Category Archives: Searching

The Zennoyance of M. Bullock Dresser

Posted on July 14, 2012 | 4 comments

[Pardon me while I Prufrock a minute.]

“Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai dietro una vettura lenta,
perché eravamo in un no sorpasso di corsia….”

“Whether it’s pain or pleasure, through lojong practice we come to have a sense of letting our experience be as it is without trying to manipulate it, push it away, or grasp it. The pleasurable aspects of being human as well as the painful ones become the key to awakening bodhichitta.” Pema Chodron Start Where You Are

Let us go then, you and I,
While the drought sucks all the rain out of the sky,
Like a baby nursing at its mama’s breast,
Let us go through several tiny towns,
The kind with no uptown or down,
And speed traps their biggest revenue stream,
The middle class mostly a dream,
One of those nightmares where you find a room
That leads you to numberless other rooms
You never knew you had–
Oh, stop. Don’t tell me about your day.
Let’s just hit the road.

On Highway 14 the woman drove too leisurely,
In a lime-green Mercedes named Martini.

The heat wave that sharpens its teeth on a wheel,
The heat swamp that buffs its nails on a wheel,
Licked its lips along the shoulder of the road,
Turned off the cruise control at some point,
Rolled down the window to watch something congeal,
Did a three-point turn, put the pedal to the floor,
And seeing no sheriff’s car anywhere in sight,
Broke the speed of sound, and drove out of sight. But

On Highway 14 the woman drove too leisurely,
In a lime-green Mercedes named Martini.

____________________________

I might work some more on that, being as I’m middle aged, and wondering what I am not (nor was meant to be) and wondering, A LOT lately, “Do I dare” and “Do I dare?”

In the meantime, let me talk about that Mercedes. My parents and Wendell and I had set off this morning about 10 for Rockford, to see my Aunt Margie, who’s in a nursing home there. Somewhere between Spring Green and Madison, we ended up behind a lovely lime-green Mercedes convertible with the license plate “MARTINIS.”

First of all, I’m not sure I’d want to advertise I LOVE ALCOHOL SO MUCH IT’S MY PERSONALIZED PLATE, just in case I ever got pulled over.

(Not that I get pulled over a lot. Mom and I talked today about traffic tickets we’d gotten–neither of us has gotten many. But I remember being very impressed when my Gran’mommy got a speeding ticket when she was in her seventies, for going something like 60 in a 40mph zone. My cousin Jodie and I used to freak out when we watched her drive because she was old-school—she would have her right foot on the gas and her left foot poised over the brake. I particularly like to think about her as a driver because it stood in marked contrast to her basic mode as a kindly and gentle and extremely ladylike Baptist.)

Second of all, WOW that Mercedes was going slow. About 45, and it’s actually a highway, where you can go pretty much 60 and not worry at all about getting pulled over. There was some slight lane meanderage on the Mercedes’ part as well.

At the stoplight in Black Earth, the woman who was driving was fixing her hair in her fetching visor-cap and YES, the light turned green, and she kept working on her hair for a count of 1-2-3.

We couldn’t pass–Highway 14 is two-lane most of the way, and a lot of no-passing zones (or, as I like to think of them, no sorpasso di corsias) and a fair amount of traffic. It was timed exactly wrong almost the whole way.

Third of all (or is it fifth of all?), it wasn’t really “MARTINIS.” It’s the name of a popular cocktail, though. I just don’t want to go listing license plates on my blog. Except, if you make your personalized plate really easy to remember and then drive in really annoying ways in front of people, you should kind of expect to show up in a blog.

In a very dramatic moment, the minivan behind us gunned it to pass them, and barely made it back over before the passing lane ended, with oncoming traffic approaching, too. The passenger in MARTINIS flipped off the minivan, which puzzled us, until my Dad pointed out that maybe someone in the minivan had flipped them off first.

“I’m pretty sure they’re just out for a cruise,” my son said.

Finally, we were able to pass them. I thought of them briefly as we drove through Janesville later and it was raining—were the Martinis o.k.? Did they get the top up in time?

If I’d been in a hurry, I’m sure I would have been mad. My friend & UW System colleague Ryan Martin explains why we get so mad when we’re driving in this great post, “All the Rage.”

But honestly, my annoyance didn’t shift into anger today. They were so annoying it ended up being hilarious. I asked on Facebook this evening if anyone knew them, and I now know who they are. They own a bar, actually, so I’m wondering if I can turn this into a free drink somehow.

