Choices

I have made an enlightened decision. I won't be able to complete my grandmother's transcription AND sleep between now and my trip (let alone before the 13th), so I'm going to set it aside and complete it for Christmas.

I'm on page 45, which represents about one and a half of five or six tapes. It takes me about an hour to transcribe about 5 minutes of speaking, because I'm doing it verbatim, and keep pausing and rewinding to get every "but...uh.." and cut off or mumbled sentence she said. So I think there are about 270 minutes more to go. That's nearly 24 hours, realistically. It can't happen as quickly as I'd like.

I can be proud of what I've done so far, and send out a note to my family in time for her birthday, maybe with a picture and excerpt and an announcement that more will come. I have a great shot of her and two friends in front of a little plane they flew in in the 1920's. That should do. I don't want to send just some of the transcript. I'll back up the tapes, back up the file, and put it all in our fire safe.

And then I can focus on other things.

The older I get, the better I can think through things and prioritize, but I'm still fighting this weird idea I have that I can and should do everything I think I can and should do.

Right now I can and should go to bed, but see, now, that's an example of a reasonable goal.