Kickin' Thursday in its Pants (Also: Becoming 'The Enemy')
I'm super-tired at the moment, but fairly content. This has been a rough week, with a lot of changes occurring during a very small time frame at work. I wasn't really expecting this to happen -- in fact, I was striving to have a calm, non-interesting semester in terms of teaching and commitments at the college, but once again I've completely abandoned my previous notions and expectations in order to thoroughly embrace something new and exciting but also potentially disastrous!
'Cause, apparently, that's how I roll.
I took on a temporary administrative position at the college that will, hopefully, help out my department and also be a good fit for me in terms of easing back into teaching and working full-time. The colleagues I've asked for advice are evenly divided as to whether this will actually happen. Some think that the job will allow me to accomplish more when I'm physically at work, so that when I return home I can emotionally/mentally "be" with my family instead of spending my evenings, weekends, and sometimes the mornings grading (which is what I end up doing when I teach a full load). This is what I'd like to think will happen. But some think that I'll be dragging just as much work home, if not more.
I guess we'll see. The damage is done now -- I'm in. I exchanged two of my classes for more office hours, which are supposed to free me up for handling student and adjunct faculty concerns, as well as duties like department scheduling and committee meetings. Today will be the first real day of this kind of work, I think. I anticipate that, at the very least, I might begin to clear off the four metric tons of paper that's been slowly accumulating on my desk over the past year.
And no matter what happens, I'm determined to remain fiercely protective of my morning writing time. So much so, apparently, that I've added an hour. A. is rising at 4:30 a.m.(ish) in order to leave the house around 5 a.m.(ish) for work these days, so I've begun to rise at that hour, too. It's nice to say goodbye to A. before he leaves -- it gives us the comforting illusion that we actually see a lot of each other during the week! Also, I've managed to get some good writing done this week.
I'm now completely finished with Part Two of Chapter X of the fairy tale. I'm sure anyone who reads this blog is happy to know that, because it means I'm one part closer to finishing the entire thing and thus, hopefully, I'LL STOP WRITING ABOUT IT COMPLETELY. I'm excited, too, because it means I'm one step closer to finishing my manuscript as a whole, which is just blow-my-mind exciting because this is the first time in my life I've written a collection of poems this long, this unified, so complete, and -- if I do say so myself -- good! (It's nice to finally have some confidence in my own work. Hopefully that confidence will hang around for a while, too.)
And it was nice to have such an uninterrupted stretch of writing time -- I managed to write the first three stanzas of the final part of Chapter X this morning. Booyah! Take that, crap-and-emotionally-exhausting week. Take that, Thursday! Take that, fairy tale poem! I will finish this poem soon. And then -- ohmygod -- move on to the play . . .
'Cause, apparently, that's how I roll.
I took on a temporary administrative position at the college that will, hopefully, help out my department and also be a good fit for me in terms of easing back into teaching and working full-time. The colleagues I've asked for advice are evenly divided as to whether this will actually happen. Some think that the job will allow me to accomplish more when I'm physically at work, so that when I return home I can emotionally/mentally "be" with my family instead of spending my evenings, weekends, and sometimes the mornings grading (which is what I end up doing when I teach a full load). This is what I'd like to think will happen. But some think that I'll be dragging just as much work home, if not more.
I guess we'll see. The damage is done now -- I'm in. I exchanged two of my classes for more office hours, which are supposed to free me up for handling student and adjunct faculty concerns, as well as duties like department scheduling and committee meetings. Today will be the first real day of this kind of work, I think. I anticipate that, at the very least, I might begin to clear off the four metric tons of paper that's been slowly accumulating on my desk over the past year.
And no matter what happens, I'm determined to remain fiercely protective of my morning writing time. So much so, apparently, that I've added an hour. A. is rising at 4:30 a.m.(ish) in order to leave the house around 5 a.m.(ish) for work these days, so I've begun to rise at that hour, too. It's nice to say goodbye to A. before he leaves -- it gives us the comforting illusion that we actually see a lot of each other during the week! Also, I've managed to get some good writing done this week.
I'm now completely finished with Part Two of Chapter X of the fairy tale. I'm sure anyone who reads this blog is happy to know that, because it means I'm one part closer to finishing the entire thing and thus, hopefully, I'LL STOP WRITING ABOUT IT COMPLETELY. I'm excited, too, because it means I'm one step closer to finishing my manuscript as a whole, which is just blow-my-mind exciting because this is the first time in my life I've written a collection of poems this long, this unified, so complete, and -- if I do say so myself -- good! (It's nice to finally have some confidence in my own work. Hopefully that confidence will hang around for a while, too.)
And it was nice to have such an uninterrupted stretch of writing time -- I managed to write the first three stanzas of the final part of Chapter X this morning. Booyah! Take that, crap-and-emotionally-exhausting week. Take that, Thursday! Take that, fairy tale poem! I will finish this poem soon. And then -- ohmygod -- move on to the play . . .
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