Because this is a totally flattering portrait of them, right? And of me, right?

Here’s the thing, and the reason I quoted Pema Chodron—at some point, getting annoyed at someone who’s being annoying, and then expressing that annoyance, is all just annoying. Same with obnoxious behavior. It’s hard to respond to rudeness without also being rude.

Like last night, during the performance of Skylight (PHENOMENAL—everyone should go see this play), I paid good money for a great seat in the second row, but there were three people in front of me who thought sitting in the FRONT ROW of the Touchstone Theater, a small venue, during a terrific show–they thought that was a good time to talk. It wasn’t so much that I could hear them (I have hearing aids), but they were leaning over a lot, so it was visually distracting. There were some odd dynamics going on, too—I couldn’t tell if the woman in the middle was sick, and her husband and friend were concerned, or if they chose Skylight because they were currently in a ménage a trois. I wondered about the latter because there seemed to be a lot of meaningful shoulder-rubs and knee-strokings in all kinds of variations (him on her, him on other her, her on her, her on him, other her on him). Regardless–what I really wanted to do was thump each of them on the head.

(I did once kick the seat of a woman in front of me at Sundance theater once during a Clooney movie—she was texting on a smart phone and it was REALLY BRIGHT.)

But it’s rude to thump someone on the head, and I was worried that my thumping might be an even bigger distraction to the actors I was already worried were distracted (Clooney couldn’t see me kicking the seat of the woman in front of me), or make them talk MORE, or begin to rub the sore spots for each other where they’d been thumped.

I moved to a different seat at half-time, but the three lovers (or the married couple and friend, one of whom was sick) didn’t return. Which was a little disappointing, since I’d complained about them to numerous people while eating my much-anticipated brownie, which, frankly, was a little dry (the brownies are usually amazing there).

One moral of these stories is, I don’t mind being annoyed as long as I get a story out of it.

Another part of what it comes down to is I’m not sure I have the right to be angry (or even annoyed). My Gran’mommy wouldn’t let us say “darn” or “heck” when we were little, because they were just substitutes for “damn” and “hell.” I remember asking at some point what I was supposed to say when I got mad, and she essentially said, “Don’t get mad.”

I don’t think of myself as an angry person, but maybe these lines from Justified apply (I’d love it if they did–I’d love being an Elmore Leonard character):

At the end of the pilot, Raylan has broken into the home of his ex-wife and her new husband in the middle of the night, and is then chatting with her out on the deck.

“I just never thought of myself as an angry man,” he says, after explaining why he shot a man.

And Winona says, ”Oh. Raylan, well, you do a good job of hiding it—I suppose most folks don’t see it, but honestly? You’re the angriest man I have ever known.”

What I’m hoping for is some sort of Zen Baptist process by which I can feel annoyance (read: anger) and express it without making the world a worse place, without cancelling out the benefit of however many days of meditation and Bible reading I’ve managed to string together.

This won’t be easy. The Baptist part of me remembers this verse, Matthew 7:3, “Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?” Most of the time I complain, I feel compelled to point out my own guilt. That’s not the worst habit in the world (I find it annoying when others don’t admit their own guilt, ever), but do I really have to list all the ways I’ve annoyed people who were driving behind me before I can say, “that Mercedes was really annoying,” before I can allow myself to be annoyed?

Is the height of Zen training really to get to the point where I drive behind a car going slower than I want to go and my actual response goes something like, “it is what it is,” and I use the slower pace to be mindful about my surroundings? How different is that, really, from trying never to get angry?

Just asking. I’ll stop now before I get carried away.

The pilot of Justified ends with Raylan processing Winona’s comment, goes to the credits, and we get to hear, once again, Tone Z with Gangsta Grass:

“On this lonely road,
trying to make it home
Doing it by my lonesome-pissed off, who wants some
I see them long hard times to come.”

If I were an Elmore Leonard show, I’d be done already. Since it’s me, I’ll just say that my new life goal is to mention Timothy Olyphant every other blog entry.

And also to get a free drink from restaurant owners who drive slowly enough, for long enough, that I think they owe me something. Unless that annoys them, in which case I apologize for being annoyed.

