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Greetings --

I am intrigued by these recent posts, especially in relation to trying to prepare (literally and I'll say spiritually) for the coming semester.  I don't find it possible to separate my personal and professional lives very fully or very often . . . and it doesn't feel natural for me to think about doing things for their own sake. What am I missing?  Of course I understand issues of boundaries, discretion, degree, but I'm of the mind that everything living organisms do is both invested and open-ended, often unconsciously so, and thus I don't feel as if, as a living being who is unfinished, flawed (like all others), and both connected to and apart from all others, I know what it would mean to seek personal salvation in any one activity or relationship.  I guess I am saying that when it comes to integrating the personal, the political, and the professional, I don't think it's possible to throw the baby out with the bathwater.  To integrate them is to try to enlarge contexts of life so as to facilitate their integration/their learning from one another -- not to split, throw out, or divide one from another.