Can it Just End?

Time-travel day

I really have trouble with weekends these days. It's not that I get time off -- it's that there's way, way too little of it. Mind you, I know this is a problem (perhaps even a first-world problem) that's been bitched/whined/moaned about by everyone throughout time, but...I don't know, with the career I have and how little I get any true downtime anyway, I have to spend more than half of my weekend recovering from the week beforehand, and then spend the second half prepping for the next week. It doesn't feel like I get any real "downtime" at all. My work week always seems ten times longer than the time I actually get off, the time I mostly spend at home sleeping and doing work for the next work week anyway.

I've lost interest in most football; I'll watch WVU play, and that's about it. That's the only football I've watched all weekend, actually, and I only watched it languidly at best yesterday. I still had a ton of work to do, and spent most of my day/night doing it until I went to bed.

My exhaustion levels -- both mental and psychological, as well as those involving my overall demeanor -- are bubbling up and are about to boil over. And I still have something like seven or eight papers to collect and grade over the course of the next month from my three classes. I've been busier before, I've been more stressed before, but I can't remember the last time I was this tired, or this sick of everything, all the time. The only thing that's stopping me from lapsing into a deep, terrifying depressive episode is that I can recognize myself going that way and I mentally stop it -- I don't have time for it. I have too much shit to do.

The cold doesn't help; the fact that the temperatures for the past few days have been in the 30s-50s with high winds puts a chill in my bones that I can't get rid of because I'm so tired -- I get, and stay, much physically colder when I'm tired, to the point of shivering -- and I can't get or stay warm unless I wear fifteen different layers of clothing (or, conversely, stay in bed all day). I needed to go out shopping last night, for example, and while I wasn't particularly sleepy then, I couldn't bring myself to get up, put on clothing, and drive to the store because I knew it would be cold and I would hate it.

A big part of it is the construct of fall semester itself; as you folks know if you've been reading this blog a while, fall semester is generally hellish. The temperatures gradually get colder and the weather gets worse as the workload piles on higher, and then -- at the end of it, when the holidays roll around and you need money the most -- the paychecks stop for four or five weeks and you're fucked for when all of your bills and monetary obligations come due (such as rent for January, car insurance, and Christmas presents). I also know nothing yet about teaching for the spring -- all I've been told is that I shouldn't have to worry about getting classes, but again I don't know what/where/when they are because the schedule, of course, is not yet set and probably won't be until after the New Year. I could end up with 3-4 classes, or I could end up with 1-2. Either way, it's not like I've got the cushion of student loans to live on anymore; I have to live on what I can and do make in my line of work. I'm not living paycheck-to-paycheck or anything like that, but I am not exactly wealthy -- by the time the first week of classes rolls around in mid-January, I'll be down to about $100 in my bank account again, more than likely, simply because of bills and rent. My last paycheck for the fall semester is on December 20, my birthday. That's really early. That's also because the semester ends early -- finals week ends a week before that. Thanksgiving comes late, the semester ends early, and while there's a long break before classes start up again in January (over a month) that's a month I'm not getting paid. Most of that time I'll be in limbo, of course, while I wait to see what classes I'm teaching in the spring.

Daisy, of course, is looking for jobs down here. She doesn't want to be apart from me any longer than she has to as we count down to the wedding, and as I may have more solid employment with the university in the fall (who knows, though), right now we're focusing on that and we're trying to make things work out. She has mentioned that if she finds a job down here, March would be about the latest she could make the move, which is true. I've also reminded her that it's not like I will have the time to be looking for homes and the like while I'm teaching in the spring -- if how busy I am now is any indication, anyway -- and that I'm going to remain crazily busy and sleep-deprived more than likely through our actual wedding day. There's really nothing I can do about that. That's my lot in life; that's my career, and that's the way it works.

All of this stuff -- all of it -- is rolling around in my head subconsciously, at all times. I can never just relax, because all of it is still there and still needs attention. Some people get used to high levels of stress and can deal with problems efficiently and as they come in; some people can push it aside for a while and actually relax and enjoy life. I used to be one of those people, but am no longer. I can't deal with anything anymore, especially when anything could basically destroy my life or send me into financial ruin. Everything that pops up, big or small, just gets added to the pile and angers/frustrates me just as much as anything else. When I go out to do my shopping this afternoon/evening/whenever, because I can't do it in the middle of the night, I'll be forced to deal with mouth-breathing idiots that do nothing but get in the way and are oblivious and/or belligerent to everyone else around them, and it will take every ounce of my self-control not to start screaming at or punching them. When I'm under extreme amounts of stress and am frustrated at life, the real person I am inside comes out -- and I am a violent, angry, and incredibly selfish person inside.

