Exhaustion (already)

Fall semester: day five

I would like to note that I more than likely would have just sucked it up and gone in to the EGSA/department journal editors' meetings, despite these meetings by-and-large being big wastes of time and gas money for me as there's really nothing new going to be presented within them that I didn't already know -- but, as I didn't wake up until 10:30 or so, that didn't happen.

On Wednesday afternoon, I told our journal's new editor -- a friend and fellow writer in the department -- that I probably wouldn't be there anyway. My gas in the car is low and my sleep levels are even lower. Last night was the first night of decent sleep I've had since Sunday, and believe me, I slept like a rock.

"You should really try to be there," he told me. "I was thinking of making you the 'head' nonfiction editor."

I was one of three nonfiction editors last year, as some of you may know or remember. Name's in the editorial staff masthead within the book/website and everything. However, apparently the journal is going by a new staff setup this year, and the ones in charge are no longer the editor and assistant editor only -- those of us sticking around on staff who have proved our worth (and have actually expressed interest) have been or will be bestowed with the titles of "head editor" of whatever genre they're working in. For me, obviously, that would be nonfiction, and I already expressed interest in the role, if only because I'll be the only second-year on the nonfiction staff and the journal needs some sort of litmus test to gauge by what is a good or not good submission.

"And that's fine," I told him. "If you want to make me the head of nonfiction, go ahead -- it's not like I won't do the work for it. But everything else is stuff all of us heard at last year's meeting, and even as the 'head' of that genre, it's not going to change any of the work I do. It's not like we get hundreds of nonfiction submissions, like we do with fiction and poetry."

The meeting will indeed be useful for all of those first-years who want to join the staff, as I did last fall. But for the rest of us? I'm guessing that most of the info will be along these lines:

1. Hey, we have an online journal now too, so start soliciting submissions from all of your friends and undergraduate schools.

2. We'll have fundraisers at some point like trivia nights or bake sales to help finance the cost of running the website and the print run of the journal in spring.

3. "This is what the genre editors do..."

Etc.

I tried to be as conciliatory as possible when I told the editor I probably wouldn't be there, not just for those reasons but also because that's a lot of miles to put on the car and about $6-8 in gas money to spend every time I make a trip to Wichita and back, and that car's already getting driven into the ground by my daily use of it to do that.

Not to mention, as I also told him, that I'm fucking tired. My schedule, even in the first week of classes, has already started to run me ragged. Tuesdays are fine, but being on campus until 10PM on Wednesday before getting up at 5 to do it all again on Thursday -- a second night I'm there until 10PM -- is wearing me down, and will continue to do so until I get used to it...if that actually happens. I've never had two nights in a row of 7:05-9:45PM classes before, let alone needing to get up at 5AM in the morning between them to get to campus and teach.

Teaching yesterday was fine, I suppose; my classes are slowly, slowly growing. I gained/lost one in my first class, and gained two more in my second class. I now have 15 in my first and 19 in my second. Three different students I had in the spring semester are taking my class this semester, so I already know their writing styles and abilities. It's always good to see familiar faces, too -- all of them liked me as their instructor in the spring.

I'm still trying to feel my way around this class and the curriculum; most of these folks seem to be fairly easygoing; some are quieter than others, some are athletes and some are just plain engineering nerds. The one thing I've found more than anything else, though, is that they're all deathly respectful. Occasionally one of them will make a joke, but they don't talk while I'm talking, they don't converse with one another via whispers, they don't text on their phones or read the newspaper. I have complete attention from everyone when I'm in front of the class, which is something both astounding and inspiring. None of my 101 classes were like that, and I've taught four of those. I guess engineers are patient, more mature, and have higher self-discipline levels for the most part. This is thrilling. If I can maintain that sort of class environment throughout the rest of the semester, teaching these kids will be a breeze.

