back only to complain, i guess
It's absurd how much my life is structured around work these months.
Too busy to think, too busy to write. (Excuses, still, but halfway true.)
Too busy to be really happy.
Too busy to spel everythin wright.
Too busy for tears or illness.
Too busy for any but the most cramped forms of laziness.
Interning over the summer, the pace of it took my breath away.
Should have had time to write, to plan, to visit.
Should have had time to paint, to go camping.
Didn't, didn't, didn't have time.
And I was nearly drunk with the pace.
I felt giddy, exhilirated to work so hard, think so much, learn so quickly.
I saw my leisure-plans crumble aside, left behind. I bumped over my regrets and rushed ahead.
Now, in the fall, I teach my own class.
And still take graduate classes.
And exhiliration has become something else.
This is searingly, crushingly busy.
I can no longer plan things farther ahead than next week.
I can no longer wait and schedule things when things open up.
I live through and inside my calendar-planner.
If something needs to get done, it must be jammed into a specific slot, assigned to a day and jostle against my other appointments to survive.
Spontaneous, unscheduled activities are rare, stunted things that I always suffer for indulging.
I enjoy my students, and I'm constantly impressed by my ability to get things done.
But I will not live like this for long.
I could, perhaps, but I will not.
If things don't change next semester or the semester after, well...
Things must change, or I will.
The irony of this post.
Work took me away from this journal, from all my softer thoughts and all the abstract duties that remain unpaid.
(So goes the story I tell myself, because I still have time for reflexive, knee-jerk doubts.)
Work brings me back. Circles and cycles.
Next week I start my students on a project to explore some of the niches in San Francisco. To introduce them to the project, my advisor suggested I show a slideshow of interesting places I've been to in the city.
Me being me, I thought the most striking frame for this slideshow would be:
"Dates I've Been On In SF"
It's catchy, right?
So I comb over my memories & records for "dates" and locations. I'm using a generous, but not entirely misleading definition of "date." This backwards trawling is strange, like visiting someone else's life. But still not that much fun.
Michelle at the Asian Art Museum.
Melody at the De Young Museum.
Diep at Brain Wash Cafe.
Joanne at the Independent Exposure film festival.
Madison at that korean restaurant...
And so inevitably, inexorably, I come to the end of the collection, and I can't remember: what was the name of the restaurant I went with Madison?
But, ha, lucky me, I recorded that information in my journal. So I reread that entry, tired and busy now and angry all over again. (The restaurant's name was "Doobu.")
For work's sake, I came back to this journal. For work's sake, I am confronted with these memories and emotions.
Memories and emotions that I've largely avoided for work's sake...
The irony doesn't amuse, but it does get me writing again. For what that's worth.
I need to continue my lesson-planning.