4 Comments

Posted in Family, God Stuff, Poetry, Searching, Spring Green, Uncategorized

Getting the Pay Raise You Deserve, Part III

Posted on April 12, 2012 | 17 comments

CREDO: ENOUGH

I don’t work too hard. I work hard

enough, having joined the small but growing worldwide Church of Enough, not to be confused with the service club called Just Enough, whose border blurs with the Club of Just Barely Enough, which is too similar, frankly, to the Club of Not Really Enough, aligned of course with the also growing club of Not Nearly Enough who might as well admit they’re paying members of the Piss Poor In Nearly Every Measurable Way Society. No, we’re the Church of Enough–not to be confused either, please, with those in the mildly amiable but really too puffed up Club of More Than Enough, who won’t admit this publicly but they share office space with the growing Crystal Cathedral of Too Much and a splinter group, the Cult of Much Too Much, who are Calvinistic in believing anyone without the proud banner MUCH TOO MUCH (a hand-tatted silky thing they work extra hours to buy), anyone who sleeps eight hours in a row, anyone who cares to whisper, “balance,” anyone who stares at a cobalt bottle in the afternoon light, anyone who smiles just must by definition belong to what they see as the biggest club of all, Just Not Enough.

Moderation in most things
is our creed. If we met
we’d chant it but we don’t
have meetings. To qualify
for membership you must
come to us having attended

enough meetings already.

A humble enough start
has bloomed like rust
in the machine
of the rest of our lives.
When progress grinds
to an ugly steaming stop
in our backyards
we’ll be there to sing songs
around the dying fire.
We will have progressed far
enough.

______________________________
I wrote this poem a very long time ago, maybe as many as 15 years ago, when I first read Juliet Schor’s The Overworked American. It became a signature piece for me at poetry readings for a while, although it still scares me to read it in public sometimes, since I assume someone is thinking and might say, “You could work a little harder, couldn’t you?”

But it’s an important end-piece for this particular series, and it’s important enough to me that my husband and I are going to be selling broadsides of it, with a gorgeous image he took of one of my cobalt blue bottles. (Contact me if you want one.)

As a friend of mine said, “It’s all about who’s in the lifeboat with us,” and as I added, “who’s down the hall in the nursing home.”

Are you with me? Want to come to my house when progress grinds to an ugly steaming stop? When that fire goes out, we’ll build a fire in our fire pit (which my husband and I made from the recycled drum of our front-loader washing machine) and drink some beers or possibly home-brewed hooch, which would both save us some cash and let me hark back to more of my Bullock heritage.

I’m saying it loud, saying it proud: Enough. Say it with me: Enough.

17 Comments

Posted in Burnout, Poetry, Searching, Teaching, Uncategorized, Work Life

Tagged

Be There Now (Day of Higher Ed)

Posted on April 2, 2012 | 7 comments

What if my life never changed for the better?

That’s what I thought about driving to work this morning.

I’m a worst-case-scenario kinda gal, so I won’t usually take the time to imagine what if my life never changed for the worse–I spend lots of time imagining variations on bad things & I think a great deal of my happiness in life is attributable to being pleasantly surprised that the worst thing doesn’t always happen.

So this morning’s commute was kind of a a more-upbeat variant on a worst-case-scenario–a status quo scenario. What if things stay pretty much the same instead of all the improvements I’m constantly longing for? What if, instead of healing from my shoulder and foot injuries, I’m just kind of in pain? What if I don’t get in better shape/eat better/lose weight? What if we don’t add a room to the house or build a garage? What if I never figure out how to be a tidy homemaker? What if I continue to teach four sections a semester until I retire? What if I’m not able to retire for a very long time? What if I never publish a book?

Some days, of course, that would have been a formula for depressing myself (some days most formulas accomplish that).  But today, it felt so good, I decided I’m doing it for at least this week, at least when I’m driving. What if?

I actually don’t think my shoulder and foot pain are permanent, but if they were, they’re manageable. If I don’t get any healthier, I’ll be courting cardiac problems in my 60s (or sooner), or diabetes in my 50s (almost there)–those two just based on my genetic history. Whatever role good cardiac health plays in staving off mild cognitive impairment, if I don’t have good cardiac health, it might mean losing access to my best mind sooner, again, given my genetic heritage. And whatever other health problems I end up with, if I don’t start out healthy, I’ll be less likely to heal well.

This is a pretty close transcript to what I was thinking this morning in the car. You know what’s great about it? Absolutely nothing in that paragraph about being fat or losing weight. Same thing in the car–at some point I thought, “Oh, and I guess I’d weigh less if I did get healthier….” This is pretty huge for me (pun not initially intended but then what the hell). I’m lucky–my husband loves me & finds me attractive no matter what size I am. I’m pretty confident in my ability to work a crowd, no matter what size I am. Not to say I don’t care at all–I am an American woman after all. But it turns out not to be very high on the list, which felt great.

