Open letter to my depletion.

Dear My Depletion,

Did you happen to know that I lost my agenda when we got back from Idaho? --by "agenda", I mean my actual, physical calendar, but now that you mention it, the word could refer to the figurative thing as well.

This past week was crowded: with dinners and breakfasts and lunches, LMS trainings, focus group meeting, writing group, date nights and family Harry Potter, shopping and movies. All of these appointments and their various delights I kept in the agenda of my brain, because the actual calendar was gone. Often, My Depletion, the calendar and its busy agenda are harbinger, the very symbol of you. This week, however, you hummed in the background of all these events and reminded me:

you are not writing

summer is almost over

you are not writing

something is so very wrong with you

I literally hate your song, My Depletion. But I have not been able to come up with a substitute.

I have notes on slips of paper, that say things like "Monday: house stuff! film." or "T: write 500 words." And who knows? Maybe Monday or Tuesday--maybe Monday and Tuesday--will be the days I hop out of bed and take Bruiser for a walk when the morning is still cool, and say pish to the internet, whip out my sewing machine or catalog my film clips or even write 500 words! I can see, theoretically, that this is possible. Saying so, maybe, makes it more likely to be so.

But nothing like this will occur unless--it must be said, My Depletion--you stop humming that goddamned song. It is getting on my last nerve.

Sincerely,

htms

The ordeal.

It's Tuesday, it must be time to whine.

1. Why is it that getting up in the morning--and by getting up, I mean getting going--is such a project for me? Once last semester, I think it was, I thought I was going to get an 8 a.m. teaching slot by virtue of some evil shenanigans inherent in the scheduling process, and I was all, SERIOUSLY, you guys, that is a terrible idea. And it's not because I'm lazy--although it's possible that I am--it's because 8 a.m. does not AGREE with me. As in, 8 a.m. wants to pick a fight with me, if I try to do something serious instead of, say, think about what outfit I might wear, or contemplate taking the dog for a walk in an hour, or thinking about breakfast. Which is to say, I can think, the people, but I cannot do.

2. Yes, shut up, I know, I would not last one minute in a job in the so-called real world. Which is why, the people, I am not there. And also, I am not teaching at 8 a.m., ever. My chair said, "But you'd do it if the program needed you to." And I said, "Sure," by which I meant, "Not even if you promised me the world in the form of a banana split with all the shoe money in China: in other words, hell to the no."

3. So, by the time I am in shape to actually do stuff, the morning feels frittered away. Even though I have decided on an outfit, taken the dog for a walk, and eaten breakfast. Gaaa.

4. After all that productivity GOSH I get started on my grading. Thanks to my colleague for her excellent presentation on audio grading! I launched into some fine commenting on student work on Audacity, which was great, but then Bruiser started barking his ferocious there's-a-gangster-at-the-door bark, which meant, of course, that the postman was drawing nigh, with a package from the Beijing University of Language and Culture for running son--a package of very very important papers. So: dog barking in the background of the student comments; containing the Big Bruise from enthusing the postman to death; and now, figuring out how to get an expeditious student visa for running son so he can go abroad. Again.

5. Off to school. Successful consultation with a student. Successful kvetching with a colleague. Successful meeting with a VP. Successful run-in with another of my students. Off to a big fat meeting. Survived it.

6. Sitting in the busy student center, I attempt, with my headset, to comment on a couple more student drafts. But my laptop doesn't want to locate the LAME file which turns Audacity files into mp3s. Woe. Another student lingers, then says, "I recognize your voice." Turns out he's another of my online students. That is a weird, but increasingly common, phenomenon--they hear your voice, they know you.

7. Another meeting, a dinner meeting.

8. In a race against time, I finish writing and producing another screenr presentation, with a fair amount of gnashing of teeth. I draft a piece on shared governance. I draft an agenda for a meeting tomorrow. I draft an e-mail. I locate many, many attachments to attach to the e-mail. I send it. Somewhere in here, I watch The Good Wife.

9. At 11:55 p.m., I begin thinking about possible outfits for tomorrow, because there is an 8 a.m. Board of Trustees meeting.

EIGHT A.M.

Woe.

tags: whiny whiners and the people who tolerate them

Summer cold.

Whose big idea was the summer cold? It's a terrible concept. Frankly, I just don't get it, how cold germs can be hardy enough to withstand the heat. Plus, the summer cold masquerades as allergies, so there's the whole Claritin-vs.-DayQuil debate, which can lead to lying awake at night deciding if the ticklishness one feels is allergen-related or viral. Then, at 1:45 a.m., the NyQuil makes its most compelling argument, so down it goes. Sleep descends like a hammer. A twenty-four hour hammer.

After my middle of the night drug-taking, I woke up at quarter to eleven this morning. Then, after a period of great grogginess and newspaper reading, I took a nap. A several hour nap. Basically, my whole Sunday I spent behind the water-soluble wall of a LiquiCap, as it dissolved and I gradually woke up. Which puts the likelihood of being able to sleep tonight in a fair amount of doubt. But hey. I haven't sneezed today. Much.