Time to smell the flowers

One of several unanswered emails in my Inbox right now is from a friend asking if I’ve done something to celebrate the end of the semester at Keene State. The fact that said friend asked this on Tuesday, after I’d submitted grades right before their noon deadline, and I haven’t had a spare moment to answer her email tells you something about the past few days.

After submitting grades at Keene State, I had online discussion board posts to catch up with; after I caught up with discussion board posts, I had neglected errands to run. Today, I drove from Newton to Keene to attend a pair of faculty development meetings; tomorrow, I’ll be helping teach meditation to a gaggle of suburban high school seniors. I haven’t, in the meantime, had a chance to finish last week’s online grading, answer emails from friends, or otherwise celebrate the end of one set of classes while another set continues on. The downside of being a multi-tasking, moonlighting adjunct instructor is that there’s always something going on somewhere: the end of the semester for one school is Just Another Week at another.

The upside of being a multi-tasking, moonlighting adjunct instructor is the steady flow of paychecks a staggered academic schedule assures. As I chatted with various adjunct colleagues at Keene State, several of them mentioned in one way or another the financial pinch of the coming months: a summer without teaching is, for adjunct instructors, a summer without paychecks. By choosing an academic rather than a corporate career, I chose a employment path that allows me more free time in the summer to enjoy the flowering and leafy things that bring that season joy; by choosing to supplement my adjunct income at Keene State with what I can earn elsewhere, I chose a path that occasionally results in conflicting schedules.

Later this summer, I’ll have time to smell the flowers, catch up with email, and celebrate some downtime…eventually. In the meantime, an occasional glimpse of crab-apples, dogwoods, and flowering maples will have to do.

 

Cheating

One of my favorite snippets of musical liner notes comes from Peter Gabriel’s Plays Live CD which, after listing the several concerts at which songs were recorded, duly notes that some sounds were overdubbed at Gabriel’s home studio. “The technical term for this,” the liner notes wryly admit, “is cheating.”

And so I’ll duly note that I did not go to Lilac Sunday at the Arnold Arboretum yesterday; instead, I shot this picture in my backyard in Keene last May, when lilacs last in my dooryard bloomed. I’m sure the lilacs in Keene are currently blooming–and I have photographic proof from Leslee and Sara and others that the lilacs were blooming in Boston yesterday–but I spent the weekend holed away in Newton with my paper piles. Here’s hoping I don’t catch any of my students doing anything that can technically be termed cheating, and I’ll see you after I submit the last of my end-term grades sometime before tomorrow’s noon deadline.

 

Re-visiting

I’ve spent a good part of yesterday and today–the middle portion of my spring break–tweaking my academic website. I’m presenting a paper at a conference in May, and I’m currently taking some tentative steps toward looking for more secure (i.e. non-adjunct) academic employment, so it’s good to have an “online presence” that actually reflects who I am and what I do.

This means uploading sample syllabi, fleshing out the portion of my website dedicated to scholarly research, and updating both my CV and resume (and yes, I have both: the former goes into detail about research and publications while the latter focuses primarily on teaching). All the stuff I’m tweaking, uploading, and organizing was already online, but when I moved this blog to WordPress, I also moved my website, and I didn’t immediately get around to moving, updating, and organizing these additional documents.

This week’s website-tweaking has also involved a strange sort of re-visiting. One of the things I wanted to re-post on my academic website is an essay I call “The Upshot,” which was the final section of the final chapter of my PhD dissertation. (I also re-posted the abridged and complete versions of my dissertation proposal in case anyone is interested in that.) “The Upshot” tells the story (in an informal and decidedly non-academic tone) of how I began, got stuck on, and ultimately finished my dissertation. In a word, “The Upshot” recounts the long, strange trip from the project’s initial stages to its completion.

In my own teaching, I typically ask students to write a final reflective piece that talks about their writing process, and I often find these informal essays to be the most insightful and enjoyable part of students’ final portfolios. How can you know what you learned until you look back on where you’ve been? In my own case, “The Upshot” is my favorite section of my entire dissertation; not only did I write it when I was (thankfully!) almost done, it’s the portion of the project that feels the most personal to me. The rest of my dissertation is me trying to sound like an academic; “The Upshot” is where I take off that formal guise and talk about what initially inspired me to start the project and what I came to learn from it.

Re-posting “The Upshot” forced me to read it again: it’s been nearly four years since I finished my dissertation and then promptly deposited its massive, still-boxed bulk atop a bookshelf where it’s been gathering dust ever since. The process of finishing a dissertation left me feeling overdosed on academic discourse, so I haven’t wanted to re-visit my own foray into that field. And yet, the paper I’ll be presenting in May is a chapter from my dissertation, so there’s something inside me that is dipping a tentative toe into the familiar (albeit still murky) waters of scholarly prose: presumably the interests that led me to start a dissertation are still a part of me even if I burned out on the actual act of completion.

