Coffee heat rising

Angst

Existential Angst, Depression, or Just Plain Boredom?

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So here’s the problem:

I cannot make myself get back to productive work.

No matter what I try to do to get back on track, I just. cannot. do. it. Before the past seven months of surgical fun began, a normal day’s to-do list consisted of fifteen to twenty tasks. Now I’m lucky if I get through five. Day by day, I’m not getting any work done, and perhaps more alarmingly, I don’t want to get any work done.

If this is the New Normal, it’s going to freaking bankrupt me.

When I am supposedly working, I’m spending about half the available time cruising the Web: reading various news sites, reading up on the odd item some client or student addresses (how do you spell Genghis Khan’s real name, and why, and who was he anyway, and did he really bring civilization to Europe, and speaking of Europe, I wonder what the BBC has to say this afternoon?), playing computer games, blogging, reading e-mail, hanging out at the corgi site, and whatnot. Add up the actual  number of time-stamped hours spent on a client’s Wyrd file, and you get about half the number of hours I sat in front of the computer while pretending to work on the project.

Okay, I’ve always had that tendency. But it’s never stopped me from getting work done, one way or the other, sooner or later. But now I’m not getting much done. Because…

• I don’t want to start.
• I don’t want to stay focused (or can’t stay focused?)
• I’m stuporous with boredom.

So I decided to devote some time today to trying to figure out what the heck is the matter with me. Hence, the following rumination…

The Problem: I can’t get back to productive work.

Reasons:

1) What I’m doing bores me stupid!

 Even though most of my paid contract work is pretty interesting, even the best of copy can get a little old on the second read and what we might call “boring” on the third read and exponentially more boring on the fourth read.

Reading student work is not only boring, it’s often annoying. Yea verily, even infuriating.

BUT: It pays the bills.

BUT1: The bills aren’t so huge that they can’t be paid from other funding sources.

2) Possibly I’m suffering some sort of existential angst.

Any health crisis brings one’s mortality to mind: Do I really want to spend what little time remains to me on work that puts me into a coma?

No.

BUT: What else am I going to do?

• Can’t afford to travel
• Can’t work up much enthusiasm for any other pecuniary endeavor
• The status quo is comfortable

3) Possibly the status quo is too comfortable?

4) Possibly I’m mildly depressed?

Are There Any Solutions?

1) Bored with work

a) Stop editing copy

• This would cut boring tasks by about 20% to 50%

BUT: I use the money to keep computer hardware up-to-date and to support websites.

BUT2: Most of the websites would be redundant if the business were closed.

b) Stop teaching

• This would cut boredom by about 50% to 80%.

BUT: Teaching makes it possible to live without drawing down much from retirement savings.

c) Get a job

• This would make Social Security pure gravy and eliminate the need to spend savings. All required IRA withdrawals could be reinvested or gifted to M’hijito.

BUT: I dislike few things more than having to trudge to a workplace every day.

BUT3: I’m too old to get a decent job.

d) Take a break

• Go on a vacation somewhere. Get out of here for two to three weeks.

BUT: Who’s going to care care of the dogs?

I can’t afford to travel.
I find flying aversive in the most intense way.
My car should not be driven into the sticks.

• One could go camping. It’s easy enough to camp for a week or two at a time. Rent a truck and get some new camping gear. The dogs could then go with.

BUT: Who’s going to take care of the house, pool, and yard?

• Simply sign off all work, including Scottsdale Business Association, for a couple of weeks.

BUT: I’ve already done that, perforce, thanks to the past five surgical procedures. The effect was to make me not want to come back to work!

• Find ways to take mini-breaks.

Set aside days in which no work will be done.
Rent vehicles for day trips.

2) Existential angst

a) Find something else to do with life.

Quit teaching, quit editing, sell the house, and go someplace utterly different.

BUT: This seems way too risky and could lead to more, not less angst.

b) Find some other line of work.

• Look for a paid job.

BUT: I don’t want to go back to work! UGH!

BUT4: Last time I tried to get hired, prospective employers made it abundantly clear they considered me too old. That was six years ago!

• Try going back to freelance reporting. It’s fun and does allow one to meet a lot of people.

BUT: Talk about your second childhood!

BUT5: It pays no more than what I’m doing now.

BUT6: And it would put a helluva lot more wear and tear on the ancient vehicle.

• Get a real estate license. This could be amusing and might even earn some money.

BUT: It’s costly and there’s no guarantee I’d earn anything. The amount of work put into marketing real estate could be devoted to selling books.

• Quit working for others and do your own thing.

