Big Rumblings, Part III

I've paid my bills -- or what I can pay of them right now (such as half of my Citi Card balance) -- and am now sitting on the least amount of money I've had in well over a year. I'm not really concerned, honestly; I haven't yet picked up my paycheck from Friday. That I will do in the morning when I get back to campus. I have decided, begrudgingly (because I want cash) that I will mail it back to my parents so that it can be deposited in my bank account back home. As much as I would like to have that cash-in-hand, I can't pay bills or rent with it, and I'd end up spending more when I go shopping because I wouldn't have to keep track of it -- that's a big thing that keeps me on a modest budget; it's the fact that I keep track of every cent in my accounts at all times. Without that limitation I put on myself, I spend too much money needlessly.

Sadly, I'd much rather have the cash for it. Daisy will be down here in two weeks for our anniversary, and I spend a lot of money when she's here whether I want to or not; food and activities cost money. They just do. But, again, I have bills to pay, and while I do have enough money in my bank account to cover all of those bills and that rent for the rest of the month, do I want to run myself down to like, $200 or less before I get paid again in two weeks? The answer is no, I don't. That should go without saying. With big expenses looming for me over the next few months, including whatever I'm going to be doing with my student loan payments and my car insurance coming due again around Christmas, I'm not going to force myself to live paycheck-to-paycheck every month when I need to be on a budget and saving as much extra money as I can. It is not cheap to take care of three cats, put gas in a car as old as some of my students once a week, or to be a smoker. None of those things are going to change, so I have to be able to take care of those expenses first, then the bills and rent, then save as much as I can of whatever is left, putting aside a little bit here and there for small luxuries. For example, the new Pokemon games come out next month, and I will be purchasing one of those and a 2DS to play them on (because I don't have a 3DS, and don't want one). I find it sad that I have to budget for something like that instead of just being able to purchase it and not thinking about it twice. Yes, a luxury like that is a drop in the bucket overall -- the cost of a 2DS and the game together would be only slightly more than a big trip to Walmart for groceries -- but it's still the principle of the thing. I never thought when I was younger that by age 30 I would still have to be budgeting for every little thing, because I didn't think that at age 30 I would be a failure -- and yes, things like this are why I still refer to myself as a failure. I can teach all the classes I want, my students can call me "professor" all they want, but I will always consider myself a failure until I no longer have to worry about stuff like this, no matter what anyone else says. I will always continue to be a failure in my own eyes until none of this stuff has the ability to concern me anymore -- when I don't have to keep track of the money in my bank account because I know, no matter what I need, I will have more than enough to cover it.

My weekend has been spent in a fairly boring fashion -- I went through my students' workshop copies for my 101 class, and I graded quizzes and made up lesson plans for my 011 class. I've tried to sleep as much as my body would let me, since I know it will be another five days before I can do it again. I ordered pizza on Thursday afternoon, and have been slowly eating through it ever since. It rained all day on Thursday, cooling things down quite a bit, and even though the weather has forecasted storms and rain every day since, the meteorologists keep pushing it back further and further in their forecast updates because it never comes. I vaccumed the house, including the stairs with my handheld Dirt Devil -- a true pain in the ass. I did two loads of laundry and put them away. I did the dishes. I went out to Walmart and spent $60 I didn't want to spend on things I needed around the house that couldn't wait. I readied my outfits for this coming week of teaching, knowing that it's going to be a little bit cooler outside, so I didn't have to worry about being too hot every day. I've watched a bit of football, mostly only halfway paying attention to it. My allergies and sinuses have been killing me, so I've been taking sinus pills when needed. This has been my weekend -- quiet, filled with little things to do, and spent quietly alone. I still have to take out the garbage tonight and clean out the cat box, and eventually get a shower.