I did spend some time thinking about my son. If I’m not active, I’m not teaching him to be active. If I’m not eating right, he’s not learning to eat right. If I’m self-medicating with food, he’ll learn to do that, too. Same with keeping my house a little neater–he’s not learning to pick up after himself if I’m not showing him. So some of the things I’d like to change have to do with parenting well.

Then what about the job thang? I’ve been teaching at UW-Richland for 20 years now, and I am wondering how much longer I want to do that, but in some ways, I don’t see a path away from what I’m doing, which makes me feel trapped (which, according to Martha Beck, is why I eat when I’m not hungry).  But what if this is it?  That’s my task this week–what’s great about this life I’m in? What’s great about this job I have?

Obviously, part of what I’m trying to do is focus on my blessings, and I absolutely understand I have a lot to be thankful for. Sure, I wish I got paid more to do my job (or actually, I’d like to get paid more to do slightly less), but I know I’m lucky to have a job. And here are the parts I love about this job:

I really love students. All kinds. I just love taking them seriously and pushing them gently and watching them learn.

Here’s a brief conversation I had this morning with a student who’d signed up for a one-on-one conference with me later in the week, to go over her rough draft.

Me:  So did you find a source yet?”

Her: No–I’m going to look tonight, but I haven’t found one yet.

Me: Why don’t you send me an email sometime this afternoon & tell me what search terms you’re using, and I can give you some feedback on that first, so when you do sit down to look, it’ll be more productive.

Her: O.k., I’ll do that.

Just a basic pretty boring conversation, but she seemed really pleased at the end, and helping students learn to figure out the right search terms is actually one of my favorite things to do. I talk to them about doing searches in online databases and “going fishing,” where we’re first just trying to figure out what the Library of Congress subject headings would be for any given subject (which I’m now able to explain to students by saying “They’re like hashtags!” This is how I figured out hashtags, btw–“They’re like Library of Congress subject headings!). I confess to students that I can often figure this out by imagining how old white guys in suits would describe something.

Even when they frustrate me, I tend to enjoy students. I love watching them really get into a lecture. I love watching them try to stay awake when the lecture’s not quite doing it for them (if there are more than one or two of those any given lecture, I figure it’s the lecture’s fault).

I love trying to analyze what’s working and what’s not and trying to improve.

I love having a flexible schedule. For example, in honor of Day of Higher Ed, (which responded to an op-ed in The Washington Post that essentially said professors are overpaid and underworked–read Aeron Haynie’s response & others & you’ll know my response) here’s what today looks like:

5:00 out of bed

5:15 reading Walter Isaacson’s bio of Steve Jobs (tons of connections to my creativity research), having coffee, then getting ready for work

7:15 hit the road (a little later than I’m comfortable with!)

7:50 at UW-Richland, heading for class.

10:00 a.m. Approx. 10-15 min. Facebook break (I didn’t keep exact track this morning, although I usually do–I’ll count it as a 20 min break, just to be sure).

10:20 Heading back to class

11:30 Lunch at the Roadrunner Cafe!

12:00 Multi-tasking–a little bit of Facebook, but mostly “Inside Higher Ed” blogs and then writing this blog.

3:20 Back to class

I’ll be working until 5:30 or so, with maybe another 10-20 minute Facebook break in there. (I’ll subtract 30 minutes total as “Facebook Break,” just to make sure, even though some of my time on f.b. is work-related). I don’t count those breaks as work hours, so I’ll end up clocking in at 8:20 (I keep track although no one else does). If I’d worked through lunch and not taken any Facebook breaks, I’d have worked 9 hours and 20 minutes, or thereabouts.

Today’s a very heavy class-time day–225 minutes in class–all four sections–but outside of class, here’s what I’m doing: writing, developing a rubric to use online, on our “course delivery platform,” planning my schedule for the week, answering emails, sending an agenda for a meeting on Wednesday, setting up a blog for the committee that’s meeting on Wednesday, class prep for this afternoon’s class and Wednesday’s classes, posting an online grade update for students in my composition classes and sending an email reminding them the drop deadline is Friday (I’ll do that for my other classes later today or tomorrow), checking email and responding (including emailing my dean and chair about using letters of recommendation they wrote for a sabbatical proposal in my fundraising letter to support my own sabbatical), grading an essay that got turned in two weeks late, meeting with a student to go over his rough draft, and…I’m not sure what else.  I’ll post an update.