BUT: The chance of earning a living wage is exactly nil.

3) Change the status quo

a) In a small and subtle way: Devote specific amounts of time per day and per week to the boring work. Do not devote any more time than allocated to these tasks.

b) Make day trips once or twice a week or a couple of times a month. Rent vehicles and bring the dogs.

c) Change the effin’ attitude!!

4) Address the possibility of depression

a) Limit boring work to specific, scheduled periods. Do not work outside these periods.

b) Get more exercise.

• Back on the mountain!
• Bicycling
• Specific, scheduled period, maybe more than once a day, for exercise; e.g.,

dog walk
human hike
yoga/physical therapy exercises

c)  Train the puppy properly

• Take Ruby to obedience training

d) Take art classes

• Check at Shemer, Desert Botanical Garden
• Or just start drawing again

e) Break loose time in which to do only my own thing

• Set computer to run offline; use offline time to write my own books.
• Or do my own writing on paper, of all things, and then type second drafts online

So if I were to organize time so as to accomplish the following, what would that look like? The following:

1 day trip per month
2 days/week to do my own thing
1 new endeavor, such as returning to art
4 hours of paying work per day, five days a week, for paid work, limited to that.

4 hours x 5 = 20 hours
20 hours x $60/hour = $1200/week, max
4 x $1200 = $4800/month, max

20 hours x $45/hour = $900/week, max
4 x $900 = $3600/month, max

Okay, I can live with either of those scenarios.

When do these famous work hours get done? Eight to noon or one to five, obviously. This leaves the evenings to grade student papers in front of Netflix, which dulls the pain. It leaves four hours a day for exercise, dogs, shopping, and housecare. And it leaves two full days per week in which to do nothing or to go on day trips.

On Thursdays I’m in Scottsdale, getting out of a meeting around 9 a.m. An upscale Costco is located on the way home from that venue, as are two Trader Joe’s, an AJ’s, a Walgreen’s, a fancy Fry’s, and a less than perfect Whole Foods. If I diddled away an hour until Costco opened, I could go there once a month and hit the grocery stores on the other Thursdays, thereby minimizing the car trips and allowing me to shop in much nicer stores than the ones in my part of town — for the same price.

{Sigh} It’s hard to believe that just “getting organized,” which is what all this comes down to, would dispel whatever the present cloud is — whether it’s boredom, angst, or nascent clinical depression. On the other hand, some steady exercise certainly wouldn’t do any harm. And starting something new, such as a new art course, doggy obedience training, or just exploring more by bicycle would at least create a distraction.

 

Would You Stop Your Car for This?

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So I haul off the freeway at Dunlap Road, a major east-west thoroughfare that passes through some of the most…interesting…parts of town. Street-wise, as I hit the off-ramp I maneuver to put my car in the outside left-turn lane, so that the panhandler at the off-ramp’s signal can’t easily walk up to my door and holler at me.

About three or four blocks off the freeway, at a bus stop near 25th Avenue, I see a guy — a BIG, athletic-looking guy — who looks like he’s having a major seizure. He’s jerking his torso back and forth and flailing his arms in the air. At first I think another local crazy and then, even less kindly, ya gotta be more careful with that dope, brother. Then realize, as he falls to the pavement, that he could be having a grand mal epileptic seizure.

I’m in the middle lane and so can’t pull over to stop even if I were inclined to do so — which I am not, for reasons I’ll explain in a minute. Traffic is just flat-out fierce, so I can’t reasonably grope around for my purse, dig out the seldom-used flip-phone, figure out how to use it without crashing a fellow homicidal driver, and dial 911.

A-n-d… Just a week or two ago, the neighborhood association sent out a safety alert. One of the neighbors, tooling down Main Drag East due south of Dunlap, had some guy jump out in front of her car. When she stopped, thinking she had hit him, he mugged her. The police advised that this is a common scam to get people to get out of their cars so they can be robbed.

We are now told never to unlock our doors if it appears that we have hit a pedestrian. Of course, it’s illegal to leave the scene of such an accident. (If it is an accident…) So you should stop your car, lock your doors, stay inside the vehicle, and call 911. Wait until the police arrive before getting out of the car.

With that little bit of intelligence in mind, you may be sure that I was not about to stop and render aid to a flakey-looking large man who’s waving his arms around, jerking frantically, and flopping down on the sidewalk.

As soon as I got to a place where I could call safely, I did call the police, who relayed the message to the fire department, who said they’d send a meat wagon.

But lordie! How un-Christian is that? What the hell has the world come to when you dare not stop to help someone who appears to be in dire trouble?

