Category 3

Fall semester: day thirty

I find it slightly ironic that we are now thirty days into the fall semester (when it's only eighty days long) and I'm just now, today, getting paid my first real, actual paycheck. Yes, two weeks ago I got that "advance" check, but that was completely different than actually getting a check direct-deposited into my bank account as it's supposed to be. That sort of paycheck I haven't gotten since May. Well, until today, anyway.


All of my bills are paid with the exception of the electric bill, which isn't due until October 17 or something like that. I just got it in the mail yesterday, and it's only $60-something -- despite the fact that basically for three weeks straight I was running the air conditioner for several hours every day just to not die of heatstroke or drown in my own sweat. Okay, well, whatever. I'm not complaining.

Last night I drifted into mostly dreamless sleep after decompressing as much as possible. Daisy went out with one of her friends, so we Skyped briefly before I took a shower, trimmed down my beard because it was driving me crazy (it's still there, just much lighter/thinner than before) and went to bed around 8:30 or so. I woke up this morning at 7, allergy-stricken and with a sore throat from sinus drainage. Story of my life, I suppose.

It's been a rather stressful, tiring week. I've been sleeping at night again (mostly), so I always constantly feel like I'm not getting anything accomplished. Add to that two papers coming in this week (I have five total left to grade) and needing to pay all of my end-of-the-month bills, including rent, while balancing time with Daisy and time I need to eat and rest and try to make the world around me stop...and yeah, I'm a bit frazzled. I have so many looming responsibilities and so many things that must be done that I feel overwhelmed almost all the time, even though I'm anything but. I think there are primarily three types of people in the world: 1) those who love responsibility and work, live for it, couldn't picture a life without it,  and thrive on always being busy and never stopping, 2) those who hate responsibility and work but can do it and manage it well when necessary, and 3) those who were not cut out for doing anything but the bare minimums, because anything else (such as trying to force them into category 1 or 2) stresses them out too much or causes them to go insane after a while, so they withdraw from people. I tend to mostly be category 2, but over the past few years I have been slowly slipping downward into category 3. I mean, this world sucks for the most part. Injustices, white-collar-crimes, and the fleecing of the people goes unaddressed while people keep up with the Kardashians or waste countless hours playing Grand Theft Auto V. I asked my students what the last book they read for pleasure was, in an attempt to teach them how to format dialogue for their narrative essays, and none of them could tell me because none of them read.

I'm getting more disenfranchised with and disgusted by the world every day, to the point where I want to just say "fuck it," withdraw myself from it, and detach -- go full category 3 and let the rest of the world implode upon itself. Like Christopher Titus, I believe we need an extinction-level event. This is why I love the concept of a zombie apocalypse -- good lord is the human race in need of a clean slate. We've become too stupid to be allowed to live. There's a reason zombie books and movies have become so popular as of late, and it's because secretly all of the fans want it to actually happen, due to the reasons I've stated above.

My classes this week were fine; my students (by and large, anyhow) have been impressing me with their papers, and have been doing well on them for the most part. I have several talented writers in both classes, students whose abilities would serve them well in a creative environment (like a creative writing program). However, usually the best "creative" writers make the worst academic ones, and vice versa. As the rest of the papers in my classes are largely, or completely, academic...well, we'll see what happens.

As I've gotten paid today, all of a sudden (as always) a large number of things have happened, all at the same time, which require money. For example, as if it could sense the fact that I was getting paid soon, yesterday my printer ran out of paper at the same time it began blinking its toner light, telling me that I need to order another $50 cartridge for it at some point soon. My old fan downstairs decided to fall over and break in half. My $3 yard sale TV downstairs decided to start randomly turning itself on and off at all hours of the day and night (I've since unplugged it). The cats are almost out of food. I'm on my last furnace filter. I'm almost out of laundry detergent. I have very few minutes left on my phone, so I've turned it off. Etc. Stuff like that. If I continually purchased or fixed everything that needed buying or fixing, I'd have a well-stocked, decently-running house that I wouldn't be able to afford to live in.

Despite this, I did order a bag of the cats' food from Amazon last night, along with a 4oz. bottle of peppermint oil to spray down the doors and windows with to keep out spiders. I don't want to spend any more money than I have to before I actually have to. Daisy's coming down this week, as mentioned before, and I'm trying to save most of my shopping for when she's here (since we like to do that together).

I don't really have a lot to do in next week's classes, which is good -- I've planned it that way, of course, to coincide with Daisy's visit. I'm covering the beginning of the new unit in my 011 class on Monday and continuing it on Wednesday, and on Tuesday I'm going over some examples of good writing in the 101 reader and some technical stuff in their textbook. On Thursday, Daisy will more than likely sit in on my class with me again, I'm collecting their workshop copies/journals, and I'm doing a Q&A session sort of thing. It's a relatively light week because we're going into the midterm point of the semester. Once Daisy goes home, I will be burying myself in work for the rest of next weekend...since, well, I'll have to. The week afterwards is a long one, and it leads into midterms and "fall break," which for me is little more than two extra days off where I'll be doing a ton of work at home instead of in the classroom (or on campus somewhere).

I'm trying to get everything I can taken care of before "fall break," including calculating midterm grades and all of that other miniscule stuff, as I need as much of those five days in a row off to craft lesson plans for my 210 class that I start teaching the night before the break begins. When I come back from the break, I come back to a veritable nightmare -- three papers/assignments due from all three classes all at the same time, one after another, and therefore three new units I begin teaching all at once. This wouldn't be a problem if I were teaching three sections of one class, but it's one section each of three different classes (obviously). That triples my prep time.