I don’t teach at all on Tuesdays or Thursdays, so I use those days for checking email and responding, grading, class prep, writing, reading, committee work, etc. I also volunteer at my son’s school on Tuesday mornings–I figure since I’m not commuting, I have an extra hour and ten minutes, but volunteering counts as discipline-related community service, in any case.  I don’t always get 8 hours of work in on Tuesdays, but I still average at least 40 hours a week during my 9-month pay period (though I might need  to count the hours of the week right before and the week right after to hit the numbers exactly–I don’t necessarily work 40 hour weeks every week of the nine months–I’m keeping track of these hours on Excel this semester for the  first time, so I’ll have LOADS of great stats soon). A lot of Mondays and Wednesdays I clock 9 or 10 hour days, and I regularly work at least four hours Saturdays or Sundays (sometimes both).

Back to the question of what if nothing ever changed–I’m feeling o.k. about where I am in my career right now, not just because I get a good enough salary  (these things are all relative) for working hard on average 40-45 hours a week for 9 months of the year (I’ll post about summers some other time, but let me just say that I don’t get paid in the summer, so as far as I’m concerned, all my hours then are pro bono.)

If nothing ever changes with my job and I’m teaching four sections a semester until I retire or die–it’s a pretty good gig. Everything I spent time on today is fulfilling to me in one way or another.  And then during lunch, a former student told me that she was answering security questions online for some thing or other and the question came up: Favorite teacher? And she said my name is what came to mind.  I told her how cool it was to hear that, given my status-quo-scenario musing.

So in addition to having students I enjoy, I get to eat lunch with a former student who still appreciates what I was able to do a very long time ago, when I wasn’t nearly as good at what I do as I am now. Pretty cool.

UPDATE: Talked to an advisee about whether or not she should drop a class and what she needed to bring on Thursday for her advising appointment to talk about fall classes. Will also be grading a second essay that was turned in two weeks late (they lose 5% per business day it’s late, and two weeks is the absolute cut-off, but some points are better than none).

 

Found & forwarded an old power point lecture & list of sources for a colleague who’s working on a workshop related to civility in the classroom.

LATER UPDATE: The student didn’t email me her search terms. I was actually disappointed.

7 Comments

Posted in Family, Searching, Teaching, Uncategorized, Work Life

Tagged

Clitter Clatter Clutter Time

Posted on March 24, 2012 | 4 comments

Here’s the thing–I just don’t deal very well with reality. The whole 24 hours in a day concept? Sure, I’ll tell you with a straight face that I get it, but then you should ask me what I anticipate getting done in the next 24 hours. Or, I might have that covered, but if you multiply it at all, say, times two (as in a weekend), and ask me what I think is going to happen, if I’m honest at all about the list in my head (or the one on paper, or in my laptop), we’ll stand there realizing I’m in cloud cuckoo land.

In some ways, my husband helps me notice reality (in other ways not so much). He did me the hugest favor when we were first living together. I have what is officially diagnosed as “mild to moderate hearing loss,” and although I’ve known about it since I was five, I was never told I needed hearing aids. I missed a lot, and in conversation, people would often say, “Did you hear what I just said?” and I would always, ALWAYS say yes, because it’s embarrassing to miss what people are saying, and it’s exhausting to attend carefully to what people are saying when you have even mild to moderate hearing loss, and I wasn’t raised to show my weaknesses. (In general, I think I was raised to be honest, but nevermind about that.) Nath was the first person in my life, ever, who added a second question to “Did you hear what I just said?” If you know nath, this won’t surprise you. He said, “All right, so what did I just say?” At that point, I might be honest and say “no, I didn’t hear you,” but I was just as likely to take one last stab at it and say, “You said, ‘the broccoli is on the air conditioner?'” It was hilarious in one way, because he wouldn’t have said anything about broccoli or an air conditioner, but embarrassing and frustrating (for both of us) in every other way. So I got hearing aids.

So what I need, and nath can’t be this person for me, is someone who can help me with the math and ask me the second question when it comes to scheduling my time–not just, “What’s on your to do list?” but also “is your to do list in any way realistic given that you have neither clones nor droids nor parallel universes that might help you in the next 24 hours?” Obviously, it would be best if I could ask myself that question, and I try, but as I mentioned earlier, I don’t always deal with reality well.