I’d initially illustrated “The Upshot” with a handful of photos I’d taken during a lonely trip to San Francisco I’d taken in the summer of 2003, approximately six months before I finished my dissertation and almost exactly a year before my then-husband and I separated. As the ironies of the Universe would have it, that conference I’ll be attending in May will take me back to San Francisco. All roads, it seems, lead me back to the same themes, the same places, and the same images, the process of pilgrimage being an out-going trip that always seems to circle back to self and home.

Needless to say, I am not in California’s Marin County this week: today’s pictures are the same ones featured in the very essay I’m talking about.

 

Time capsuled

When it rains, it pours…and when it pours, it’s difficult to take pictures. This morning after a drenching dog-walk in which almost-freezing puddles pooled on last week’s ice and hard-packed snow, I reviewed last month’s photo folders to find something to post today. After I’d found some images from a sunnier day to share, I took a peek into my blog archives to see if I was suffering the “is it spring yet” blog-blahs this time last year, too.

What I found was the “before” to the above “after“. It seems that roughly one year later, the abandoned paint and wallpaper shop in the above photo is still in need of a fix-up. I guess one way to avoid cleaning windows is to get rid of your windows entirely…or lacking motivation to do that, let bored vandals do it for you.

Any photo-blogger knows it’s wise to save up images for a rainy day, or week, or is-it-spring-yet season. Not knowing when life will get busy, the weather will turn, or you’ll fall prey to a Don’t Wanna Wednesday, you’d be wise to stock up on ideas and images in case of blog-emergency.

Unfortunately, time is perishable: it can’t be stockpiled like canned soup or beans or other emergency rations. Looking back on that post from last March, I see the more things change, the more they stay the same. The dissertation and creativity coaching I mentioned then has fallen (intentionally) by the wayside: these days, I’m too busy teaching, blogging, and trying to have a life to spend much time cultivating the creativity of others. And yet, yesterday I received a brimming basket of peace lilies by way of thank-you from a PhD candidate I’d coached to completion: a reminder of success. Progress does indeed happen even (or especially) when you aren’t expecting it.

In that post from last March, it almost sounded like I was giving up blogging; instead, in retrospect I recognize I was looking to re-focus and re-define what I do here and how it fits into an active life. They say the unexamined life is not worth living, and I’d argue the opposite as well: the un-lived life is not worth examining. Before you can sit down to consider what your Ultimate Existence is all about, you have to stand up and get on with the business of living with its dog-walks, icy puddles, and broken windows. Progress does indeed happen even (or especially) when you aren’t expecting it, and roughly one year later after wondering aloud what I’m doing here, here I am still doing it. Whatever didn’t get fixed up last March, it seems, is doing okay this time around.

 

What women want

Perhaps you’ve heard the old joke about what women really want from the men in their lives. What every woman secretly fantasizes about, the old joke claims, is to be with two men at the same time: one to cook, and one to clean. Finding a man who shares his feelings or puts down the toilet seat is merely icing on the (wedding?) cake.

I’ve never been a huge fan of Valentine’s Day. Yes, it’s nice to take an annual opportunity to do something special for your loved one(s), but a day devoted to the commercial shilling of hearts, chocolate, and roses always seemed a bit tacky to me. When I lived in an all-women’s dorm during my senior year of college, I was dismayed by the sheer amount of misery one simple day could cause. Girls without boyfriends felt dejected, and girls with boyfriends felt a strange need to flaunt whatever their sweetie had gotten them, leading to a huge competition where Boyfriend A’s chocolates paled alongside Boyfriend B’s long-stemmed roses, which were outdone in turn by Boyfriend C’s diamond earrings. Otherwise demur girls turned downright vindictive, it seemed, knowing that the worth of their relationship would be judged (by a jury of their peers, of course) on the basis of what their boyfriend bought. Heaven help those creative and/or impoverished college guys who tried to get away with writing a poem, painting a picture, or singing a song to express their affection: those non-commercial gifts just couldn’t compete in the annual round of Whose Boyfriend Is the Best.

Tonight, J and I have nothing special planned for Valentine’s Day. Thursday is my usual night for making the weekly drive from Keene to Newton for the weekend, so Reggie and I will arrive at J’s house later tonight just in time for dinner, just as we always do. Instead of eating out, we’ll eat in, Thursday being soup and salad night: something light and easy as we settle into the downside of another work week. When you have a man who cooks and cleans, there’s no need to go out for wining and dining: at this point, heaven sounds like another Thursday night on J’s couch watching Whatever’s On over a couple glasses of wine.

