The Beginning of the Year

Summer’s end and the New Year

It’s officially the end of my summer. As I’ve said before in these pages, my life goes by the academic calendar. Summer starts about the second week of May, when my schedule becomes more languid. Autumn, and the beginning of my year, starts on the first day of school in the fall.

The semester’s beginning

I go to meetings tomorrow through Tuesday, and then it’s time for classes. I think I’m ready, and I think I’m rested. I think I can clean my office this weekend (the ritual start to the school year). I’m as ready as I can be — with 27 years at this, I think I know what I’m doing. I’m not feeling that rush I feel at the beginning of the fall semester, though. Maybe it’s because I’ve been teaching for almost 30 years (more than that if you count grad school).

Maybe it’s because I’m not going to the beginning of semester picnic, because it’s going to be a couple hundred people and held indoors (so are the beginning of semester meetings, which doesn’t make me happy as I can’t avoid them.)

The rush may come back to me when I stay up for the fireworks next Tuesday, or when I’m back in the classroom, even with all of those masks in the seats (we’re masking again due to the delta variant of COVID).

How to find the thrill

I’m going to find something new to motivate for the school year. Maybe frame one of the three or so posters for my office. Maybe bring in some coffee for my office coffeemaker (a Nespresso). Maybe get my nails done in Bearcat green.

I’m looking for the shine of a shiny new year. Make suggestions for me.

Trouble in Paradise

Trouble with coffee

We’re having trouble with coffee in the household. A coffee crisis, one may say.

Our daily coffee brewing (using an electric vacuum pot, which is hard to find these days) has disintegrated into a pot of coffee that is half good. In other words, the first 1-2 cups are perfect and the rest is either weak or sour.

We’ve been playing with grind size, which is why we go from weak or sour. We’re probably not on the right grind size, or so my husband hypothesizes.

I think there’s something wrong with the heating element of the pot myself. Which is a shame, because KitchenAid no longer makes that coffee maker, and I’m not sure anyone else makes an electric vacuum pot either. It may be time to go back to a French press pot or a pourover or an non-electric vacuum pot or something else low-tech. Something that requires a little more work for this lazy household.

Were you expecting some other type of trouble?

Heavens, I hope not! Things at the household are actually going pretty smoothly, other than my blahs, and I’m about to go into counseling about that. I’ve suffered an identity crisis over the past seven years, because life now isn’t like life before bipolar meds. So I’m seeking some help over that. No trouble at all.

People Move Away and Time Flows On

People move away

I’m having coffee with a friend today. She will be moving to Arizona soon to enjoy her retirement in new surroundings. I don’t blame her; this is not a good town to retire in.

Coffee morning concept, coffee cup with small dish putting on old plank together with stack of notebook over forest outside as background.

We haven’t seen each other in the longest time because of COVID, but we’ve corresponded online in that somewhat indirect way allowed by Facebook. She participates in community band and runs marathons. I, on the other hand, write and self-publish, hoping to get some of my work traditionally published.

Our coffee date will no doubt be a way to catch up and, in a way, to get closure even with Facebook as a medium of exchange. She is embarking on an adventure.

Time flows on without me

I admit I’m jealous of my friend. I have been caught in gaffa (as in the Kate Bush song) for so long, with my writing, my adventures only in books. I used to ask God, “What am I called to do?” but got no tingling that told me what direction to go. I’m not getting too much excitement from writing these days. Nothing is calling me on a quest. No serendipity calls my name, and when I think it does, it falls flat.

I have spoken about this before. I don’t know if this anhedonia is something normal people feel, or if I’m just comparing this pale mood with the elations and depressions I felt before I was diagnosed with bipolar II.

But I’m looking for a quest, a re-energization within COVID, a pleasant surprise, a story to tell as I tell my friend goodbye.

The Beginning of the Semester Looms

Friday is zero hour, the beginning of semester meetings. I’ll sit through a couple days of meetings and then classes start.

This summer emptied out into the flattest vista of grey, and I curled up in it. I know this has been the most restful summer I’ve had, and that if I’m not rested up for the fall, I’ll never be.

