To Teach

Some rewards do come from teaching college. This week I learned about emo from an essay by one of my students, and later a student tutor demonstrated google documents for me. I feel so young and with it. At a regular job I might have fumbled along without this knowledge. Think of the lack of conversation fodder at cocktail parties. There may be meager compensation, and as an adjunct, I may not garner respect nor be acknowledged. At least I get to approach cool. I think I'll go listen to some Weezer, put on my studded belt buckled in the back, and allow a collaborator or two into the nefarious plan I stored in the great ether I imagine google documents to be. (It's probably less romantic--an abandoned fridge sans door with tapes carelessly tossed on to the rusted shelves.)

Two Google employees

head for a newly arrived

storage unit. Note cool

attire and attitude.

So, Like Wow

I have been taking an additional medication for a few months. I am not going to make this a confessional about the meds I have experienced along the way in an effort to "stabilize" my life. However, this new ingredient in the cocktail has implications I am attempting to accept. The stuff is called provigil and its original purpose and claim to fame is as an antidote to narcolepsy. Supposedly, the person who ingests provigil is able to remain alert, purposefully and appropriately grab a twenty minute cat nap, and then awaken again alert. Two different medical professionals claimed it is used by military who might at any time be engaged in battle. They may go for days without the opportunity for long stretches of sleep, so short naps and return to alertness make sense. I wondered if the same pharmaceutical rep had given the same spiel to both doctors. More recently, the medication has been approves for other uses.
Whatever the medical explanation may be, I believe provigil has made me more aware. Now I am left with all this damned awareness. It is similar to when I finally admitted to myself that I was an incest survivor. Oh swell. Now I have this yummy information. Don't I feel better? No.
This time I am becoming aware of things around me and inside of me that I don't like so much. So, deal with it. Right?

Fear of Writing

Maybe it is more a fear of life in general. It's difficult to determine. I have flirted with writing in this blog again for several days but was afraid to actually follow through with any writing. I don't know if I feel guilty for not having visited for so long. I really did not want to be tied in that way to a blog, having one more thing I would feel guilty about not doing any particular day. So much for my whining.
My life is typically messy. I have a family and a neighborhood and friends and church and work, so of course life would be messy if I am paying attention at all. Sometimes I just pay such close attention that I wake up one day and realize that craziness is reigning. Then there is the crawling back. In the Bill Murray movie What About Bob? the Richard Dreyfus character talks about baby steps to mental health. He publishes a self-help book about the concept. I personally think baby steps are a leap (forgive the mixing of metaphors). Crawling makes more sense to me. That action better expresses the weights that keep me from standing. I'm not envisioning a baby crawling but an adult in one of those Renaissance paintings of a classical figure pulling himself up out of the abyss. Cheery, huh? So I am crawling back once again, and posting to the blog has to be a positive component.
Work sucks. Not being listened to sucks. Being powerless sucks.

Honesty

So why is honesty the best policy? There is always the moral consideration, but I vote for simplicity. Keeping track of lies wears out the liar. Some may view lying as a challenging game, but the stakes get higher and higher, and I do not relish the possible embarrassment. As a teacher, I would find a few truthful explanations so refreshing instead of the tired, old and often lame excuses. Even originality does not impress me when I consider what the lie is doing to the person making up the excuse. I remember fondly a game show called Truth or Consequences, not so much for the format as for the title. It might be fun to live by that motto.

Application

In order to present myself in my best light when applying for a job, I must convince myself that I have a very real chance of landing the position. I have to want it, be passionate about it, see myself as the person performing it. In the meantime, I must continue on the job I already have, the one that now seems so unsatisfactory. I submit a long application, a personality questionnaire, my resume, a letter. I interview with administration and also with a committee of peers. During the one-on-one, I again answer personality questions. The committee asks more job related questions, but sometimes it is difficult to detect the nuances they expect. I try not to second guess. Instead, I go with what comes to mind and I give each meeting my all. I think the interview has been positive, but then I thought the same about that previous position. I was so comfortable, but someone else was hired. When I inquired, the director pointed out that my specific experience was not enough. Did they really need to get my hopes up to discover that the experience on my resume was lacking? Did they enjoy my performance?

But I must protest too much. Whoever gets the job has to jump through the same hoops. It's all part of the loosely choreographed dance that continues into the relationships once employment occurs. Allowing my optimism to slip away does no one any good. Like getting in shape for a sport, if I choose to seek a new job, then I will go through the required motions with the expected attitude.

Ebb

My emotional energy is at an ebb. I read posts by blowhard academics and instead of reacting in anger or going on a student centered tirade, I just have a generalized, "So what?" That is much of my life right now. "So what." I hesitate to share that with anyone in particular. I would not want to be the one to bring gloom into someone's life. But even the smiling comes hard these days. I need a dose of grandchildren. I need at least one of them around the corner night and day. Is this heavy sadness the simple truth I have sought? Even the irony holds no charm. And I begin again. Some piece of beauty floats my way and I manage to be awed. Then the untethered loveliness dissipates and I am amazed at the weight of the air around me. Some thing is naggingly unfinished, maybe a family curse to never quite know what it is.

Perfecting People

I perused a book last night. War Against the Weak was written by a journalist, Edwin Black I believe, about eugenics. The topic was not entirely new to me. I was interested in some of the connections he claimed to make between the movement and the Carnegie and Rockefeller foundations. There were other claims and suggestions, but something I found puzzling was a current that went through some of the leaders' proclamations. They were against helping the downtrodden(sp?), the disadvantaged and impoverished. Without charity, they reasoned, the true fittest would survive and the least worthy would die off as a breed. That odd conclusion was coming from elite and sometimes even intelligent sources like Margaret Sanger, although I might want to further check the citation. But recently I saw something on the Neanderthals in Europe and there, as with other anthropological studies I have read, marking a species as human rather than animal had everything to do with compassionate charity. Finding skeletal remains of members who must have been cared for in order to live as long as they did proved their humanity. What an interesting circle of thought. Survival of the fittest may have something to do with evolution but eugenic theory certainly tips toward devolution.