Dirty Energy

Fall semester: day sixty-one

Still no movement on my bank account, either with the "pending" debit card purchases I made last week or with the rent check. I'm guessing this means that the bank's servers are being super-slow to update account information and the like, and not that there's any sort of real problem with my check or anything else. I expect it to show up on there eventually, and I am once more glad that I keep a pen-and-paper bank ledger on my desk to keep track of everything. If everything else goes in and out and the check still doesn't show up, then I'll still have a cause for concern. Right now I'm being cautiously optimistic that everything's just slow. Which happens on occasion. I so don't want to be the guy who bugs his landlord over shit like "hey, did you get my check? My bank won't tell me."

I've been in a haze all weekend; some of it was (and still is, to a certain extent) the bank anxiety weighing on me, but more of it is that I just want the semester to be done and over. I hate complaining about these sorts of things because it makes me sound like a whiner, but my brain is just shot and it wants to shut down and do something completely mindless for a while. It doesn't want me to concentrate on work or school, writing papers and worrying about money or when/if my car will start having major issues again -- my brain is like okay, we've had enough of this grad school, real-life worrying shit for the semester. Now we want to sleep, play video games, and listen to podcasts. And we refuse to do anything else.

The bad part is that my brain is trying to pull this shit about three weeks too soon, when it knows full well that I have a massive amount of things to do before the semester ends and that I can't just stop what I'm doing in order to placate its desires.

This sort of thing happened last fall around this time too, and it was around that point when I lapsed into a bout of severe depression for more than a month. Looking back on it now, I'm sure it was my creative, recreational mind's way of sitting in the corner and pouting, arms crossed, glowering at me because it didn't get its way.

This fall it's trying to take me by force -- if you don't do what I want you to do, I'm going to ensure that you can't do anything. It's a constant struggle to concentrate; my motivation and will to actually focus on what I'm doing, and what I need to be doing, is almost fruitless. It took me a lot of willpower to put together my presentations for both of my classes this week, and even more to read the books involved for said presentations. I'm still not done with one of the books, and every time I think about reading it, it makes me ill -- not because it's a bad book, but because I'd rather be sleeping or doing anything else than working on anything for school.

Case in point: I've been awake for a little over four hours. I've tried to get into doing my work again, as I'd like to get it finished before tomorrow afternoon. As soon as I started, I was swamped with an overwhelming go back to sleep feeling, to the point where I'm wobbly, weak and dozing off, and yawning -- no matter how much coffee I drink. If I were to actually go back to bed, I'd be wanting to play my DS in order to help go back to sleep. That's what my brain wants. it does not want me to work or do anything productive. It wants me to be a slacker.

I don't sleep well anymore, as you know. Part of it's loneliness, but the other part of it is knowing in the back of my mind that until the semester is over, it feels like wasted time -- or, unconsciously, I know I'll be unable to enjoy or get any real rest from the sleep, as there's always a set time it has to end before I have to get up and do some more school/work-related bullshit. You may think that's a laughable premise, but it's true, at least for me -- I sleep much, much better when I know that there's no set time I have to get up and do something else.

I don't care how much work I have to do over the Thanksgiving break (which starts for me, of course, on Thursday night); the first 2 days or so of it are going to be spent sleeping as much as possible and doing as little as possible for school.

No, I'm not making a turkey or anything else. You'd be shocked to see how bare my fridge and cupboards are. Yes, that's part of being poor, folks. On the plus side, I'm losing a lot of weight.

Anyway.

I slept for a few hours last night after finishing my fiction presentation before getting up at 7AM and registering for classes. I was awake for approximately twenty minutes (long enough to pee, turn on the computer, register, smoke one cigarette, turn off the computer, and go back to bed). Registration went off without a hitch, and I'm now currently enrolled for the spring in what may quite possibly be the easiest semester of grad school I'll ever have, if not my easiest semester of higher education period. I do look forward to the spring, because during the spring (and hopefully, for the next year after that) I'll basically be coasting downhill towards a degree; all of the hard, incredibly time-consuming classes will be behind me. The spring offers new hope, new free time, more money, better sleeping hours and possibly a chance to find a new romantic interest, as I'll have the time to pursue such things. It will also give me a lot more time to focus on my actual writing, which is obviously the entire reason I'm in school in the first place.

Anyway, I got up again at 1:30PM, took out the garbage and finished off a pot of coffee, and here I am. A second pot of coffee is brewing now. Coffee has become my life's blood these past few months; I am truly unable to function in any capacity without it. Coffee is what keeps the sleep deprivation, which slowly builds up more and more severely over the course of the semester, at bay. Without it, my body realizes things like "Hey, you haven't had a full night of decent, responsibility-free sleep in months! Let's pass out for three days!"