In other news, I do feel the need to mention something else about the book -- I've been told by friends who bought it that when Amazon transferred it to the Kindle format, it messed up some of the formatting in it. Andrea told me that the footnotes in it became basically randomized (don't ask me how that happens) and that every ten pages or so, it repeats a sentence or something like that. Obviously, it's not like that in my own manuscript, and I'm not even sure how the wording or footnotes could change, as my manuscript for it was in PDF to discourage any of that shit from happening. I glanced through my manuscript again earlier, and everything's good on my end -- so it's apparently something to do with Amazon. I don't have a Kindle myself, obviously (though I think if you're selling Kindle books and making profits for Amazon, they should give you one), and the Kindle Reader program doesn't work with Linux. There's a Kindle "editing program" that Amazon offers for Linux, but it appears to be command-line only, with no install option -- which doesn't matter, really, because I can't get the thing to work correctly on my computer anyway. As much as I don't want to, I may have to buy a new laptop sooner rather than later just so that I can have a machine with Windows on it that will let me actually use the software to edit through that book a fourth time to see just what the hell is wrong with the formatting. As I just paid the rent today and still have to write the deposit check to the former girlfriend at some point in the near future -- as well as get my car worked on -- that would be a last resort, obviously.

Perhaps I'll see if there's an all-online version of the program or if there's a computer on campus I could use for that purpose, if only for a few hours at a time. It's not like I don't have enough to do already this semester, though. My point is, if/when you do buy the book, try to overlook the formatting issues. I will say once again that it's not my fault, but Amazon's.

So, on to other things: this afternoon I ordered a specialized set of hair clippers and the biggest clipper guide they make, a #12 -- which leaves hair at 1.5" all over. After I get them in the mail, as I know myself well, I will probably let them sit in my room for a few days while I stare at them in apprehension and hair-filled fear before I just say fuck it and do the deed of actually cutting my hair. The best time to do it is now, as if I'm going to pull the proverbial trigger on this sort of thing, I need to do it before it gets cold so that it has time to grow back out over the fall and winter. I'm planning to take the beard off, too -- or at least trim it down drastically -- so that it has the chance to re-grow itself during that time as well.

Why have I decided to do this? Well, as you already know, I am beginning to lose my hair, and it's thinning out a lot as it is. This won't slow the process, of course, but it will stop all of my long hair (that keeps falling out more with every shower) from clogging the tub drain. I also think it's time for a change; over the course of the past month as a single guy I've sort of been wanting to reinvent myself appearance-wise, and this is one of the easiest ways to do it. Plus, I'll not have to buy shampoo and conditioner every three weeks.

What I haven't told you folks is that when I haven't been completely exhausted by my school day, I've been coming home at night and eating lighter meals, have been trying to watch my diet a little more, and have started a basic exercise plan of push-ups, sit-ups, and ab crunches. My back doesn't necessarily like this shit, but I know if I try to keep it up it can only help me. I really should have told the former girlfriend's mother to bring by that exercise bike when I had the chance in 2009, as I now have room for it and would use it a lot. Oh well. Maybe I can find one on Newton's Freecycle thing eventually.

"The Trashing" continues; albeit slowly. I've slowed down on it for a while as I can really only put one of those huge steel-sac bags into the can every week without the trash people getting suspicious that I'm dumping bodies or something, and I still need to run the clothing bags to a donation center somewhere. I did, however, find a bunch of older "failed" tie-dye shirts I'd made that I'll bleach and re-dye with the little dye I have left -- they'll make good thank-you gifts for friends I haven't sent stuff to yet. Maybe I'll redo a few of them this evening while football is on, as I need to ready my second volley of those packages anyhow.

As for the rest of the weekend, it's going to be filled with crazy amounts of work to do -- most of tomorrow will be spent reading not one or two, but three different books, with the intention of finishing at least one of them. Aside from that, I have workshop poems to critique and a week's worth of lesson plans to write/calculate (as well as my students' first assignment to get ready), I need to make a quick shopping trip to get the cats more litter and put gas in the car, and I need to make a run to the Dollar Tree for bubble mailers and other small items (like some cheap cookie sheets and cooling racks). Maybe, if it rains, I'll be able to mow the grass on Sunday or Monday, too. So yeah, I'll be busy. Very busy.

Remember, though -- being busy keeps me from becoming too lonely or depressed, so that's a good thing.