This is NOT me.
Photo by Max Fischer on Pexels.com

I still don’t know if I’m ready for the semester to start. I don’t know if I’m ready for the color and the cacophony of all the college students yet, the part of my life where I stand in front of a class and try to make the subject’s information real, the part where I unleash my odd sense of humor to help capture my students. I have forgotten that “professor” is one of my roles.

But this happens at the end of every summer, and the transition is made easier by the rituals of beginning: The all-employee picnic. The all-staff and faculty meetings. The greeting of new students. The cleaning of my office.

I’m ready. As ready as I’ll ever get. Bring on the cacophony.

The Shortest Hiatus

Twenty minutes

That’s how long it took for me to get back into writing yesterday.

So much for my “I think I’m going to take a break from writing” spell. I guess I’ve become a writer after all.

A strange hobby

Writing is a strange hobby. It doesn’t cost much at first, only the cost of paper and writing implements, or the cost of a computer. It’s not as expensive as woodworking or sewing, and one can get results with very little practice. The writer can even show the results to friends, neighbors, or the entire Internet,

Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com

Then, the writer gets the notion in their head that they’re going to get published. After failing at that, there’s one of two places to go: give up on being published, or hone one’s craft. Writing is addictive, however, and the writer gets drunk on possibility. The writer gets pulled down the path of honing one’s craft.

Honing one’s craft is not cheap. Workshops on structuring the story, software that helps edit, developmental editors — all cost money, and quite a bit of money. But the writer gets better, and tries to publish again, because it’s become part of the hobby. A lot of rejections follow. Sometimes the writer decides to self-publish, but sharpening one’s skills and improving one’s writing still takes priority because writers want to be recognized for their best work.

However, writing intoxicates — an elixir of possibility bubbles up whenever one takes up the pen. Writing mesmerizes its practitioners — they feel the quality of the words, the patterns they make as the words are read. Writing tantalizes — visions of the pinnacle of their art as they finish the last word of a document.

It’s a hell of a hobby.

Doing Nothing

The last few days

I’m facing the last few days before my fall semester starts, and I don’t want to do anything. No writing, no advertising, no anything but binge-watch British medical documentaries.

I may just indulge this need to do nothing. I really haven’t taken breaks from writing for about seven years. Between writing and editing, I’ve been writing for seven years. Almost every day.

A few days won’t hurt. Maybe I’ll get some inspiration, or another book ready for queries.

Or, at least, some rest.

(Anyone putting bets on when I’ll quit my break?)

Waking Myself Up

On the stereo: Funk Essentials

It’s 6:30 AM (or ‘six AM in the morning’ as they say around here). I’ve been up since 5 but not quite awake.

Sometimes, in the mornings, I just have to turn the music up to 11. Today, it’s the Funk Essentials playlist from iTunes. The coffee hasn’t arrived yet, but I’m awake enough to get my mind typing. James Brown’s ‘The Payback’ is playing right now, and I suspect that the never-ending loop of ‘Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat’ stuck in my husband’s head has been derailed. Let’s hear it for the downbeat!

In the cup: Zambian coffee

The coffee’s just about ready. The coffee du jour is the bottom of the Zambian beans we got at the local cafe. It’s an interesting coffee with notes of bitter chocolate and something berry.

On the docket: Trying to motivate

The problem with writing so close to the beginning of school is that I want to soak up every drop of leisure I have left — and I have less than a week of it. I’m not that enamored of what I’ve started right now, and I have Canva advertising to play with. Ideally, I should get two hours writing today. Or even an hour. And it’s not speaking to me.

Maybe I need motivation.

Or a vacation.

The Cataract Surgery

Sorry I didn’t write yesterday

I was prepping for my cataract surgery, which means no breakfast, no water, no coffee. NO COFFEE?! I was a total wreck.

What cataract surgery entails

I arrived at the surgery center, which was in the basement of the eye center. (When the patient liaison told me it was in the basement, I entertained all sorts of gruesome scenarios of dungeons, but the surgery center wasn’t that way at all. The lights were somewhat dimmer than usual, because eye surgery necessitates dilation of pupils.)