Early tonight, J emailed to ask when I’d be arriving for what he’s termed my “multi-staged” Valentine’s Day gift, adding that he’d told a female friend what he’d gotten me, and she responded, “While it isn’t your ‘traditional’ gift, it could be fun.” Right about now, a man who cooks, cleans, and dreams up nontraditional gifts sounds just right, those college games of Whose Boyfriend Is the Best notwithstanding.

The box on the left is my gift for J, which isn’t exactly a traditional Valentine’s Day gift, either, although it’s gaily masquerading as one. I’ll let you know what it is tomorrow, after J’s unwrapped it…

 

Submerged

The sleep I lost getting ready for last weekend’s trip to Los Angeles along with the aftermath of jet-lag has caught up with me at last. Even though I got nine hours of sleep after a full day of teaching on Tuesday, the principle of “too little, too late” seems to apply as I woke up this morning with a sore, raspy throat: for me, the first sign of an oncoming cold.

Most folks can and do work through colds, but in my case, full-blown colds almost always lead to laryngitis, and as a teacher, laryngitis is the one sickness I can’t afford to have. After spending too many winters fighting colds that developed into laryngitis then bronchitis, I’ve learned to lie low–very low–at the first sign of a cold, quarantining myself in my apartment away from germ-laden college students and imbibing as much hot soup, tea, and Vitamin C as I can swallow.

Missing one day of face-to-face classes at the beginning of a cold, I’ve learned, is better than fighting the full-blown consequences for months thereafter. In the case of my online classes, calling in sick isn’t a problem; I can and do use sick days to catch up with online teaching tasks, one benefit of a job that allows you to teach in your pajamas. My face-to-face classes are a bit more problematic: at the college level, there are no substitute teachers, so if I’m home sick, class doesn’t happen. That being said, both email and Blackboard make it possible for me to communicate with my face-to-face students while I’m sick, and right now, typing feels much better than talking. Although it troubles me to cancel classes so early in the term, I’ve taught–and dealt with my laryngitis-prone body–long enough to know that we can make up next week the material we didn’t cover today…but only if I take the time and care to get well between now and then.

And so today I feel like I’m submerged in my own life aquatic, soaking in plenty of fluids while I swim in warm oceans of blankets. Lying low–very low–at the first sign of a cold is a bit like diving, my body protected by a bathyspheric bubble from whatever illness is floating about. Whatever bug is out there, I tell myself, isn’t going to get in here…and I’ll wash out the initial inklings of an existing invasion through an intentional overdose of chicken soup, fruit juice, and Emergen-C. Only then, I tell myself, will I be ready to respire among the sleep-deprived, immunity-compromised, and germ-laden college students I normally share a diving bell with.

Click here for more photos from cloud-shrouded Santa Monica. Although embarrassed locals insisted it “never rains in LA,” I myself like the moody look of cloud-covered beaches.

 

Watch your step

Soon on the heels of arriving back in New England after visiting my family in Ohio, I’m leaving again, this time for a weekend wedding in Los Angeles. Although I’ll be taking my laptop to keep in touch with my online classes, I’ll once again be out of the loop when it comes to blogging. I’ll see you when I return from the Left Coast; in the meantime, watch your step and beware of falling ice.

 

Slipping away

No sooner do I get home from Ohio, it seems, but it’s nearly time for me to go back to school: another example of time slipping out of my fingertips.

In one sense, I’ve already been back to school for more than a week. My new online term started last Monday, so two classes of students and I are well into the second of our eight weeks together. But for me, “back to school” refers to face-to-face classes, and those resume next week. In the meantime, I’m trying to figure out where half of December and January have already gone. What happened to the long winter break I’d looked forward to during a busier-than-usual fall semester?

Time has a way of slipping away regardless of the traps and snares I set in its path. Yesterday I sat down with my Book of Lists–the notebook I use to organize teaching and other mundane tasks one to-do list at a time–and made the first set of lists for the new semester. For each day, a page; on each page, a list. Today, tomorrow, and the day after: here are the tasks, chores, and errands I have to do between now and then.

I have almost an entire book filled with such lists, and time slips away still. Do you know how many times I’ve lamented in occasional scribbled journal entries (some kept in the Book of Lists, and others elsewhere) about how I need to “tame time” through more efficient list-making, scheduling, and other time-management techniques? Despite all my organizational tips and tools, time refuses to slow for me. No matter how many times I make my lists and check them twice, time still continues to fly.

