Not profound

I'm not sure I have much profound to say. Not just on this blog, but in general. I seem to have a lot of small to medium writing projects to do, none of which are particularly scintillating. I have two final reports to write for grants and a preliminary draft of a grant that will need some revision. I submitted a referee report on a bland paper today, so at least that's done. And I also need to re-submit an NSF grant. The proposal was rejected, but I think it should be possible to address most of the referee's concerns in the revised proposal. Annoyingly, I think it was only one referee who had any substantive objections.

Anyway, all these things are pretty straightforward. I don't really need to be deep. I think I know what needs to be done and I just need to do it. Unfortunately, I'm not particularly fast at this type of writing, although I'm getting faster. Somehow the weight of all this proposal and report writing, plus a slug of email that I'm very behind on, and needing to gear up for the term that starts in a week, has kinda pressed all the profundity out of me and I feel kinda weary.

This isn't necessarily a bad state of affairs. I do need to be profound for around half an hour Monday morning, when I'm supposed to give an inspirational welcome talk to entering students. I've done this before, so I think I can pull it off just fine, even if my overall mood is unprofound.

In any event, autumn approaches. The weather has been fantastic and the nights are just a little crisp. I thought I saw the faintest hint of fall color on the maple trees as I drove to campus this morning. But it might have been my imagination. Most of the new students are doing their outdoor orientation trips, returning students are trickling back, and I'm trying to finish up tons of things while also enjoying the last few unscheduled and unstructured blocks of time for a while.