Am I too, too crazy paranoid? What would you do? Would you stop your car beside an eight-lane thoroughfare in a sketchy part of town to try to help a guy thrashing around as though he were having a seizure? Really?

 

DON’T WANNA WORK…or much of anything else…

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It’s 10:40 Saturday morning and I do NOT feel like working today. Dammit.

Three more sets of busywork “reading response” papers are in from the English 102s. That’s a hundred and twenty-six papers to read! Actually, in each section three students are MIA (thank God). So that leaves “only” 108 mind-numbers to look at and assess.

They’re only  worth 15 points and they don’t actually have to be read carefully: it’s just a matter of looking at them to judge whether our nimrods seem to have read the assigned chapters and tried to apply the principles therein to one of the included essays. Some students are so effing useless that unless you MAKE them read the assignments by demanding that they regurgitate the gist of what they’re supposed to read, they won’t do it.

Even then, sometimes they won’t. One guy obviously just looked at the chapter’s title, which appears in the syllabus, and made up a lot of vague bullshit.

Many students flat-out refuse to buy the textbooks for their college courses. And you can’t blame them: textbooks are horribly overpriced. When it comes to a required bullshit course like freshman comp, which most students highly resent being made to pay for, the textbooks are a frank rip-off. Sixty, eighty, a hundred bucks for a $20 trade paperback? GIVE. ME. A BREAK.

And forgodsake give the students a break.

For the magazine writing course, my colleague and I are trying to concoct a “virtual” workbook by finding websites that contain the same information as the pricey textbook. Really, it would be easier to do that for freshman comp, and I don’t understand why the colleges don’t assign a committee to identify a dozen websites with the instructional content and another couple dozen online essays and articles to examplify that content, and then let us point classmates in that direction.

Even if the students had to sign up for sites with paywalls, like The New York Times, it would be infinitely cheaper than having to fork over some enormous amount of money for a textbook you don’t want and will get rid of on the last day of class, to your significant financial disadvantage.

Ugh. I’ve been sitting here drinking coffee and cruising the Web for the past several hours. GOTTA either get to work or get off my duff, walk the dogs, and do some yardwork.

Yesterday I did manage to get several major chores done:

Cleaned up final (or next-to-final) copy for a client’s 275-page manuscript (single-spaced; that would be something over 500 pages if it were double-spaced the way it’s supposed to be…). Drafted a proposal for said client to send to publishers. Read about 60 stoont papers. Attacked the weeds in the quarter-acre yard and up the alley. Walked the dogs. Devised a yoga routine and tested it (not long enough yet…). Met with my son to discuss the proposed refinance; found him once again unhappy with the idea. Realized he may be right.

My father may have been right, too: mortgage instruments are designed to screw the customer, no matter how cheerily they are presented and no matter how “low” the interest. One might, just might be better served to live in cheap apartments or company housing throughout one’s adulthood, squirreling every penny into savings, and then buy the retirement residence in cash.

God, but the news stinks these days. One exception: Jordan is moved to blow ISIS out of existence.

About bloody time someone got off that dime. If the Jordanians succeed in extinguishing those lunatics, their pilot’s life will not have been lost in vain.

Unlike, we might add, the many lives we’ve thrown uselessly into that vortex.

There’s only one way to bring a stop to extremist attacks on Western targets and on (relatively) innocent locals, and that is to demonstrate without a shadow of a doubt that we will exterminate the perpetrators and anybody who happens to be standing nearby. That is what they understand and that is all they understand.

Sorry to sound harsh, but I grew up in Saudi Arabia. I can assure you, the only reason the Saudis ever pretended to be our “friends” was and is spelled O-I-L. In reality they hate Westerners, they hate Christians, they hate Jews, and they especially hate Americans. That was as obvious while my family was there as it it obvious today.

ISIS represents the worst threat to civilization — any civilization, not just the West’s — since Adolf Hitler. In fact, I would venture to suggest that ISIS is worse than the Nazis, because they have religion behind them, and religion rectifies just about anything. Like the Nazi, they would happily relieve the world of every Jew, every gay and lesbian, every mentally or physically disabled person, everyone they imagine is “immoral,” and everyone who fails to toe their political line. But to that list you can add vast numbers of other nationalities, races, faiths, and non-faiths.

These are people who would not hesitate to detonate a nuclear bomb in New York, London, Paris, San Francisco, Seattle, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Tokyo, Singapore…you name it. Or to unleash chemical or biological weapons on hundreds of thousands of human beings. They would do so without compunction, because they believe God approves.

