Productivity

Fall semester: day sixty-seven
Thanksgiving break: day five

I spent twelve hours yesterday cleaning up, revising, adding to, and finally finishing my long paper for my Middle Eastern/Asian Lit class on Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, probably the best novel I've read in years. The paper clocked in at eighteen pages and has twelve different sources aside from the book itself. I'm confident I'll do quite well on it.

After finishing it at 3AM, I promptly went downstairs and passed out. I didn't get up until almost 2PM this afternoon. This has been a continuing trend since I've been home during this break. I have six more days of relative freedom left before I must return to Wichita for the last two weeks of actual class, filled with grading and finals prep more than anything else. Then, of course, there's finals, followed by a month of freeeeeeeedom. FREEDOM.

With the Midnight's Children paper done, that knocks off one of the several big projects I needed to take care of this week. The other ones are more time-consuming, though; I must read three different books, write a 12-20 page paper, and assemble a portfolio for my poetry class, as well as look through some student workshop copies of their final essays. Of those, of course, the paper is going to take the most time; I'm going to try to tackle that tomorrow. I'd like to have everything completely finished by Friday, so that the rest of my days off I can enjoy responsibility-free. That is the last of the "real" work I'll be doing this semester for any of the classes I'm taking (aside from the final exam for the Middle Eastern/Asian Lit course), and all that will be left afterwards will be grading -- which is relatively easy compared to all of my other tasks.

Even though I've been off and have had the time to relax somewhat, I've barely done anything but work. I've had the TV on only for football, and even then I didn't pay much attention to it. If it's not been homework, it's been housework -- I've done all the laundry and dishes, and vacuumed the entire top floor of the house. I've baked a ham and made homemade chicken fried rice (of which more is forthcoming). I've paid all the bills for the month, and will be getting an early paycheck this week as the school is closed on Thursday and Friday. I've even spent extra time with the kitties, as they are glad I'm home for such a long stretch of time all at once. They'll get more time with me over the next few days as I spend long stretches reading on the couch and organizing my poetry into the portfolio I need to create.

It's been a relatively quiet week, too. For the most part, I'm really enjoying that. It's such a disconnect from all of the work I've been rushing around doing at school. I appreciate few things more than being able to sleep on my own schedule, work on my own schedule, and if I don't want to work, being able to leisurely read the news online while holding a cup of coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other is pretty good too.

I do have a few errands to run, though; I must get out of the house and get some groceries later this week (probably tomorrow, late-night shopping to avoid Thanksgiving crowds) and I need to drop by the post office once I get paid in order to start mailing out the rest of the packages I have around the house. As my budget is rather tight this year, I'm probably not going to send out the huge volume of Christmas cards that I usually do, though I will (as always) send some to most of my family and close friends -- especially those people who send me things all year round like Wayne & Jane, Andrea, Amber, Zedral, etc. I've got a list. It's a list I need to work on, but it's a list.

It's still been cold here recently; I've kept the thermostat as low as it can comfortably go without me breaking into shivers in the house (it's set around 58 or so right now) so that the furnace doesn't run all the time, and I've been wearing sweats and/or robes around the house a lot just to keep myself toasty. Could be worse. I'm already bracing for December, January, and February, when it will be -10 outside some days (because it always is). That's totally "stick the car in the garage and leave it there" sort of weather that I truly want no part of yet, or ever. My skin's already drying out on my face, head, and hands because of the cold and wind. At least I'll be able to stay at home for a month of that nasty winter and save what little money I'll have left by the end of December. And believe me, it will be very little. My budget isn't destitute, but it will be soon enough. And then summer will be here, and I'll have to teach through that just to be able to survive (as I don't get paid over the summer otherwise, in any way/shape/form).

So many people I know don't understand what it's like to be truly poor, or they think there's some easy way out of one's problems. For example, whenever something goes wrong with my car, and I mention it in casual conversation, people will say "You should sell that car and just get another one that's newer and more reliable." Yeah, well, don't you think I would have done that already if it were possible? While I love my Monte Carlo, it has so many cosmetic problems wrong with it (windows, doors, lights, dents, etc) that it's not even worth the $500 I paid for it. Not to mention the spark plug issues and mileage it has on it, which are decidedly not cosmetic problems. I didn't want a car that old or with that many problems, but it's what I had to get if I wanted to have any sort of transportation whatsoever.

I also hear "you wouldn't be so broke if you lived in Wichita instead of in Newton." Yeah, again, not true. While my rent up here is more than most other grad students pay for their own places, they also have places about 1/4 of the size of mine with no garage, no yard, and only one floor. It's quiet here. I can play my podcasts or music as loud as I want. I have room, and so do the cats. Nobody bothers me here, I don't have to worry about being mugged or stabbed, and I have nowhere to go to spend all of my money (because, as you might assume, there are many, many awesome bars and restaurants in Wichita). And moving anywhere, without anyone's help, is a huge pain in the ass and very, very expensive -- don't let anyone tell you otherwise, because they're lying. Moving trucks are not cheap, finding a new place that would make you pay first-and-last-months' rent (plus a security deposit) is not cheap, and transferring utilities is not cheap. I don't have some sort of magical money fairy that will provide all of this stuff for me, or a magical moving fairy that will help me do any of it. I am poor. I am in a rut because I am poor. I am, at any given time, two paychecks away from being homeless and hungry. That's it, folks. People out here (mostly Republicans, admittedly) seem to think that the chronically poor can just change their lives around at the drop of a hat, and that being poor is one's own fault because they're lazy and/or unmotivated. I'm poor because I am in grad school so that I can actually better my life, not because I'm lazy and unmotivated. I fight for everything I have and work hard to keep it. I don't buy extraneous shit I can't afford; hell, I'm worried about being able to pay my car insurance to keep that landboat of mine legally on the road. My life is mere survival. Plain and simple. And it's expensive just to survive.

Okay. Rant over. Anyway.

While I'm getting stuff done, I'm also in the weird headspace that I don't know what I'll do with myself after the semester is over for that long month we're all off. I've been pushing myself so hard this semester to get everything done -- barely sleeping during the week, reading and writing so many things for my classes, teaching so many different lessons, getting up and driving in to campus before anyone else is there and leaving when most other people have gone...that when it all just stops shortly before Christmas, it will feel like time itself has stopped. Yes, I've been waiting all semester to be done with classes, and I will feel some sort of relief, of course, but after that feeling passes, what's left? I'll return home to Newton and continue being poor and cold. The novelty of time off does tend to wear off after a few days, and after that it's just tedious.

Everyone's telling me I should fly home to visit my parents over the holidays, but that is a horrible, horrible idea when I'll have no spare money and will be at the lowest point in my finances that I've been in several years around that time -- not to mention it's cold, the weather sucks, and any number of things could go absolutely batshit wrong during that time in regards to things like weather and travel, family gatherings, etc. I just want no part of it. None at all. I may fly out to visit next summer, but right now I am not dealing with it. My focus needs to be on survival, getting things done, and preparing for the spring semester of teaching and classes. I, like anyone else, just need some time alone for a while if that's what I choose. I need to decompress. I need to not have to worry about absolutely everything that has consumed my life. This break is not long enough for that, obviously, and I still have too many responsibilities to take care of during it to properly enjoy it. Nobody seems to understand any of that, either.

On that note, I will leave you -- the rest of my night must be spent reading and working on various class-related things if I want to finish everything quickly and still have time to spare to relax before my Thanksgiving break ends.