My coming week will be (or should be) quiet and uneventful -- I've got workshops in my 101 class, as mentioned before, which means I don't have to create lesson plans, and in my 011 class I'm covering two readings and assigning two journal topics. Woo, right? I will be taking care of other little things as necessary, but other than that I've got nothing on my plate that will take a ton of time or effort. This is good, because as I've said in my past few posts, I've not been having a lot of luck at sleeping. I think, more than anything else, I'm just weary. It's like a full-body depression of sorts, though I don't feel particularly depressed. It seems like the routine is getting to me. Normally I'm good with routine; it'll take me a few days or a few weeks to get used to it, but after that, I'm usually good. But really, I think this semester, this time around, it's just...not routine enough? I suppose? I don't really know how to describe it. I'm used to having four or five days off at a time, especially over the course of this past year that I was working on my thesis and studying for comps. Yeah, teach two days, spend the rest of them at home was a very, very good schedule for me. I was usually getting enough sleep, I was only stressed about the important stuff, I wasn't worrying about money or time for the most part, and I was teaching classes I'd taught for two years at that point, so I knew exactly what I was going to do and when I was going to do it. It was all about going through the motions. Now, teaching four days a week on two different campuses and alternating between the two on different days, with one of those classes a class I've never taught before and the other a class I haven't taught since 2011 -- not to mention in that three weeks, I'll begin teaching yet another class, one I haven't taught before either, on an eight-week schedule -- it's become near-impossible for me to actually get used to, to get into the groove of. There's no routine. It's too varied and too back-and-forth to get into any sort of routine. It's not focused enough. Because of that, it slowly wears me down a little more each week. It's as much about consistency as it is mental for me. And it just wears me down, so much.

I've stopped being social with most of my friends; none of them are ever around when I'm on the main campus anyway, and if they are, they tend to act like I'm a bother to them if I want to hang out or talk to them for a while (gods forbid that I want to be a friendly person to people I'm close with who I have barely seen all semester thus far, people who I would assume would want to see me as well). A large chunk of said friends who are actually still on campus and teaching, I've not seen once since May, and I've not even heard anything from them. It's frustrating. Yes, I realize I'm a bit of an outsider now that I've graduated and now that I'm adjuncting, but still. I'm outside the bubble now, yeah, I get that. I shouldn't be excised from their lives, which is what it feels like. I've met approximately five of the new recruits (those I didn't know before, anyway), and couldn't pick the rest of them out of a lineup if I tried -- because none of them are social with anyone outside their own little "new GTA" circles, and I've not been introduced to any of them, nor have they introduced themselves to me since I'm not in those circles. I've noticed this large demographic shift now, to where most of my friends are becoming fellow faculty members -- the Director and his wife, the office administrators, two or three of my former professors, etc. While this is probably good for my "career," so to speak, it's so different than any situation I've ever been in before. I don't know if I'll get used to it or not. I don't know if I should let it bother me or even acknowledge it, seeing as I don't know what the future holds -- there's a good chance that, depending on job prospects -- I won't even be there after December, but will instead be teaching somewhere else.

I knew this would happen, of course; I've written about it here before. Once you graduate, you're no longer of consequence to most people in the department, including the GTAs with whom you were, previously, "in the thick of it." If you're still around, those people will slowly graduate as well, leaving you still there as they somehow move on with their lives in all the ways you wish you could, but somehow can't because all of them get the good luck and all the breaks -- or they have rich parents, trust funds, reliable vehicles and jobs waiting for them to act as their safety nets. After a year or two, you're just the guy who graduated from there and stuck around to teach, and nobody knows you but your fellow faculty since everyone else you once knew or were close with were able to move on with their lives and actually get out of the system. Soon, everyone else is a stranger, and none of them even attempt to get to know you as a person because you're not "one of them." It's already happening to me only four months after graduation. I can't even get most of my friends from around here or around the department to reply to me on Facebook or Twitter anymore, and if they do, it always seems like they're doing it just to shut me up and get me to leave them alone. It's frustrating on one level, and immensely saddening on another.

Being a professor is a very lonely, solitary life. It's like I became someone different in the eyes of everyone I know, and I became that overnight after the graduation party. I haven't changed who I am; I'm still here. Maybe that's the problem -- I'm still here. Maybe everyone wanted or expected me to go away.

Maybe I'm just under stress I've never dealt with before and I'm blowing this all out of proportion. Who knows. I can only write about what I think and about how I feel here; I can't expect anyone to answer my questions for me.

I have not showered since Thursday -- I don't leave the house and have no one to impress, so why bother wasting the water just to end up sweating through another set of clothes that I'll have to use more water washing anyway? It doesn't matter to me if I look or feel like a hobo if the only time I leave the house is to walk the ten yards down my driveway to the mailbox and back, or drive over to Walmart in the middle of the night to get cat food and cigarettes.

On that note, there is a massive storm headed this way, one with purported 60mph winds and half-dollar-sized hail. I've put the car in the garage and I'm getting off here.