I like to say that my life goal is “sustainable chaos,” which I imagine as just enough stuff going on and lying around that life feels vibrant and alive but not overwhelming. It’s a skinny-minny line between “sustainable” and “horrific,” however. At least in my experience. I want my house to look like a professorial version of Mary Engelbreit-land, but it’s really easy to go from that over into my own private episode of Hoarders.

As I mentioned in a previous “inner weasel” post, I tend to try to do too much. It’s sort of a 21st century virus, I think, though it certainly was catching in the late 20th century. It’s what we say to each other all the time, right? “I’m behind at work,” “I’m too busy,” or “I don’t know how some people manage to get enough sleep.”

And as I’ve mentioned so far in several posts (sensing a theme here, or a chronic, nagging complaint I really should see someone about), I tend to suffer from burnout.

So this post from Nadia Bolz-Weber, one of my spiritual heroes, came at the perfect time. “The Spiritual Practice of Saying No” is pretty mind-boggling to me. She has a terrific list of good reasons to say no, and concludes with the following:

“Women especially get the message that they are not allowed to say no and if they do say no they should feel really bad about it. This is a lie.

My friend Sara told me that when I write an email or letter telling someone no, to write it, walk away for 20 minutes, then come back and take out all the apologies because they make me “sound like a girl”.

Now I try and say no graciously and with some humility but without apology.

Certainly we should all say yes to some things that are inconvenient or not on the top of our list of how we’d like to spend our time. I’m not talking about trying to pawn off narcissism as a virtue. I’m just suggesting that sometimes we say yes for really stupid reasons and then spend our time or energy on things that rob us from being able to say yes to things that are actually ours to do and care about.

Lastly, if you need to say no, you do NOT need to try and borrow the authority to do so from the person you are saying no to. Would it be ok if I need to say no? Oh I’m so sorry. I hope that’s ok. Are you ok with that?

Yikes. Stop it. (note to self)”

This really resonated with me. The following phrase occurred to me at work a few weeks ago, which I haven’t used yet in seriousness, but am holding in my head as a kind of talisman for when someone asks me to do something and doesn’t take no for an answer: “Please use this as an example of how budget cuts are beginning to affect quality.” It’s not a bad point, really, and in some cases it’s true, but why do I feel the need to have a sentence like that in my head? (I mean, other than amusing myself and a few others.) Because somewhere deep inside me I believe that no matter how hard I work, no matter how much I do, I’m not doing enough to justify my existence on the planet.

That’s pretty wacked out.

I actually read “The Spiritual Practice of Saying No” after I’d read “The Spiritual Practice of Saying Yes.”

Here’s what resonated with me in that post:

“Any Pastor or leader of an organization that requires a great deal of volunteerism to function can attest to how frustrating our culture of selfishness can be. The people who are inclined to say yes to everything do all the work and then burn out and become resentful about the people who are inclined to say no to everything. It’s as though the world is divided into martyrs and slackers.”

I can see my life as plotted out on a roller-coaster graph careening between martyr and slacker. I don’t seem to get moderation, though I have long pointed out that “moderation in all things” is not a very moderate statement, and that “moderation in most things” makes more sense as a moderate motto.

Honestly, this is a big part of why organized religion and I are spending some time apart at the moment. I don’t seem to know how to be a part of a faith community without volunteering too much, too soon, and burning out. The last faith community I was part of got some good stuff from me, and I got some good stuff too, but at the end, I was so burned out that I ended up responding to some social missteps by pretty much cutting all ties. I felt as though I were Jonah, vomited out by the whale. Headed in the right direction, sure, but YUCK.

Bolz-Weber concludes, “Some of us need to know how to say no to what is not really ours to do. And some of us need to know how to say yes to what might be ours to do, we just don’t feel like doing it. And most of us are both of these people.”

I am both those people, all the time pretty much. So. How do I figure out what is mine to do? And what is not? Until such time as I can answer those questions, I think I will continue to have problems over-packing to the point of not being able to zip the second-hand kid’s backpack on rollers I bought to use for my classes since my shoulder is so messed up I can’t carry bags any more. I would worry even more about looking utterly uncool and middle aged if I hadn’t recently seen this video of George Clooney in which he uses the roller to pull his backpack. Just one more reason to love the man.

(And yes, I do realize that by adding George Clooney to this post, I’ve cluttered it up, but THAT’S what I mean by sustainable chaos–I did, in fact, say no to including every single thing I thought of while writing this, but I said yes to George Clooney. In that sense, I know one thing that is mine to do. When it comes to Clooney, I will always, always say yes.)

