Perspective is a precious commodity. When it's lost, everything collapses into itself. Things with little importance seem unmanageably huge, and the truly important is often overlooked.

I will be on an airplane headed for Billings, Montana next week. I'll fly in for a four-day meeting with my grad school cohort; we'll learn and socialize and get to know each other better. Airplanes allow me a particular type of perspective. I can look out the window, down through the clouds to the mountains below. Mountains seem manageable; roads seem small. Cars are specks and people ... well, we are just the tiny beings we always were but it's possible to actually see that.

In the grander scheme of things, work in a library is one drop in a very large bucket. Graduate school is a speck of difficulty on the road of life, and the mountains of work which surround that road are manageable, taken in their proper time. Pacing myself is difficult, but necessary. For now, it's enough to spend time learning and digesting what needs to be done. Tomorrow and the next day and the years to come will be time enough for conquering the world.