Time, I’ve decided, is a wily creature that delights in wriggling from our grasp, creeping away into any tangle or thicket where we with our calendars, to-do lists, and time-lines cannot follow. Yesterday as I made yet another set of lists and noticed how my current Book of Lists is nearly full, I wondered whether I should keep it once I’ve moved onto its successor. I keep my journals–I have a portion of my bookshelf where they stand numbered and dated as they keep the time written within their leaves. How much more indicative of my days, I thought, is each day’s to-do list with its assortment of tasks Done and Still Undone?

They say Saint Peter stands at heaven’s gate with the Book of Life, a list he checks for the souls of the saved, their names appearing like a entries in a maitre d’s reservation book. Isn’t Saint Peter’s book merely a mythic version of my own Book of Lists, a whole lot of lives chronicled in his while mine keeps track of merely one? Time can’t be tamed, but it can be tracked, noted with each line-item like a snow-stamped footstep. Where have my days gone, and what (if anything) did I accomplish with them? Only the Book of Lists knows, if I dare page back and double-check the checked.

The second photo in this entry is intended as a visual reminder that even in the snowy wintertime, furniture sometimes chooses to go wild.

 

Out of the loop

Yesterday while I was in New Hampshire casting my vote in the primary there, the wireless router here at J’s house died a sudden and dramatic death. As a result, I’ve been largely out of the online loop…and since I’m flying to Ohio to visit family tomorrow afternoon, I’ll continue to be largely offline through the weekend, keeping in touch with my online classes but not doing much blogging via a slow-as-molasses dialup connection at my parents’ house.

So, while I’m out of the Internet loop for the next handful of days, here’s a quick picture from a recent Bruins game to show that Real Men do indeed change diapers, with several men’s rooms at Boston’s TD Banknorth Garden (home to both the Bruins and Celtics) being equipped with changing tables. I guess fatherhood, like both hockey and basketball, is a contact sport.

While I’m gone, feel free to avail yourself of this handy “Random” link to dip into my archives. Even I sometimes find hidden gems I’d forgotten about there.

 

Retrospect

Yesterday was my birthday, so here is the requisite shot of Friday night’s celebration: Girls’ Night Out at Solea in Waltham. In past years, I’ve shared similar table-top shots; last year I was sick on my birthday, so the celebration felt anticlimactic. This year, instead of trying to figure out what I want from the proverbial “rest of my life,” I’ve decided to reflect on what I am grateful to already have. Instead of seeing the occasion of my birthday as an opportunity to focus on what’s wrong and needs to be fixed, I’ve decided to focus on what right in my life and needs to be continued.

So in the spirit of tapas–little dishes that whet the appetite and make for a meal when combined–here are three little things I did as a 38-year-old that I want to continue now that I’m a day over 39.

This past year I’ve made a more serious effort to meditate with others. During the spring and summer, I started practicing with the Open Meadow Zen Group, and recently I’ve been making an effort to sign up for talks and interviews at the Cambridge Zen Center. After having led a Zen group of my own in New Hampshire–and after seeing that group fold–I was a bit shy about climbing back into the “sangha saddle” again. But now that I’ve taken baby steps back toward doing formal meditation more regularly with others, I’m wondering why I insisted on practicing on my own for so long. Meditating at home on one’s own is an important part of practice, but I find meditating with others infinitely more powerful.

This past year, I’ve made a more serious effort to see my life–not simply meditation–as being my spiritual practice. Instead of limiting my practice to what I do on a meditation cushion, I’ve been trying to pay closer attention no matter what I’m doing. That means spending a lot of time doing “driving meditation” during my weekly trips between New Hampshire and Massachusetts: instead letting myself zone out while I’m driving, I’ve been trying to follow my breath as I drive, paying close attention to the sensation of my hands on the wheel while I watch other cars with alert concentration. If sitting upright on a meditation cushion qualifies as “practice,” why can’t sitting upright in the driver’s seat?

This past year, I stayed consistently debt-free and saved money instead of digging out from debt. In the past, I’ve relied upon credit cards to fund my under-employed summer months, which has meant I’ve spent my fall semesters paying off debt. This past year, I did a better job managing my finances (and I taught more) throughout the summer, so the money I made during an extra-busy fall semester went toward savings rather than debt. Without feeling like I’ve scrimped, I’ve felt more financially “settled” this past year, paying off my credit card balances every month (even if that meant dipping into savings over the summer) and being more diligent about saving for next summer and beyond. After having spent years in a marriage where we couldn’t make ends meet on a six-figure salary, I love the feeling of living within my means (and enjoying myself) on much less.

So there you have it: three things I feel I did right this year that I want to continue. They aren’t exactly New Year’s Resolutions since they’re things I’ve already started doing; instead, we might call them Birthday Retro-lutions, nibbles of wisdom I recognize as tasty in retrospect that I’d like to continue sampling as I continue to creep toward 4-0.