UPDATE: It has occurred to me that I injured my shoulder by trying to do too much in the pool, exacerbated the injuring by doing a weight-lifting routine I wasn’t really ready for, and made everything worse by carrying really, really heavy bags on the same side as the injured shoulder. Lovely as a metaphor, really a drag as reality. So I’m just going to meditate on that pain for a few years.

4 Comments

Posted in Burnout, Procrastination, Searching, Teaching, Uncategorized, Work Life

Honoring My Inner Weasel, Part III

Posted on March 23, 2012 | 3 comments

As failures go, this one’s not catastrophic. Not so much crash and burn as bump and simmer. No cause for flailing and wailing–but maybe a little hand flutter and throat clearing would be in order.

I just posted an Excel spreadsheet for all my students to see, showing how promptly I’m returning student work this semester. After three semesters of being right around or below an average of a week, I’m currently returning student written work, on average, 9.7 days after they’ve turned it in. For my ENG 102 (Advanced Composition) classes, the longer essays are taking me 10.25 days.

There are seven full weeks of the semester to go, and then finals, so if I’m on top of things, the numbers should be below 7 by the end of the semester.

But I’m disappointed.

And not giving up! This failure to meet my goals (I wanted to be under 7) comes along with some other failures (subject for future blog posts, thank you very much, but I don’t want to depress myself by listing all my failures here).

There are some basic reasons the numbers are worse this semester. I have a lot more students, for one thing, and I decided to start using D2L rubrics (D2L is our “course delivery platform” for the UW Colleges–online resources for me & my students) for ENG 102 papers. I also decided to start doing reading quizzes regularly for the first time in ENG 102, and I’m doing those as D2L Quizzes. I’m also doing D2L quizzes for my literature class (did I mention I’ve used D2L quizzes only a little previously, and never where students were required to use them?) and I’m asking my creative writing students to turn in portfolios online so I can grade them digitally, which in turn motivated me to turn my regular rubric into an Excel spreadsheet so the math gets done automatically and I can post it on D2L with the commented-on digital copy of their portfolio….

As always, there was some procrastination involved. But not as much as there would have been in the past. For example, being able to post feedback for each student online means that I was motivated to finish grading assignments in all three classes at the beginning of spring break, rather than waiting until the end. If I’d been grading paper copies, and couldn’t return them until March 26, I would probably be grading this weekend instead of last weekend. (Not that students were checking their campus email during spring break, but they might have–they could have, in any case.)

But I’m realizing that one of my biggest problems is not so much procrastination as trying to do too many things. Here’s what I’d like to do each and every semester:

  • Teach well.
  • Revise my courses (heavily) in terms of reading and assignments.
  • Do a decent amount of committee work (my share or perhaps slightly more or less, depending on a number of factors).
  • Write a lot of poetry.
  • Send a lot of poems out to magazines.
  • Reassemble my poems into chapbooks and full-length manuscripts and submit to multiple publishers.
  • Write fiction. Submit to publishers.
  • Write plays. Ask for feedback.
  • Revise what I’ve written.
  • Do scholarly work on creativity.
  • Work on a chapter for a scholarly book on creativity.
  • Raise funds for a sabbatical (well, that’s not EVERY semester).
  • Spend as much time as possible with my son.
  • Spend as much time as possible with my husband.
  • Spend as much time as possible with my parents.
  • Maintain friendships.
  • Volunteer in my community.
  • (Insert 75 things I’m sure I’ve forgotten to list, HERE).
  • Be a mellow, laid-back person.
  • Get a good night’s sleep regularly.
  • Work an average of 40 hours a week during my contract period.

What’s crazy is how much of that I try to do. What’s amazing is how much I end up getting done.  But here’s the thing–I’m pretty tired of feeling like no matter how much I work, I’m always behind and there’s always more to do.

So.  The math is pretty easy in this case. Doesn’t even need a spreadsheet. There are 24 hours in every day. There are nine months in my work contract. The work contract thing has been true for me for 20+ years. The 24 hour thing has been true a very long time.

So, the answer is simple, right? I need to set my priorities and be firm about them and not apologize. Unfortunately, there’s not a spreadsheet that can show me how to do that.

3 Comments

Posted in Procrastination, Searching, Teaching, Uncategorized, Work Life

LET THERE BE LIGHT AND LESS CAFFEINE

Posted on December 9, 2011 | 7 comments

As I write this right now I’m sitting in the sun. It’s true. 6:11 a.m. in Wisconsin in December, and I’m drinking my coffee, soaking up the rays. Ah….

