Getting caught up on everything and starting to level out with my writings and teachings, and I can do so now, finally with this office time. The weekends and especially the evenings are becoming consistent no-go’s with writing and lecture writing, grading, being the student I want to be— Student just walked the hall looking for me, wanting to turn something in. A bit late, but I reward her consistency and determination. Time for another coffee, even after the 5-shot mocha I had this morning, had to have this morning. Still so much on the mind but I have to focus on the moment here in the adjunct cell.. write more for teaching.. keep the Road in mind. Sipping my ’12 Merlot last night and it completely shifted shape on me, delivering a different conviction and rhetoric than it did the last time I tasted it, which may have been about six months or so ago. My identity changes with the wine, with everything, with life and what I’m “supposed to do” in life, what I want to do and what I definitely don’t want to see myself doing, what I don’t want my babies to see me doing.
The adjunct with whom I share the office talks to students in the conference room. It’s distracting, but I’m letting myself be distracted. And I let myself get swallowed by other distractions as well; budgeting, money, bills, taxes coming up, this new winery gig. And that I’m just getting older and perpetuating the same habits… with writing and so much.. need to act outside of character, go against compulsion… So does that mean no coffee right now then? Well, not that. But just doing things a bit differently. And one thing I need to do, which I haven’t yet though I keep talking about it is waking early, earlier than early. 4AM! Imagine the writing I’d put down, the ideas I’d produce, the content and how my blog would grow— I can see myself on the Road just lecturing on that, the early hour and the benefits to the writer. Maybe tomorrow morning, right? There’s always tomorrow— though that mentality and what-me-worry attitude that’s delivered me straight to nothingness in terms of production.
Felt amazing handing back the papers, FINALLY, in the ‘5’ class this morning. Off my mind, off my chest, out of my life… I’ll be more proactive with grading and planning, more creative. I must say, this morning’s meeting, its meaning, felt more second-nature to me than recent sessions. I see me at other campuses, sharing ideas with not only students but other teachers as well. How the journal and the freewrite, and the embrace of singular words is oftentimes the remedy for what students accept as writer’s block. I need to print more! All these ideas! Bring them to the world of academia and other writers, everyone I contact and connect with. This lecture I’m writing, for 1A later this afternoon, to be my strongest of the semester. But I have to stay energized, keep with the coffee and the vision of me on the Road with my teachings and ideas, pages and discussion directions, prompts and what be. This whole thing, this blog and everything I write is, I’m finding, a stream of memoir. Of an adjunct. Of a writer. Of a writerfather.
Time for coffee. Time for a walk across campus. Need air. The morning. The outside.
More and more, my days as an adjunct are like re-livings of days before. But I’m seeing gems and voices I didn’t before. That it doesn’t have to be a certain way. There doesn’t have to be a humdrum, there doesn’t need to be repeated the doldrums. There’s fire in teaching, in being on a campus, the writerfather reborn in so much this morning, refusing to let this week be like the last. So anyway.. a walk. The professor will walk. But with his little journal, the Carpe journal, gifted to me from parents and probably with unintended significance, and not just from what’s on the cover, the obvious, the “Carpe Diem” of it all. But with more, ownership and control of my own story’s narration.
Back from walk. My coffee, medium. And me, feeling ‘blah’. Not sure why. Thought the walk would help, and it did, I guess, but nothing is happening this morning. Next logical question, then: “What do you want to happen?” I don’t know….. Just immerse— no, hate that word— douse yourself in the moment, anoint yourself in it. Shared adjunct office, door behind me that opens to roof of theatre room, hear a video or interview playing. Not sure what the man speaking’s talking about, or what the context is, but I enjoy that this office is MINE for now. One page, then another, then another… why don’t I have a finished book? WHY! That’s just it.. I’ll collect, page by page, moment by moment, me by me. Thinking of all that I write, as much as I write. If it wasn’t so scattered, more FOCUSED as Mom recently punctuated, I’d have I don’t know how many books by now. Self-published then picked up by whatever house, distributed and I’d be traveling, speaking about writing and life and how I wrote my life the way I wanted, how my children see me as I want them to. Goddamn last week! Think it still tears into my mood. But I can’t let it. I have to let it pass me, I have to ignore it. That ‘me’, or that side of me. Want to leave, just drive home and see Alice and Emma, have a coffee and prep for this afternoon’s 1A.
Met a lady from SF yesterday, in the makeshift notebook I made behind with bar with stapled mini-legal sheets I called her “positive Sid”. Her name Sidney, and she told me she was an artist, and that she had a near-death transaction and that she was so grateful for everyday, and that she’s proud of how vocal she is about her gratitude, bringing her partner over to attest to her appreciation, “Don’t I say at least five or six thank-you’s throughout the day?” Sid said to her partner. “Yeah, yeah you do…” Alicia, her partner, said. I had to write it down, I had to capture her energy and the reminder that all this is without guarantee, that life is frail, fragile, and atop that so incredibly temporary. So I hold to this attitude, and hope it raises me this morning, away from this ‘blah’. Refusing the adjunct ‘blah’… NO ‘BLAH’.
Last semester. I remember thinking it would never end. But it did. And now this semester, already in Week 9. How is this happening? Life passing me and I’m concerned with shit that doesn’t even really impact my days significantly.. grading papers and bills, fucking taxes and… The blah returns, and I’m too lazy and dispirited to put the singular quote marks around it. I just feel it and this coffee doesn’t help expel it. Hear full-timers down the hall laughing and gossiping and talking about plans for curriculum and bitching about their students, “I think that’s what we’ll have to do,” one of them says about a student or some meeting they have coming up. Doesn’t concern me but sometimes I wish it did. I wish I was invited to offer thoughts on something….. But I’m not. I’m another added adjunct, just one in the “pool” (another word I hate, especially with the context.. I think a pool of sharks, devouring each other, or other fish taking food from fish that more need it). I’m not letting ‘adjunct’ be my sole identity, even when I make it my own or I come off empowered.
10:33— done filling out absentee forms from last week, and the other week. With Spring approaching the bugs, what gives me weeks like last week, die. Can’t be sick anymore, especially not like last week. Horrible. In fact this morning I had a sinus headache just above my right eye. So it’s still with me a bit. Or the ripples of the bug are.
And blah lands on my shoulder, wraps its tail around me neck. I breathe deep but it barely helps. The other adjunct is in the room with me and she uses the keyboard, types loud and it’s infuriating that she doesn’t honor that this is my time in the cell, but is there ever really a “my time”. No. I’m an adjunct and there’s only the wait, and the hope I’ll have a class the next term that aligns and jives with my life’s timing—UGH, that sound of the plastic keys, type fast fast fast.. then stop. “Fuck this morning,” I think. The mood has won. Blah wins. And I can only remind myself how pissed off I am. I won’t be one of those adjuncts that lives like this, I can’t. My kids can’t see me like this. They’ll one day read this, yes. But I don’t want this image in their eyes.
Goddamnit.
Hear a full-timer down the hall, in her office, talking to a student about writing, like she knows everything about writing, about how to write, and what to write. This is painful, hearing the pseudo-sagacity and the certainty behind it. I become more turned off to academia, and that I’m a figure in it.