This is probably why I don't really have a social life and tend to keep to myself most of the time. I don't have patience for anyone else or their bullshit.

My computer has been acting up recently; it has been, on occasion, freezing or running really slowly. I know it's getting old, obviously, since I've had it since I started grad school, but it's not like I can afford a new one right now, and if it dies on me, the laptop Daisy bought me for Christmas last year is way too slow and underpowered to use as a replacement for longer than a few days unless I spend $200 to double the memory in it. I don't know if it's a software or hardware problem on the desktop; its hardware appears to be functioning fine, and I can't update any of the software more than I already have -- I'm running Ubuntu 12.04, which is the last long-term release, and the last one which will fully support the GNOME desktop environment that I've used for almost ten years now. I've tried 12.10 and 13.04 on other machines and I hate it (I have 12.10 running on my laptop at work, and had 13.04 very briefly on the newer laptop before I realized how much I hated it and switched to Linux Mint 15). There's only so much modification I can do to the desktop before I'd have to wipe the HD and install another OS, which I do not want to do as I don't have the materials/flash drives/etc to back up all of my files easily, and all of the customized programs I run -- programs that I've tweaked, installed, and gotten working correctly for years now -- would be gone and I'd have to start over from scratch. I can't exactly do that without spending an entire week or so reinstalling things and changing them around to get a workable, usable machine again. I put a portable 500GB HD on my Amazon Christmas List in case someone wants to get it for me, as without that I'll never be able to back up all of my stuff. My podcasts alone -- that I spent a good week going out and re-downloading after the disaster before -- take up 68.3GB of space, and that was me being able to recover only about half of what I had, since many of them are no longer available on their respective servers due to them being so old. It would take fifteen 4.7GB DVD-Rs just to be able to back up those alone. If my computer has a brain fart and I lose those again, I will probably take the machine out into the back yard and shoot it out of anger.

My car seems to be running okay, I guess. I didn't have any of those weird transmission issues last week, but it's still rattling like crazy. It's not the wheel bearings or anything like that (those are the same) but it may be the rotors wearing out and getting squeal-y. I don't know. All I know is that the engine seems to be fine, and that she seems to be perfectly fine -- like just-off-the-lot fine -- when she has a full tank of gas. I refill the gas tank about once a week, when I've driven between 200-220 miles, and it's at the half-tank mark. I'm actually getting better gas mileage, I think, than I was before; I was able to put less than 10.5 gallons in this week when I drove her a little farther than I normally would before a fill-up. Normally it's 11 or 11.5, so I couldn't tell you what the issue is. The "low coolant" light is always on now, even though it's full, so the sensor is on the fritz there again -- especially because it takes a lot to get that car's temperature gauge even up to the halfway point. So, it's not like she's overheating or anything like that. She's also not dropping or leaking any oil or coolant in the parking lots at school (I've checked), so any fluids the car's using it's either slowly burning off or it's keeping them all. This is a plus -- that coolant is like $10 for a gallon of it, and I'd rather not have to buy a gallon of it every month.

Again, the car is old. It'll act up sometimes, and sometimes it won't. There's not a lot of rhyme or reason to the way it acts. I'm really surprised and impressed that it's running as well as it is, and is still making 50-mile round trips every day without any major issues.

This afternoon/evening I will be working on, yes, more student papers yet again. And, of course, I'll have to go out and do my shopping as well. I ordered pizza last week in order to postpone that for as long as possible, but I finished it off yesterday morning for breakfast. That means I actually have to go out and get real groceries in order to have something to eat for the next week or so. I'm also, as always, on my last pack of cigarettes, and the cats have very little litter left after I cleaned their box on Friday. It's almost 60 degrees outside today, yes, but there are constant and oppressive 25mph Kansas winds, which (the weather claims) doesn't make it feel any colder, but I'm willing to bet that's a horrible bold-faced lie from weather liars. It's either do it now or do it after the sun sets when it's colder and nastier, though, so I suppose I should get to it and actually do what I need to do.