I am allowed eight more minutes in the sun, at which point I have to turn off the light box on my kitchen table and get on with my day.

We bought the light because in this house the grownups have S.A.D. issues. Though neither of us has the official diagnosis of Seasonal Affective Disorder, it’s clear the issues we have with depression grow worse when the nights grow longer.

There’s an episode of Northern Exposure in which the characters discover these crazy light caps and they want to wear them all the time. I get it now—I have not yet wanted to turn the light off when it’s time. It is intoxicating.

So yes, I’m self-medicating, but this seems more productive than my standard self-meds—caffeine, alcohol, and salty-fatty-sweet-food-of-nearly-any-variety.

[Oops—there. Time’s up. Two minutes over, actually.]

I really identify with (we’re talking seriously resonate with) this quote from Pam Houston, in an essay called “ Breaking the Ice “:
“On September 21 I feel nothing but flat-out panic that we are about to enter the long slide into darkness that feels like an annual survival test. People think June 21 should be a seasonal-affected person’s happiest day, but it’s really joy mixed with trepidation. June 21 may be the beginning of summer, but each day will get a little shorter from then on. March 21 is the only truly joyful day: twelve hours of daylight and nothing but clear sailing ahead.”

But for me, this winter is better already. There may well be a bit of placebo effect going on when I turn on the light, but I don’t care. Even the first day I realized I didn’t feel the need for that second cup of coffee with breakfast (let alone the third or fourth at work), and with less caffeine in my system, I’m sleeping better. My doctor friend Betsy pointed out to me once that caffeine stays in your system 24 hours.

The third day of the light box, I wrote an ode to it:

LIGHT BOX

What Goethe said he wanted, we now have,
My husband emailed me. Not officially
A medical device, and yet I love
It more than Xanax. As if a little box of Italy
Beams up from our table. Just once a day
I sit in front of it, in the morning, first thing.
I never want to turn it off. I want to stay
On the piazza in the sun, emboldening
Myself for normal days of normal strife
And pleasure, days I find so difficult
Sometimes. I’m simply not equipped for life
In winter. Summer makes me gloriously hot
And happy to be alive. When he was about to die,
“More light” is what the poet said. “More light.”

There’s a parallel universe (the one from which Narnia springs) in which I’m a freelance Christian evangelist and author and the title piece of my latest book is Let There Be Light and Less Caffeine. In it I talk about the light box being helpful but my morning devotion ultimately being more helpful. If you live in that parallel universe, please buy that book, because as a freelance evangelist, I depend on the grace of God and the influx of cash from my brothers and sisters in Christ. And buy it from a local bookstore, if you would.

I’m not in that universe, but, even in my current unchurched mode, when I say “light,” I think God. In the Cruden’s Complete Concordance I stole from my Dad years ago (hey—maybe I should buy him a replacement for Christmas—I wonder if they make it for the Kindle….) there are almost 200 references for “light.” When I read the reference

“is a lamp, and the law is l.             Pr 6:23,”

I hear a praise chorus—not sure if it’s something we sang at camp or if it’s from an album—the  Christian pop band Second Chapter of Acts, maybe?

(And here I say a heartfelt thank you Jesus for the blessings of the internets—by the time I figured out that the lead singer for Second Chapter of Acts,  Matthew Ward, looked alarmingly like Riff Raff from the Rocky Horror Picture Show, I wasn’t in touch with anyone who would get both references. There aren’t that many people on the planet who would get both references.)

And of course I think of light when I think of Christmas. Wendell and I will be lighting advent candles on Sunday and talking about Jesus and light. We’ve got our tree up, and lights on  our porch. (A student said, “I saw your lights. They look like they’re falling down.” “That’s how we roll,” I told her.)

Speaking of the second chapter of Acts, it is the second chapter of Luke that we usually use for our Christmas story. It’s what Linus quotes from, for example. But it’s the first chapter of John that I need the most, not just at Christmastime, but year-round. (And not just because one of my favorite Emily Dickinson poems begins “The Word made Flesh is seldom, but tremblingly partook.”)

I cling to John 1: 5 this time of year, and somehow the King James Version sounds better than any,  “And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” The darkness either didn’t understand the light or couldn’t overcome it, depending on your translation. In the winter up north, either way, that’s good news.

7 Comments

Posted in Family, Searching, Uncategorized

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