You may laugh, but that's been known to happen to me, especially at the end of a semester. I'll be awake long enough to use the bathroom and eat/drink before an hour or two later, I'll pass back out for another long stretch of unconsciousness. It's how my body resets itself, how it re-regulates itself after long stretches of highly-stressful, sleep-deprived periods of time.

Coffee has become my dirty energy, as I call it -- a provider of energy that's not derived from a healthy diet, exercise, and proper amounts of sleep. It's what gets me up and keeps me going, and without it, I crash. It's another one of those things that for the moment, not much can be done about. In three weeks, I'll be able to ease off of it and get some proper sleep and relaxation. Right now, however? Warp speed, Mr. Sulu.

Tomorrow I have conferences with my students. Well, about half of them, anyway. The remaining ones will come in on Thursday. This is required for anyone teaching English 102; even though I'm teaching the science/engineering version, I'm not exempt from it. My students are bright, sweet, and know what they're doing (for the most part), so these conferences should go quickly and easily. I've given them the option of turning in their final papers early, as well, and for those of them in the final workshop group, if they do so they can avoid wasting our time in workshop and will get the full allotment of points. After conferences are done, I must jet back home to do whatever work remains for my reading/presentation in my Fiction class on Wednesday, and put together the other half of the powerpoint presentation that Suri and I will be giving on the novel Comfort Woman on Thursday night. I've already finished my half of the presentation (I had it done on Saturday) but to completely finish/format it, she's giving me her info to plug into the rest of it between now and tomorrow night. This means, unfortunately, that I have to stay awake tomorrow afternoon once I come home (which also means that I must actually get some decent sleep at some point tonight).

It is a long week, folks; here's what I have going on, en todo:

MONDAY (today): Register for Spring Semester classes. Completely finish Waiting for the Barbarians. Try to figure out some way to write a response paper on it for class, even though I'm doing a presentation on it on Wednesday. Also see if there's an angle I can take to write a response on Dashiell Hammett's The Glass Key, as well, as if I do those two responses I'm done with response papers for the semester.

TUESDAY: Student conferences, day one (9:30-12:10). Return home, write/finish writing those response papers, email to self for printing at school. Get presentation info from Suri, add it to my Powerpoint and finish the presentation. Email a copy of finished presentation to her. Check bank account to see if anything's changed. Go to bed as early as possible once this stuff is done.

WEDNESDAY: Get up, shower, return to school. Print copies of the response papers as well as my Fiction presentation for class. Go to Fiction class, give presentation, try not to fuck it up (as it's only 15-20 minutes long and 20% of my class grade). Return to office, try to make any needed changes to Powerpoint presentation, if necessary. Check bank account, again, to see if anything's changed. Leave campus, drive to local bookstore for Poetry Workshop. Leave when class is done, drive home at 10PM, eat, pass out ASAP after eating.

THURSDAY: Student conferences, day two (9:30-12 or so). Practicum meeting with my supervisor until 1PM, in which I'll hopefully find out when/where the final exam will be taking place. Hour in the Writing Center from 1-2PM. Back to my office and/or Suri's office to make any final preparations for the presentation; as I'm doing conferences, my office hours are basically appointment-only this week (since, y'know, all of my students will see me anyway). Check bank account, again, for changes. Post class cancellation notice for next week on my office door. Night class; give the presentation with Suri, make it sound interesting, and hope my computer's battery doesn't die halfway through it. Finish class, drive home exhaustedly, and sleep until I wake up again because Thanksgiving vacation has begun for me.

Yes, it's a lot of stuff to do, and it's all crammed into the next three days. I can do it, of course; it's no different than any of the other rough weeks I have (except for the presentations, that is). But it also means that there will be a steady supply of dirty energy flowing through my veins between now and Friday morning/afternoon when I get up and start my break.

For those of you wondering why my break starts so early, it's because the department doesn't hold classes on Friday, and I don't teach or have classes on Mondays. I also canceled the classes I teach on Tuesday (because, let's be realistic here, half of them wouldn't be there anyway and there's not a whole lot I can have them do but work on their papers over break). That added two days to my break, and we get Wed/Thu/Fri off next week. In essence, because of my planning ahead, I gave myself eleven days off in a row, uninterrupted -- by far the longest "vacation" I've had since summer -- to get all of my remaining big papers and other schoolwork done as much as possible.

On that note, folks, I need to get back to work. I have a lot to do tonight before I can go to bed with my DS, podcasts, and kitties, and not feel like I'm shirking responsibility.