End of a long day
All day at a conference, which I enjoyed in spite of its massive time overruns. As far as I could tell my own paper (which I had timed beautifully) went well. There was one paper which was way too long for its slot, and one that covered familiar ground, but others that were on a range from good to excellent.
Also, a chance to get together with other people working in this particular field and over coffee/lunch/drinks at reception/dinner (and occasionally in whispers during sessions), catch up on what's going on in each other's lives, geek out about Marie Stopes's sex life/Winifred Holtby/the novels of Naomi Mitchison, receive compliments on The Biography, and generally have a rather good time.
Which intersects with a question I was wanting to address following discussion elsewhere on my reading list, in which I was questioning the querying of the proposition that adulthood is fun.
My thought was that there are pleasures in adulthood which childhood cannot grasp or even imagine.
There are all sorts of things I enjoy now which I disliked or avoided as a child, like vegetables and physical exercise, books and other media that I appreciate now that I would not have liked in my earlier years, etc etc.
But it gradually dawned on me, thinking about this, that I wouldn't necessarily say that adulthood was fun precisely.
I just think, have thought for years, that it's better than being a child. I had a pretty benign childhood as these things go, but I so think being grown up is better.
And being grown up doesn't mean I can't at least occasionally indulge my inner 8/11/15 year old. Some of my pleasures are about 'And I can do that now!' (this can apply to really quite small things - no-one is insisting I eat the crusts of sandwiches).
I just don't think I could have envisaged the kind of enjoyment I got out of today when I was a child.
This entry was originally posted at http://oursin.dreamwidth.org/1394462.html. Please comment there using OpenID. View
comments.