Blue Accountablogging

I'm feeling low. My grandfather died last week; while my father was willing to pay for the tickets, I got sick and Tot was just finishing up an ear infection, so we didn't go to the funeral. My father and I had it out, finally, over some unfinished business. Members of my family are having catastrophically hard times right now. Lots of death. I'm just feeling low, like everything's dismal and unlikely to get better. But really I'm probably just worn out, not terribly healthy, sore from working at the CSA, and grieving, not just the loss of my grandfather, but the loss of the way I wish my family were. I know that an important part of being an adult is to accept the way things are and stop getting angry or upset that things -- and people -- aren't different. But I think I need to grieve right now, instead of telling myself I should be over it by now. Which I should. It's just more of the same. But I'm obviously upset about it. I don't have the strength to fight too hard with myself.

Which explains why I've been home for two hours and really haven't done anything that I set out to do. I need to finish up the spring quarter (we have a really late grade turn-in date, mercifully, considering that this is the first quarter that I haven't had everything in more than a week early, but then it's been a very eventful end-of-quarter). I have revisions, final papers, and some other stuff to look at in one class. The other class is just final projects and assigning grades to things like participation. I'm not going to get all this done this week. Not even close.

Then there are other things I really need to get to, like this article I'm trying to write and for which I really should have a draft written by the end of the month. That's not likely to happen, but still. And then there's the annual report, which I really need to pound out. Then there's planning for the summer, but I'm not even going to put that on my plate just now.

There are other things I'd like to do today, like work out, do the dishes, and try to take care of myself, since I'm so run-down and borderline sick it's crazy.

So what to do? Originally I was thinking an hour for research, an hour for the annual report, then two hours for grading. But if I do that now, then it'll be 4:30 by the time I'm done and I won't get anything else done, not even, likely, some working out, which I think I need. Maybe 45 minutes for each, then an hour and a half for grading. Then I'll be done by 3:30. That sounds better.

Here's what I've done so far: made the bed, threw some clothes in the hamper, cleaned up the toddler toys all over the floor, watered the plants and took care of the patio, read lots of blogs and wrote a couple emails. Pretty pathetic.

Here's what I'm going to do:

1. Do dishes, so I get that instant satisfaction that comes from being able to see progress.> DONE!!
2. Work on research for 45 minutes. DONE!!
3. Work on the annual report for 45 minutes. I think I spent way more than 45 minutes here, but it felt good to make clear and visible progress on this puppy!
4. Pump? Eat? Mmmm. Swiss chard. Wow.
   
5. Grade for 1-1/2 hours. Hmmmm. Not so much.
6. Work out.
7. Take shower.

I realize this is the most boring post in the world, but I need that public accountability. I'm depressed; what can I say?

Grandpa

I found out last night that my grandfather is dying. The doctors say it's a matter of days. He has two different cancers, and he is in his eighties. I should've seen him when I was in Urban City a couple weeks ago for my sister's wedding, but I was barely functional the one day I could've seen him so I didn't.

Though I haven't seen him in a while, my grandfather is a very important person to my writing and my scholarly life. He really started me on the trajectory I'm now on -- in trying to understand the mystery of him, I developed a whole collection of scholarly interests that I am still fascinated by. He was always a very difficult man, sort of cold and distant emotionally. He worked all the time, talked about war and politics during the holidays. He couldn't really relate to people on other people's terms. He was only really interested in talking about a few subjects interesting to him. Luckily, he and I shared interests -- mostly stories about his rather remarkable life -- and I wrote about him over and over again.

Part of me wants to hop on a plane, but I really can't. We don't have the money, for one thing. I would have to take the Tot because we are not at all prepared for me to be gone -- no breastmilk saved up, days that the daycare is closed when Absurdist Lover has to work. I have responsibilities here. I could ask my father for the money to fly Tot and me to Urban City, but there is a whole drama there. I owe my father tons of money already which he is angry about and mentions that "we need to talk" but then doesn't call me when he says he will and doesn't pursue clearing the air with me. Yet, I know he's still mad at me because he didn't call to tell me that Grandpa was in the hospital or anything and because my brother made reference to it. I know Dad avoids confrontation, and I should just deal with it because of course he has every right to be angry, but we're doing our best with one car and can't pay him back yet. It's hard for me to believe that he needs that money to eat the way we do. And maybe I've just been avoiding the whole thing too, because it pisses me off to have to be the one to pursue it when I'm already ashamed of the whole mess and I also have a full and exhausting life without worrying whether my father is angry at me and won't deal with it a dozen states away.

