December 14, 1964
Whoopie! I’m president of our Girl Scout Troop! Me, the old flunky! I got every vote but one.
There is a dark lining to this silvery cloud - I found out that Mr. W checked notebooks and I don’t have mine done! I don’t have my book home, either! I’ll die tomorrow, I know! I feel like a rat fink! I’ll never ever flunk out again - I promise.
December 14, 2022
Oh, the drama. The exclamation points!! Was my life really worth all those punctuation marks? Seventy-three year old Jo can’t remember the last time I cared that much about a missed deadline or forgotten commitment. How did I get so chill? I can’t remember that either. It was probably a slow process, starting with the my first pocket calendar (around 1974, when I was in grad school) and culminating with my decision, sometime between my first and second child, to work smarter, not more hours. The State of Maryland, I reasoned, paid me a modest salary (less than my male peers, in fact) to teach a certain number of classes per week and publish x refereed articles per year. If I could meet those expectations in 40 hours a week (or better yet, fewer), I had met my obligations. I learned to say “no”, to schedule my focused efforts during my hours of peak energy, and to make the most of my leisure time. When work was done, I did things I enjoyed, that made me happy.
Yes, I have backslid from time to time. But never again to the point of exclamation point abuse.