RRRGHHHHH

I am going to take a break from whining about whatever else it was I've been whining about to complain about my job.

I love my job, I really do, but do I need to do it every day at 7:30 in the morning?

The scheduling gods have not been kind to me this semester. On the plus side, I won't be teaching a night class on top of that like I feared, but.... I'm a night owl. 7:30 am is when I like to go to bed. FUCK.

I can't believe I have a full class of twenty kids at 7:30 am. What is wrong with them?
Maybe they are all foreign, and 7:30 equates to something reasonable across the pond.

7:30 really isn't that bad, until you consider that this means taking the 6:30 bus in, if it even runs that early. Assuming I would like to shower before I teach (and I would), I will need to get up no later than 5:30 every morning. Which means that I will kill myself before August ends.

Please, oh purveyors of the internet, do you have any advice for me?

"Suck it up and be glad you have a job you love."
"Coffee. Lots of coffee."
"Sleep in your office."

Any other suggestions?

Thoughts

1. Anything written after three a.m. that is not the direct result of a mad burst of inspiration is catharsis, the reassuring clack of the keys, the surety that your mind is still in there cranking. Right? Still in there?

2. It is entirely possible to work until your heart gives out. It is also entirely possible to get there by worrying about whether or not the ones you love are going to barrel headfirst into the reservoir without lifejackets on, by standing out much too long in the sun after too many beers, or by simply losing sight of one of those many-legged devils as he slides from the wall to somewhere mysteriously under the carpet.

3. How do you make your heart calm down?

4. Is it possible to hate someone for making a selfless decision?

5. It really wasn't that selfless.

6. Do you ever have the perfect comeback, the absolute right thing to say about four hours or four weeks too late?

7. Don't you hate that it wouldn't have made a difference?

8. Que sera sera, I'm going to bed.

Just a Few Thoughts

Sometimes I feel just a little too much like Maculay Culkin.

If, in a Bildungsroman, the narrator has not turned sixteen by page 400, fuck him. 40 pages about how brilliant he was as an infant? Oh just fuck off!

I would be a brilliant cook, if I could only find the time and energy to go to the grocery store.

Inconsistency is the spice of life, if you can fall in love with your enemies and savor the taste of cyanide.

Living for the present is great, but if you don't live for the future, you won't have one.

I can't stop biting my lip.

It's ice cream sandwich time.

So I got a call this afternoon from my mother. . . .

"Hey! I googled you last night!"
". . . . And?"

And the fact of the matter is, my manifesto shows up on Google Books, and one of my blank journals is at the top of the English Dept. blog for a binding show.

If you will excuse my bragging, I would just like to savor this moment: if you type in my name followed by the word "books," things pop up. And I love that.
I hope the trend continues.

Have you ever "googled yourself?" On one hand, it's an entirely vain enterprise, but on the other, it's a way to see yourself through the eyes of the world at large. Case in point, I usually don't think about the fact that I technically still have a Myspace (and only remembered it because it came up on Google a few minutes ago), but I remember a few years ago I went back and figured out how to log in again, and what came up was infinitely nostalgic. Sophomore me? I think it was.
It still says I'm in a relationship with oh God why, but she loved him, because he made her laugh. There's still a dressing-room photo of her in a prom dress, which Hannah must have taken, and can I have her waistline back please? And those tennis arms? She still gets creepy messages from the cart boy at Meijer, the one with the giant mole on his face. She still hasn't written back. The friends on her top 8? Some she couldn't live without, some she doesn't speak to.

This led me to two questions:
1) God, how did I get so OLD?
2) Am I still who I was?

I couldn't bring myself to delete it. I suppose I will have to, some day, but I kind of like the idea of a static, timeless self floating out in the world somewhere.
I'm not sure that I want that timeless self to be me at sixteen, but. . . .

Some things have gone really well since then. I'm not sure Iowa even registered in my consciousness then, but I am precisely where I wanted to be at 22. Professionally, at least.

So, professionally, I issue this challenge:

Doppelganger of the Duke swim team? You're going down.
Married lady with a baby? You're going down.
Famous flutist? Homeowner? Dead lady? You can all suck it.

One day, I will be on the first page of the google search results.
Twice.

Only part of me is kidding.

In the meantime, I will use my anonymity to... get back to work.

more complaining

Midterm midterm midterm.

Last night, I dedicated a solid four hours to working on it... while I read and understood things, I wrote nothing.

Today, I dedicated.... ten hours now, and I have a grand total of three pages.

Tomorrow, I need to come up with at least 12 more.

FML. Something about a "you have three days to do this midterm, here's the prompt, GO" reminds me of the papers I had roughly three months to complete during my undergrad. I still probably did them in three days, but still, it's the premise.

I WANT TO GO TO BED DAMNIT WHY CAN'T I THINK FASTER