I'm a basket of nerves in case full of baskets in the mornings this week since school started. I don't know exactly what's going on except for two changes in my schedule--I'm teaching earlier than usual and my advising center hours are right before I teach. Perhaps the changes make me more stressed than less, which is what I hoped when I changed the schedule and then promptly forget that I changed the schedule.
So, I shall make a very boring list of what I did today in an attempt to figure out why I'm rushing around like a chicken in a basket of full of cases in the mornings. Sorry for the tedium. Take caution, ye progenitors of future generations and would-be professors of future students. Generous anxiety seems to be the primary side-effect of good luck and happiness.
1. Woke up at 7 in a deep sleep, dreaming about how there are too many cassette tapes in a box by my bed.
2. There is no box of cassette tapes by my bed but Erik did tell me upon my waking that he forgot to tell me yesterday about a cool story. The chief of police had new-found evidence in a cold case. He came to Erik's work to see if Erik could fix a tape that had been damaged by water. The sound quality is very bad but if Erik can fix it, they may have a lead. The fact that the tape was a cassette tape a coincidence with my dream? I don't think so.
3. Find Zoe in the bathroom already dressed. She tells me how big her hair is. It's very dry and staticky in this arid mountain town. Zoe's hair takes up a room. She put on a headband.
4. I woke Max up who, upon rising, asked if we were going camping today. Any day that begins with a "no" and "you have to go to school" makes for a hard morning.
5. He wanted oats. Usually, I only make oatmeal on the weekends but as a bribe to get dressed, I said yes.
6. I started making oats. He said he'd get dressed, "in a minute." He helped stir the oats in still his pajamas. This is why I do not work for the state department. I have a hard time holding up my end of the bribe.
7. Finally I asked him if he got dressed in the kitchen, would he?
8. Another minute.
9. And then a yes. In the kitchen. On the counter. While he stirred the oats.
10. Lunches finished packing. Hats, coats, gloves on Zoe's dance shoes, library book in her backpack, Erik's lunch in hand--go, my people, go.
11. It's 7:30. I'm tired.
12. Email. So much email. Email the editor of a magazine about interview and photos. Email editor of Quench about editor of magazine hoping to get him an advance copy. Email list of reviewers wanting galleys. Email friend about manuscript. Email a different editor about paragraphs cut from Quench. Email students about new webpage I made on website. Email student about copy right laws. Email student about internship credit. Email about camping in the desert. So many emails. I receive no emails, which in some ways is good. Emails lead to more emailing but in some ways makes me think I'm possibly living in the void.
13. Read 28 pages of one student's 68 page thesis. Make notes. Do not send notes yet.
13.5 Find out spring break is not when I listed spring break. Perhaps my anxiety has to do with the course schedule that I roundly screwed up this year. What's the problem? I'll make a new one. No one does anything unless I email them to remind them anyway. Still. No typos in this syllabus. Just the wrong days and times all over the place.
14. Stop reading theses. 9:30. Where did the last two hours go. Time to run.
15. Run for 40 minutes. Even though it's not so cold as it says it's as cold as it was which was 7 degrees. The difference between 7 and 17 is not so much on the back side of 17 anyway.
16. Shower.
16.5 Load dishwasher. I almost forgot. Twice!
17. Make lunch: lettuce. Quinoa. Queso ranchero. Sunflower seeds. Poached egg. Eh. OK.
18. Write! I have 20 minutes. Start an essay about a restaurant in Portland called Der Rhienlander (is it still there Portland people?). Forget to write about polar bears (note to self. Write about polar bears.)
19. Send micro essays off to editor. Just thought to do it thanks to Facebook. Thanks Facebook.
I did have Facebook open 12 through 19 . Perhaps it is a problem. BUT! Facebook also gave me these great ideas:
News about borrowing microbes in the someone else's healthy intestine cures many. Polar bears and Alaskan huskies playing in the cold. And the idea to email the editor at #19 some micro essays.
It's noon now. I'm at school. I'm mostly relaxed. Perhaps I just needed to be a place where people could see me work instead of working in the void of the internet. Is this work?
I have my lesson plan planned for my undergraduate nonfiction class. I can't imagine what could go wrong? Perhaps that's it. There's the anxiety. The idea that I forget at the beginning of the semester what else could go wrong with the semester. But since I already disastered the course schedule, perhaps it is, as it is in the house Garp buys in World According to Garp (as I told my Poetry Workshop) pre-disastered. Shouldn't everything, now that everything's already screwed up, go perfectly?
If worse comes to worse during class and I feel like things are spinning out of control, I can always pull FB up on the overhead and explain how FB is really time-saving research.