I don't want to borrow pretty much near a thousand dollars right now. I want to honor my grandfather and what he means to me -- my brother says he's only sometimes lucid -- but I also don't want to further weigh down my little family's half-deflated liferaft of hope that we're going to eventually be able to climb up and out of the financial mess we're in. I just can't do that to AL when he's working so hard and not really loving this job -- really finding some of the corporate crap impossible and ridiculous. If my father gives us the tickets, that's something else. Though it would be nothing but headache, I suppose I would take Tot on a couple planes and tough out dealing with all the stupid issues (Tot in some sort of living space not meant for an active toddler, Tot with Dad's dog, etc.) if Dad would buy us the tickets. I'm not holding my breath, though maybe he would. Obviously, I don't really want to go to Urban City, don't really think it will do much for me and my needs when losing my grandfather to deal with all that. I'm really torn. I swear to God I was already really exhausted from trying to be a good little trooper finishing up a sort of depressing quarter, driving everyone around, and dealing with Tot's being sick, which means he wants to nurse through the night, i.e., bad sleep for Mom.

I can't really expect the family to understand and respect that I'm torn between my duties to them and my duties and responsibilities to my little Absurdist Family. (My needs in the face of this loss: how do those factor in to them?) I'm not sure that there is much I can do there in Urban City -- for my grandfather, my father, my siblings. I can see my grandfather, if he makes it that long. I can go to a funeral. I should probably call my father and ask him how he's doing, despite his idiocy. (How angry and disappointed at him I am to realize that his anger toward me outweighs his letting me know that his father is dying! Did he say anything about his anger toward me at my sister's wedding? No.) I know what's important is that I make the right decision for me and feel good about it -- but that's so much easier than it sounds. What is the right decision? (Is not going the right decision for me? Or am I just trying to justify it? I don't know.)

I feel terrible. I've been in my office for hours now. I should be reading some student papers already woefully overdue to be graded. Instead, I've been writing about my grandfather (which I'm sure will turn into a eulogy that I can ask someone to read), remembering things, and reading things I wrote about him. And crying.

So what do you think? Am I the terrible daughter and granddaughter I think I am for thinking that I really can't just up and go to Urban City? Do I wait for the funeral? Do I go to the funeral at all, if I have to pay for it? I figure I shouldn't go anywhere until next Tuesday anyway, when my classes are over. Not really because my job is important, but for my own peace of mind. Maybe I'm terrible, but I'm exhausted and I need to finish up my courses. I have a couple weeks between the end of this quarter and the start of summer. Maybe I can go to Urban City then and help with whatever Dad needs help with.

More on Writing: I Wanna Do More of It!

I was rereading the terrific and varied comments on this post and wanted to respond, but when it got super-long, I figured I better just write a new post. (You all rock, dear great readers! Rock on!) But it's been so interesting to re-read all your comments now after a week where I really wanted to work on research and so I did in weird odd hours.

I read once that the key to writing with kids at home (I think this was a stay at home mom) was to pull up the file and keep it open all day, so that you have that sense that you're still working on it, but that you were pulled away from it and will get back to it.

Now, I didn't do this exactly (I usually have tons of things open on my computer, so having a file open doesn't really exert the tug on me that it should), but I did have this sense that if I had a few spare minutes I wanted to use it to read and take notes on an article, do another library search and request stuff from ILL or even, one exhausted evening, type up my handwritten notes (which is a must for me) into a file.

What I think works about this strategy is that they are all short assignments, little almost modular pieces I can work on and then leave. In fact, in the idea-generation phase of scholarship, it's even better if I come to the work many different times so I get different perspectives and ideas.

