, drove to weekly lessons

Tuesday:
6:45: woke up, showered, did my back-stretching exercises, ate breakfast, drove to Parsippany to write curricula for 4 hours
12:30: ate lunch, practiced guitar, updated journal and blog, cleared up pile of mail on my desk
3:00: my parents arrived for visit, culminating at supper at local Chinese buffet

That was a total of 4 hours’ editing in two full days. So far I have finished 5 chapters in 3 weeks. With 7 weeks left of vacation, including one week which we plan to spend camping at Old Forge, New York, the prospect of finishing all 26 chapters plus the outline/summaries seems daunting. Trust me, it will get finished, but it won’t leave me a heck of a lot of time to accomplish any other chores. Thank heavens I cut back Visions of Paradise to semi-annual so I do not need to finish another issue of that magazine this summer as well.