We sat in a small waiting room with other patients. Finally, the nurse called me back. Once called back, the nurse sat me on a gurney and took my blood pressure and oxygen, and my bp was high, as one might expect from someone who’s about to take a scalpel to the eye. I’m normally sanguine about surgeries, even wanting to watch them, but slicing eyes is beyond my comfort zone.

The nurse gave me a Xanax. I informed her that one xanax would not be enough to sedate me, so she gave me an IV full of Versed (a benzodiazepene). They gave me eye drops — dilation, numbing, betadine (ow!), water, more dilating, more betadine, more water, more numbing. I didn’t feel any different, really, but I shrugged and let the nurse wheel me into the operating theatre.

The surgery itself was no big deal. They pried one eye open and shone red and green lights in my eye, and somewhere over to the side, the doctor did something that stung a little bit. I felt the vacuum part, which felt like a tugging on my eye and hurt a little. At some time, the doctor told me that I needed to look at the lights; I must have been distracted.

The surgery didn’t take that long, beginning to end. My eye was disappointingly blurry for the rest of the day, so I couldn’t see how well the surgery worked. I spent the rest of the day wandering with Richard to lunch, to coffee, to the follow-up appointment, taking eye drops and Tylenol.

A day later

This morning I woke up — and oh my gosh I could see! I couldn’t just see — I could SEE! The eye gets gunky at times, and it feels a bit like there’s something in my eye (which drives me crazy) but I can see again!

I’ll have to have the surgery on the other eye in a year or three, so I’ll know what to expect. But A+A+A+A+A+A would do again!

Cataract Surgery Tomorrow

What I’m not worried about

I’m not worried about how well my surgery is going to go, because it’s a minor, 20-minute surgery. The surgeon cuts a slit at the side of the eye, breaks the lens up with lithotripsy (the same procedure used to break up kidney stones), and then sucks it out. Then they put in a (in my case fixed) intraocular lens. Voila, surgery complete.

Nurse covering eye of patient by medical plaster

I’m not worried about coming out of anesthesia, because the anesthesiologist doesn’t put the patient to sleep. They instead use medicines that make the patient zone out, or as they put it, ‘not care’.

In fact, I would find this all an intriguing experience (as I do any medically-related things, including my gallbladder surgery and getting hit by a car.)

What I am worried about

I’m afraid that dissociative anesthetic is not going to be enough. My brain says, “There’s a person. With a knife. At my eye.” I find this edginess strange, because I fall into meditative states while having teeth drilled and pulled. I watch the nurse take my blood. I study pictures of injuries to improve my moulage (casualty simulation) skills. I watched a video of a leg fracture reduction last night. But my eyes — I feel rather protective about my eyes.

I’m going to need to be really dissociated. Like ‘look at the scaly butterflies’ dissociated.

How I’m going to get through it

I figure the first thing is to let the doctor and anesthesiologist know about my misgivings right off: “I’m in a cold, dim basement room and you’re going to hold a scalpel to my eye; this sounds like a bad horror movie. My next move is to scream and grab the scalpel, then make my escape. Is there any way we can prevent this?”

I think this will get me the good drugs.

Bye for now

I won’t be online tomorrow, so wish me luck today!

The summer winds down …

I’m privileged

Being a professor means that I get a wide-open summer (well, if you subtract internship time and setting up classes for fall.) Most people don’t get that, but it’s part of the reason I became a professor. It’s a privilege I will accept gladly.

I needed the break

After a school year of drastic COVID mitigations, life not normal, lack of a social life, talking to nobody, the summer was welcome. Unfortunately, with the Delta variant, we may go back to that soon. But at least I had this summer to recover.

I admit I’m been a bit of a hermit, writing/editing and staying cool. But it’s been a good, relaxing summer, and I’m grateful I had it at the right time.

Two weeks left

I don’t know how summer went by so fast — I’m now two weeks out from the beginning of semester meetings. I’m contemplating taking these last days napping and watching British ambulance shows on YouTube. I probably won’t do much of that, because there are projects I want to do. (Really? I can’t think of any.)

Whatever I do, I plan to make the most of these few days, and be ready for the fall semester.