This tends not to work as well when I'm actually trying to draft the damn thing, which is usually a terrible battle because I have to figure out how to organize the piece. This part really needs the kind of focused effort that requires a longer session. And then I might try to organize it multiple times until it feels right or at least okay. It's so tempting to not even think of this researching-and-taking-notes phase as writing. Except that it is, and I know it. But this is why I never want to say "I'm writing scholarship"; it's always "I'm working on scholarship."

Anyway, what I noticed about this engagement with working in little bits was that I was much happier and more fulfilled on the days I got something done on the research front. I think I've finally really grokked that research IS the way to tenure as well as the option of moving elsewhere and that I've got to do it. But I think there is something else going on too: I just like what I'm doing.

So it was weird for me to write a blogpost that said I probably can't write every day, then find myself stealing moments to write/work. Since Friday (when I stole some moments at the Corporation, if you can believe it!), I haven't done diddley-squat though because 7am is really really early -- and that's the time that AL has to be at work. And also I'm finishing up the quarter. And Tot is sick. So: no time to even dream about research. Okay, I can dream about it for two seconds before I fall asleep, before Tot starts crying to come to our bed. . .again. Poor guy. Poor us.

I'm going to bed now, because I'm an awful person, a really bad example of an attachment parenter: after a few nights when Tot needs to come sleep with us, I absolutely relish being in bed without him, able to stretch out, able to sleep in any position I want. Off I go. Good night all.

Oh. My. Freaking.Goodness

It has been the most exhausting. . .I don't know anymore how long it's been. . .long time.

So to start where I left off last week I woke up late to get to my flight to Urban City, but made it nonetheless. I slept, somewhat, and worked on research on the plane. Then despite the fact that I told my credit card company that I was going to Urban City and what I was planning to use the card for, the idiot company still put out the fraud alert when I tried to rent a car at the airport, making it impossible to use said credit card. Gah! The rental car company was really nice and let me call AL from their phone while we tried to figure out what to do. Ultimately, we had to let the rental card company hold money in our checking account so I could rent the damn car. So that was an exercise in purgatory.

That day, finally, I visited my grandmother. That was fun. Then it was off to the wedding locale and though I thought that everything was going to be mellow, I ended up being whisked away by my sister and her friends and it was a whirlwind from then on, right up until the part where one of the bridemaid's (not me!) didn't have her dress with her until 15 minutes before the wedding. Oy vey! I've never had so much hairspray on my head in my whole life -- and I was an inventive teenager. It took several days to wash it all out.

I got home Monday evening, then Absurdist Lover started his new job the next day. Because we share a car, I had to drive him, then take Absurdist Tot to his eye doctor appointment. The next day I worked my first day at the CSA (yay! in the rain! squashing beetles! yay!), then I went off to my final workshop that makes me despair of any other such workshops. I'm not signing up for anything outside my field that proposes to teach me how to teach from now on. I could critique the facilitators up and down, but I won't. Suffice to say: madness and badness.

Then Thursday, driving everyone everywhere, then going to teach, locking myself out of my office, driving everyone everywhere again. Friday, same thing without locking myself out of my office. All this, while making sure that Absurdist Lover is there at his new job by 8am. Which is a time I don't really believe exists. I now understand how people get their children to sleep by 9pm and themselves crash by 10: it's called waking up at 6. I crashed on the couch at 10pm last night watching Pollyanna. How embarrassing.

Today, I woke up at 7, took a shower (unheard of on the weekends), got Tot, etc. By 2pm, I had baked bread, gone grocery shopping, started the laundry, taken care of the Tot. I wanted to do anything but the grading I needed to do. When I finally got to it at 5pm, I figured I could do one in 20 minutes. And by the end of 2 hours, I had 5 graded. Then I nobly did 3 more once Tot went down to sleep. Now I'm considering my options: I could work on research, which I've strangely been doing in between other things; or I could eat chocolate chocolate chip ice cream. The last few nights I've been too exhausted to get to dessert! What is happening in this world?!

All I can say to all this craziness is that I can't wait until two things: 1) This quarter ends in less than two weeks and then I have about two or three weeks off. 2) We get another car.

I basically go through my day telling myself what a trooper I am, what a good job I'm doing, mostly just because I'm still alive at the end of the day.

