How strange it feels to not be working at the moment, though I most certainly could be doing… something. And how strange it feels to be thinking that.

Being locked into a cycle of 12-, 14- and even 18-hour work days since last August, for six and sometimes even seven days a week, does a number on your head. In the rare instances where I have the option to be idle for a few hours, my mind automatically slips into overdrive… what should I be doing, rather than sitting in my pajamas at 3:30 p.m., listening to the cool rain outside and enjoying the site of steam curling off of my coffee cup in the window sill?

Attending concerts retains all the joy it ever had. For two hours or so — and likely more where the Metropolitan Opera or Leon Botstein are involved — I can allow myself to get swept away from the routine. This can happen regardless of the quality of the event, and even when I'm in analytical-reviewer mode. And it's a blessing, no question. Later this evening, I'll be back in action again, for the last of four consecutive nights at Carnegie Hall. (Don't worry, Carnegie Hall, I'll see you again on Tuesday.) I'm looking forward to what I'll be hearing.

But right this minute, at home alone, my mind is racing. Should I be working on overdue freelance projects? Might I get ahead on my day-job work, so that perhaps I'll have a few nights that don't linger into the wee hours?

Instead, I'm taking the opportunity to update this poor, neglected blog of mine, which so seldom sees any attention apart from links to my Times writing. (Those links have frequently been tardy in recent months, something I should really work on if this blog is to serve any use at all.) Twitter has definitely provided a handy outlet for day-to-day mutterings and minute observations, and I'm also regularly producing posts for The Volume, TONY's relatively new all-music blog, not all of which carry my byline or extend much beyond news items and Now Playing "song of the day" shout-outs. Still, I miss the days when there was time for larger reflections here.

Enough with the navel-gazing, here's something useful: Recently added to the blogroll are Mass Culture Mozart, whose Olivia Giovetti is a writer, an opera administrator, a busy Twitterer and a thoroughly entertaining cultural observer; and An everyman for himself, a useful and stylish beginner's guide to classical recordings by one Friedrich Kuhlau (another Twitter fancier). Both are well worth following, in both the blogospheric and Twitterverse senses of the term.

Wow. Time to get ready for work again already. Where does the time go?

Playlist:

Smokie Norful – Live (EMI Gospel)

Karol Szymanowski – Complete Music for Violin and Piano – Alina Ibragimova & Cédric Tiberghien (Hyperion)

Tanya Morgan – Brookynati (Interdependent Media, due out May 12)

The Dead – Nassau Coliseum, April 24, 2009 and Izod Center, April 28, 2009 (audience recordings)

John Luther Adams – The Place We Began (Cold Blue)

Mono – Hymn to the Immortal Wind (Temporary Residence)

Sarah Borges and the Broken Singles – The Stars Are Out (Sugar Hill)

Hector Berlioz – La Damnation de Faust – Enkelejda Shkosa, Giuseppe Sabbatini, Michele Pertusi, David Wilson-Johnson, London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus/Colin Davis (LSO Live)