Post-Finals Life: Mindfulness or Mindlessness?

Some people spend years in Zen meditation to reach what the professor has attained at the end of a school year: An empty mind.

My brain is empty. I am no longer looking forward to the end of the year — it’s just there. Next week I will sit in office hours looking at my gradebook and giving exams. I will grade the exams. And then I will be done with the semester and … nothing. My mind will consider “What’s for lunch” an unsolvable calculus. My only emotion will be relief. If I even have an emotion; many times I just sleep for 23 hours straight.

I’ll have a week of numbness to get over the oncoming train, which is the end of the college school year. Not so much mindfulness as mindlessness.

And then there will be summer semester and 20-some interns to supervise. But at least my days are more relaxing most of the time.

Short note — so sleepy, cannot brain.

So sleepy. Cannot brain.

My last final is today, and after that I’ve only got internships to grade, and grades to turn in, and I’m done for winter break.

I just need coffee to get through this. Luckily it’s on the brew.

**********

The coffee has arrived.

It might take two cups of coffee to get through this.

Or maybe even three.

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After break, stories to write. I’m a little torn at the expansion of Kami, because my writing is filling the background up — with Barn Swallows’ Dance, with its magic. I’m afraid it will be too strange for the contest I want to enter it in. Ah well, I knew I’m not that standard.

Have a great day!

Summer productivity

My school year officially ended at noon yesterday, after I finalized my grades and finished my office hours. Now I’m officially in summer mode.

That means I have some uninterrupted blocks for writing. This doesn’t mean I’ll only be writing this summer. I have a class I’m taking in administration of disaster mental health programs, I have at least twenty interns to supervise, I have research I should do, I have classes to put together for the summer, I have my gardening …

Professors don’t really have the summer off, we just have more freedom to schedule things as we need them.

So, writing. I’m celebrating the end of the semester with a writing retreat in a cabin at Mozingo Lake next week for two nights. I’m hoping the change of scenery will help me get ahead on the rewrite for Apocalypse.

I’m talking this all out loud because the concept of planning out this summer productivity is new to me. Before my bipolar diagnosis, I pushed myself hard at the end of the semester, usually swinging between hypomanic and depressed, then collapsed on the finish line and slept for two weeks. Or longer. A lot of summers went by when I could barely function to do my summer work.

Being able to enjoy productivity on my own terms is a very new concept for me. And I plan to enjoy it.

The Inertia Paradox

I am into Finals Week in my day job here at Northwest Missouri State University. My schedule has already relaxed as I make it a point to get all my grading done before finals week, and my exams are multiple choice. For all intents and purposes, then, I’m done with the semester except for paperwork.

My summer will be much more flexible — I will supervise 20 interns, which will require visiting them, calling their supervisors at the beginning of the semester, and some grading, all of which can be scheduled at my discretion within reason.

I will have more time this summer. And it will make it harder to write. Does this seem like a paradox? Wouldn’t having more time make it easier to write?

As it turns out, having more time — or more specifically, less to do — makes it harder to write. We are all victims of inertia — a body at rest stays at rest. But inertia works both ways — a body in motion stays in motion.

During the school year, I am a body in motion — four classes, half a dozen interns, meetings, other committments. On a summer schedule, I have plenty of time to be at rest, with no timetable set for me. I can spend all day checking for readers on Blogger if I want. Therefore, I’m a body at rest, and without solid goals — more solid than I have in the school year — I will become a body at rest.

After this school year, which was one of the hardest I’ve had in a while, it would be welcome to rest. But not long enough that I become a body at rest.