Go Figure. It could have been an ideas day today, but too much was going on. I got intimations of this when I was thinking about my proposal draft. I had some good ideas. So my trusty old subconscious is doing its job.

Writing is difficult, writing a book is hard. Writing a proposal is absolutely onerous. But I must do this.

I decided today that I can’t work on three big projects simultaneously. No, I cannot do this. So I am going to prioritize. For the next few days I will work on the book proposal exclusively and get it out of the way. Then I will work on the Summer in the Park(s) administrativa. Prioritizing like this will make it all seem less overwhelming. All is a key word here. All is what overwhelms.

I am adding an About the Author section to my proposal. And I am going to expand upon my potential audience, adding educators to the list. See? I’m thinking.

There is also the Books to Kenya project. I liken this to a large elephant in a small room. It is hard not to notice it. It must be dealt with. But it’s more piecemeal than are the other two projects.

Go Figure. I resumed my math tutoring session today. Skye, my math teacher, used the Smart board. He wrote several fraction problems on the board, and together we worked through them. We added, subtracted, multiplied, and divided fractions, and then we went over prime factorization.

I like prime factorization because I understand how to do it. I’m shaky on adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing fractions. I found myself wondering today: how did I ever learn to do this in the first place? None of it seemed familiar to me today.

I will find the time to figure this out.

Pete (I think) does feel a sense of accomplishment about his having gotten his letter in the New York Times, as he should. This was a major rhetorical accomplishment. He has repeatedly told me that the Times gets over 1,000 letters a day. And as I know, there are people who routinely send them letters and don’t get published. Pete added that such letters have to speak to a particular issue. Everyone has opinions about what’s going on politically. So those who are going to get their letters published on political subjects are going to be those who are known figures, experts on the subject.

Pete is the expert on the subject he wrote about, which is an overabundance of books. He also got lucky. It was like the time when his brother Pat and I were wandering around a bookstore, looking for a copy of the book The Power of Now. We told Pete this, and as we continued down aisle he said, “Here it is.” Good old Pete, he was truly in the moment.

And so, I wrote this dispatch as a form of procrastination. I am now going to work on the proposal. I’d like to have it done by this weekend.

Next: 14. 1/14/26: Distracted