This is the first time in a week I've been able to actually consider putting together this blogpost, meanwhile so many of you are off now. Next week will be better, even though I have to have AL to work even earlier (egads!); at least I won't have to go from quietly planting seeds in flats and hunting beetles to pretending I find a bunch of hot air intellectually and pedagogically inventive in a matter of hours.

Tomorrow's the farmer's market. Fitting all the lovely things -- like homemade bread, working at a farm, and going to farmer's markets -- alongside all the other things that must be done means pushing myself to do things when part of me just wants to park my butt on the couch, watch some 8 hour saga, and drool. I feel like this week I've been living my life in a higher gear (or a lower gear -- one that has more oomph). I'm not sure I'm up to it. Two weeks from now I'll be taking Tot to daycare and probably coming back home to sleep. Oy vey.

Inspired to Work, not Travel

I'm not sure if it's the great meeting I had with my mentor or the great feeling I have from having a plan (get those articles drafted and out: you've got 2 years. ready? go!) or if it's something about thinking about the way I'm going to talk about my work in my annual report, but I've been working on my article in drips and drabs, mostly collecting articles to read. I'm really excited about reading some of the stuff I've printed out as well as working on my annual report, so much so that I'm taking those two things with me as I go to Urban Home City for my sister's wedding. I hope to get time to work on them, which I know is terrible, but there it is.

My mother has been totally over-the-top bubbly about it all (sending me text messages at 3am is so not cool, Mom), while I'm just trying to live through each day, get things organized (renting a car when you have no money is no fun), and get it done. I honestly hadn't even thought about the prospect of fun until she mentioned it. Maybe it's just that it feels disloyal to have fun without Absurdist Lover and Absurdist Tot, who are both staying here because it's just too expensive for us all to go, not to mention that I think we'd have a terrible time flying with Tot, despite that his daycare providers say he's the happiest baby they've ever seen and he never cries there. Well, he cries plenty here. He's been tantrum-y lately, pulling my hair and grabbing at my glasses. Maybe I just have a bad attitude about my family, or large parties, or saying the same things over and over again. ("Yes, I like my new job." "Yes, I somehow survived the snowy winter." "No, I'm not looking for a job anywhere near here.") Maybe it's just that I have to wake up way too early, fly, land, visit people, and drive all around way before I'm ever going to get any real sleep. And since Tot has been having a hard time sleeping lately, so have I. I'm pretty zombified.

I'm going to go and try to get 3-1/2 hours of sleep before I have to get up, take a shower, etc. Maybe more blogging on the road.

On Why Writing Daily May Not Be for Me

Undine and Kathleen Fitzpatrick over at Prof Hacker are talking about writing again and the old writing-in-the-morning game again. I know that this conversation, while inspiring, may not really be for me. Yes, I can wake up and plunge into something, but the brain that plunges is certainly not my best brain. Not to mention, one's time with an active nineteen month-old is not one's own. But I'm sure I have friends who'd simply wake up before the Tot and get much done. But here's the thing: when I do wake up before him and focus on work before I get him, I don't really want to stop. And I'm not sure I really want my brain to be in work stuff and wanting to be in work stuff when I really should be with him with my whole head. Especially now as he has just vaulted into some incredibly annoying phase where his favorite things are all things he's not supposed to do: standing on the chair, climbing over the sofa, and sitting on the bottom shelf of the entertainment unit. These are all things he's heard "no" to a dozen times, so he does them while watching us with that smile. I don't know if he can truly understand "no" yet, but he spent a lot of time today in his playpen, which is the punishment for naughty things. Is he too young for that? Are we still supposed to be doing distraction? Any thoughts?

Anyway, back to writing. After a horrendous week where I actually got some strange sickness leaving me very very weak but without many symptoms, I was determined on Friday to get some scholarly work done, especially because it's Annual Review time and I have that my scholarship -- or lack of published verification thereof -- on the brain. So I worked and made good progress. I did not actually write. I read a vital source for my article and took copious notes and really allowed myself some time to wade around in those ideas. It was great. When I was done, I didn't really want to stop. I didn't want to work on the backlog of student marking I have to do. I didn't want to prep for Monday. I couldn't make myself sit still to do those things either. I wanted to do research, Annual Review things like work on the report, or chat with colleagues.