This is an enemy that truly does embody pure evil. If Americans, Europeans, and Asians do not clear the fog from their vision soon, we won’t have to worry about global warming much longer. There won’t be anybody left to release carbon into the atmosphere. At least, not from combustion sources much more impressive than a campfire.

Cripes. I suppose I’d better get up and get to work. Though under the circumstances there hardly seems any point in it.

Lazied Out???

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ooohhhhhhhhhh…. Has WonderSurgeon turned me into a zombie? Whaa?

Of late, I just do NOT seem to be able to get my act together in the morning. It’s a good thing I don’t have to be at a job come 8 or 9 ayem, because I sure wouldn’t last much longer, at the rate I’m going.

Down at the church, we have what has been dubbed “Switch Sunday”: every third Sunday of the month senior choir sings at the nine o’clock service, meaning we have to surface there at eight o’clock, two hours earlier than our normal choir call. I’ve never been fond of this relatively new “tradition,” because Sunday really is the single day that I prefer to move slowly.

One reason I pay to have the New York Times delivered in hard copy IS the Sunday Times: I want to read the Magazine, the book review section, the Sunday Review, the business section, and the front section (pretty much in that order) over breakfast and a second pot of coffee.

As a practical matter, if I don’t get to the Times over breakfast, I’m not going to get to it, because there are so many other things that have to be done day by day. And so that expensive Sunday paper is going to get dropped into the recycler, mostly unread.

But whatEVER. It’s not that big a deal. I guess. On these inconvenient Sundays I try to at least look at the Magazine while bolting down breakfast, and then the rest of the pile of dead, mashed trees goes into the trash. I’d rather be singing than reading a newspaper, any day.

 This morning, though…f’r hevvinsake!

The alarm went off at 5:30.

NOT, for a change, loafing in the sack for another 20 minutes, I got up, read and responded to a couple of emails, fed the dogs, returned briefly to the ongoing project of de-stinking the slow cooker (which smells grossly of the many pounds of dog meat that have simmered interminably therein), cooked my breakfast, sat down to eat. As I was stuffing a piece of apple into my face, I glanced up at the clock to see how long I had to get dressed…and…

IT WAS ALMOST 7:30!

And my face wasn’t even washed.

Where the hell two hours went, I do not know! Needless to say, I didn’t make it to choir this morning.

Really, since about the third of these five endless surgeries, I simply don’t seem to be able to get moving in the morning. Often these days I’ll be stumbling around the house, feeding the dogs and doing the early a.m. chores and answering emails and checking on students, I’ll look at a clock, and it’s FREAKING 9:30 IN THE MORNING! And I haven’t even gotten dressed yet!

Ugh! What an enormous amount of wasted time!

Somehow, I have got to get over this!

Great News!

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Hallelujah, brothers and sisters! Just heard from the Mayo’s breast clinic: the path report came back NEGATIVE!!

By coincidence when the call rang through I was standing around fiddling with the required self-care procedures and thinking  “ooohhhhh i’m sooo scared the path thing is going to show an invasive cancer moooaaannnn!” 😀

She said the Innocent Boob was clear of any threatening cells; the Guilty Boob still had some residual DCIS, which is what we suspected. The margin was clear, and so it looks like the end of this little horror show is finally in sight.

woo HOOO!

Twiggy_promoAdmiring my new sylph-like self in the mirror, I believe I’ll change my name to Twiggy. 🙂 Remember her?

 

 

 

 

A Modern Massacre of the Innocents

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This Christmas, as we often do, our choir sang William Stopford’s version of Lully Lulla, the Coventry Carol. A survival from a medieval mystery play, the carol tells the story of the Massacre of the Innocents, in which we are told that King Herod ordered the slaughter of all boy children under the age of two in Bethlehem.

Some scholars believe this episode never happened. Indeed, such is the story’s horror that one would like to imagine no king, no leader of men and women could possibly be capable of such a thing. But of course we know human nature well enough to know exactly the opposite is true.

Over at Daily (W)rite, Damyanti Biswas’s consistently interesting blog, we find a cri de coeur and an empathetic declaration of humanity over the Taliban’s mass murder of children in a Pakistani school. Her words are well said.

When we began to rehearse Lully Lulla, it was all I could do to keep from weeping, so vividly did it bring to mind this latest horror. If the Biblical story itself is fable, so be it. Yet it’s emblematic: it tells the sorry story of humanity’s repeated outrages, of massacres of innocents down through the ages. After 2015  years, we don’t seem to have changed much, as a species.