One of the luxuries you lose when being chair is the ability to focus on just one thing at a time.  Your involvement in something has to be shallow and broad--one of oversight--rather than deep and narrow.

I am on my third week of third summer leave and I confess that the simplicity and clarity of life in this mode is both refreshing and addicting.  There's an intense pleasure in being able to work on just one task and progress on it substantially.  Limited interruptions--no phone calls, very few texts, a smattering of email , and absolutely no one knocking on your door and asking, "Are you busy?"  Just work.  Life is simple.  What a delight!

I look at life back home with a detached fascination, as if examining a specimen.  It's a completely different skin--so complex, so abuzz with noise of all kinds.  Being away from the complexity makes me realize just how tiring it sometimes is, this needing to care about a dozen different things.  The advantage is that the social structures that support this life are equally complex.  Other people--our friends, our colleagues, our bosses, our subordinates, our families--help us cope.  They convince us that complexity is all right, it's normal.  We can handle it.  We can survive it. We can even thrive in it.

In a little over ten days, I'll be back in that millieu and I'm sure I will be fine.  For now, though, I'm relishing the time away.