Spring break has arrived, and as always, I am certain I will make it a productive time.

First, planning: I fire up my word processor of choice and begin planning the creative writing course I’m teaching when we return for the final quarter of the year. Nine weeks, three major topics: creative nonfiction, poetry, and short stories. It’s a bit ambitious, I’m sure. One adviser recommended that I stick to poetry. “A short story is such a complex thing to write.” Perhaps, but I’ll give it a try anyway. Yet no matter what, I’ll change it substantially before next year’s session: I just can’t leave well enough alone.

The yard needs some work. Our neighbor has been kind enough to share the massive amounts of chickweed and dandelions that have utterly conquered her once-magnificent yard, and the only way to get rid of weeds — as with so many other issues in life — is to pull them up by the roots. Even then, I’ll be out there again in a week, fighting more.

Our kitchen faucet is leaking. The whole thing probably needs to be replaced. Our back sillcock, freshly replaced, needs to be replaced yet again. “Faulty manufacturing,” the gentleman at Home Depot tells me when I take it back. I exchange it with another one, same model. It’s a crap shoot, I’m sure.

Productivity, then, seems to be temporary, cyclical even. After all, if I fixed a leaky faucet and it stayed fixed, what would I do in three weeks’ time?