Really Good and Very Bad

Trying to get back into regular blogging because I miss it and you guys. It's a nice creative outlet for me. Well, not that I'm very creative, but whatever. You get what I'm saying. I just have to survive a very long workshop tomorrow and then I'll be home free.

SPRING BREAK!!!!

Too bad I'm in the middle of an Austen paper. I'm so off and on with this thing. If I wrote about it half as much as I think about it, I wouldn't have even needed an extension. For some reason, though, I'm procrastinating so badly. It's not that I'm disinterested: actually, I think I'm really onto something with my idea and have lots of ways to address it in a close reading. I. Just. Don't. Feel. Like. Writing.

So let's do a random list of life these days:

Really Good - My first Comp Class that I teach in the mornings. My students are dolls and I want to clone them for every class I will ever teach in the future. Ever. I love them all dearly.

Very Bad - My second Comp Class that I teach in the mornings. They are disinterested and too cool for school and uninvolved and uninvested and silent. I may or may not refer to them as soulless when talking to G. If I only had this class, and my life wasn't balanced by the dolls, I would think I was the worst teacher ever. They are so bad that - when we had to go to AR last week - I arranged to have one of my fellow TA's sub for me. He's more experienced at teaching "kids" than I am, and he's super laid back and alternative (for lack of a better word) so I knew he would be great. He texted me while I was in AR and told me that teaching my 2nd class made him realize how good he has it and that he promises not to complain to me about his students anymore. They're really bad.

----The picture below was taken on my Spring Break last year. Some things never change.----

Really Good - Remember how one of my complaints about last semester (my first of teaching in college) was the constant evaluation? The constant observation and explanation and second guessing and articulating? I was so ready to be done with that. The good news is that I am...as a teacher.

Very Bad - The bad news is that I walked into a whole new world of scrutiny as a professional writing consultant. I'm evaluated on something just about every day. I'm not kidding. On the one hand, this is some of the best professional training and advice I've ever received. On the other hand, sometimes I just want to scream and rip my hair out. I. Just. Need. A. Normal. Day. Have you ever watched a documentary where the camera man follows a key character around and at some point they look like they're going to throttle him? And it seems to take the last teeny tiny bit of patience they have to deeply inhale and then (overly) calmly tell him to turn the camera off? Yeah. That's how I feel sometimes. And it doesn't help that my hardest and longest workshops are always freakin' scheduled for Fridays. Who thinks that's a good idea? I never have any energy on Fridays! All I want to do is crash!

It wears on me.

Also this time last year - our trip to Nebraska to visit Willa Cather's home town!

Really Good - Almost everyone I encounter in all of my jobs (including the vast majority of my coworkers) are younger and less experienced than I am. I don't mean that in a condescending way - it's actually really refreshing, all their hope in light of all my skepticism. They are energetic and determined and don't yet know that life is not going to bend to their will. Poor things. But I'm reminded almost every day how varied my job experiences are. I started out in higher education for a few years but didn't stay there. I worked for the government then for contractors in a lot of different capacities before - as we all know - returning to higher education. And, although I wouldn't describe that decade of my life as particularly positive, it sure was eye opening. I know a lot about a lot of things. And, because of the money I made in those jobs, I've traveled to a lot of places. I have a lot of good memories that balance out the...other stuff.

Very Bad - The travel bug has bitten G and I very hard and there's nothing we can do about it. Admittedly, this is a first world problem and let me just say up front that I know it. But. We've spent the last several years spending our time planning for trips. We're either saving for a trip, planning for a trip, or on a trip. And it's weird to have spent the last year (since Croatia) not doing that. For the first time in almost a decade, we actually don't know where we will go or when we will take our next trip. So much needs to happen in the next few months that will affect how the next few years will go.

It occurs to me that this might sound weird. In the past, travel has served as an escape for me, which is not what I'm looking for now. However, one of the (few!) things that G and I have in common is our desire to just get up and go. Fly halfway around the world somewhere to see really different people in really different countries living their really different lives in so many really different ways. With cool animals. And yummy food. And beautiful, exotic landscapes. I think about travel every day. I think about it at least as much as I ever think about anything else. So, to not have something on the horizon feels weird. It actually feels wrong to me. Which is why I skulk around whining about our need for a rich benefactor all the time. I'm kidding but then I'm so not kidding. 

You better believe when we're planning our next trip, that will be all I ever talk about again on the blog. In the meantime I must live vicariously through you (cough Russia cough) (cough living in Germany cough).

Singapore

I guess that Austen paper is, in fact, not going to write itself. I'll pay you $1,000 to do my writing workshop for me tomorrow so that I can sleep in and roam around the house in my pj's all day...