Monday, August 11, 2014

Can We Panic Yet?

Tenure stuff due in two weeks.  Big move to our new house in six days.  Absurdist Partner is a wizard with packing, so we'll be ready for the movers, no thanks to me.  But each day this week is a jumble of tasks from both lists -- and then there's all we don't know, like when exactly the sellers will move out.  Tenure wakes me up in the morning.  It also makes me incredibly grouchy and short-tempered.  Just tenure me already.  Or don't.  I no longer care.  I just have to get this dossier into some kind of shape, and once that's done (which includes an emergency shipment from Amazon because it turns out I can't find a particular journal with a piece of mine in it -- even with AP's amazing packing and repacking abilities), I get the infinite joy of wrangling with tabs and printers and making things look nice.  The printer in my office decided that after I bought new ink cartridges (four!!) was the perfect time to develop a hiccup in printing, so now I have this big hulking thing on my work desk that is good for nothing.  When I see it, I want to hurl it out the window Julia-style.  (Lillian Hellman was so frustrated she threw her typewriter out the window.)  So I'm bringing in our home printer, which is small enough to be portable.  This brings up the good question of why I need to be on campus in the first place -- after all, being on campus during the summer makes me grumpy, but it's another half hour back home (at least this week -- next week it will be longer), and I need that hour. 

To show for this summer, I will have tenure binders and a new home.  But so far I haven't prepped my fall classes, and, sadly, I haven't been able to take any real time off.  (I've taken off a day or two when I've felt too awful to go on, but what I mean is the very image of summer:  spending the day reading or watching TV or doing something else that has nothing to do with being productive and everything to do with just being.  Oh dear angels of tenure, please let me get a day or two like that next week.  After next week, Absurdist Child is home and we'll have to figure out how we're going to homeschool while giving Mommy some time to prep her classes.  We will have a couple weeks off -- two or three -- before his art and music classes kick in, so that's good at least.)  I really would've liked to have felt refreshed before the term started.  Maybe the new house will magically make me feel refreshed rather than inundated with tasks.  Here's hoping.

Have a good week everyone.   

2 comments:

What Now? said...

Yeah, I think that the summer you move and prepare your tenure dossier is just not going to be the summer that you feel refreshed. BUT -- maybe you could think of it as the summer in which you've put things in place that will lead to a more refreshing life long-term.

Earnest English said...

You're right, WN. I want it all. But life will be much better and have so many more possibilities, and I should just be happy with that. I worked all the way through the summer last year, so I guess I feel I'm already overdue. Things will be amazing a couple weeks from now.