This is my problem with the whole writing in the morning idea. It works really well for people who are better at transitions than I am. I suck at closing something up and going on to the next thing. My brain really wants to stick around in the research. Which makes it hard to focus on even the most worthy student project.

So I have teaching prep to do tomorrow that I couldn't get myself to do on Friday, even though I stayed until 6pm. I don't know if other people have this problem. I don't know how to get around this problem either, because I definitely have to work on research on a regular basis, because this article I'm working on must be done by August 1, and I'll be teaching pretty much straight through until and past then. (We're on quarters, so we're still a month away from being done with this quarter, then I'm teaching in the summer.)

But I feel amazing for having finally read the source article and taken notes. Also, I met with my mentor, and we have a plan. I need to work on getting some articles out. There's even a timeline for this, if you can believe it. So I have to get serious. I am to learn to say no until I get these articles done and out. It's very liberating.

So I'm trying to figure out exactly how I'm going to get work done while I'm teaching. I had a mentor long ago who was one of those giving dynamic beloved rock-star professors who saved one day a week to focus on scholarship. Maybe I can do something more like that, since a half-hour each day may work for me when I'm revising, but not really in the earlier stages. And I hate feeling badly about teaching or taking care of the Tot because they're not research when my brain refuses to shut off and move on.

Trying to Honor My Emotions while Focusing on What I Can Control

So, there's a lot going on right now -- and as is usual probably for all of us, that which has been most tumultuous is pretty much unbloggable. But beyond that, I've been feeling pretty hemmed in by my life lately. AL drives me to work, then I'm inside my building teaching and running around until pretty much the second that AL comes to pick me up. Then we pick up Tot, and I'm mom again. What I'm saying is that I get very little time to myself. I guess this is what my chair meant when s/he said that being on the tenure track and having kids at the same time takes discipline. What's made it worse the last few days is that I've been grading, grading, grading -- and so even when I'm home, I'm holing myself up in the bedroom trying to get stuff done. I really don't feel well in my body and know that the answer is going to have to be to get some exercise, but I'm really struggling to figure out when I'm going to be able to do that. I know I'm not completely insane, because a colleague who is also junior faculty says that she doesn't know how I manage at all, because she's running around like a beheaded chicken without a child. Still, I'd really like to live to see my child grow up. And I really feel like I'm run down in a serious way. I'd rather not wait until the heart attack happens. But when? When am I going to fit in some exercise? And how without putting the entire household out? I'm sure that this one is going to take someone else to figure it out, someone who is not staying up late blogging after grading after a particularly hellish day.

Sometimes I don't know whether I'm an idiot for the choices I've made. I guess that's not a very productive thought just now though.

So I'm going to meet with my mentor about the big picture of what I'm doing from now until I go up for tenure. I have to say that lately I've been dealing with the minutiae, really just running from thing to thing and hoping it's enough to keep everyone happy. (Can I just indulge in my bleak mood for one second and say that my running around lately has not been focused on whether I'm happy? But then, that may not really be fair. I'm happy when I'm looking at the six goslings following their parents. I'm happy when I look into Tot's face. Sometimes I feel a wave of love for my life; I'm just tired now. And achy. And dispirited.) So the question of what I want to accomplish and how my goals for P&T fit into that has been interesting and productive. While I thought last year when I was writing out my plan that I really would write the weird fat book where I discuss three different related heads of the hydra, I've thought lately that even though the weird Three-Headed Hydra book would be super-cool, and there would definitely be productive and cool stuff to see when I put the heads together, it really would short-shrift each Hydra Head. And because of stuff going on in my midst lately, it's clear I have even more to say than I thought about one particular Hydra Head. Even in the diss, this Hydra Head was pushing at 50+ pages; one of my readers commented that he thought that the overstuffed chapter probably suggested that there was a book in there waiting to come out. So now I'm thinking of writing the obvious and more conventional book: One-Headed Hydra. It's hard to figure out whether it would actually sell, but I'm not angling for the book by tenure, only a realistic plan for articles by tenure.

There's another set of concerns I'm interested in -- and these I'm sort of collecting into a second book. So I can write aspects of either and still feel like I have a trajectory. I like this. I like feeling like there is a plan. Like I actually have something to say to my mentor. This is exciting.