Composition of Philosophy. August 5.

I was in the mood to write 6A, and did so. The total time from zero to final draft was 1 hour, 8 minutes. That was reassuring, because I was expecting all of the sections in this second half of the book to crawl by slowly, but 1:08 is pretty much in line with how the first half went.

TOTALS SO FAR:

27 hours, 13 minutes
74 pages

In every task, being past the halfway point has a certain magic to it, for the obvious reason that there is less remaining than has already been done, and each step forward makes the finish line appear much more vividly in the distance.

The project is in pretty good shape, both conceptually and deadline-wise. Concerning the latter point, moments of nervousness are few or non-existent, since most of August still remains, and August 31 is an artificial, self-imposed deadline to begin with (though I must continue to pretend that it’s real, just because it will be miserable if I have to find time for this project along with the litany of other obligations for September).

Conceptually, things are coming together nicely, despite a few surprises that have caught my attention. Surprises are almost always a good sign in intellectual work, because they show that you’re in contact with a reality that differs from your initial preconceptions, and that you are listening to that reality rather than to your biases.

Currently, my goal is to have 6B, 6C, and 6D finished off by tomorrow. There will have to be another short pause after that. However, Chapter 6 is essentially table-setting for the more difficult Chapters 7, 8, and 9, and sometimes if you set the table just right, the rest happens very quickly.

In fact, that idea has been on my mind a lot lately… The really good things in life tend to happen surprisingly quickly.