...because Fall Out Boy comes up with better titles that I can, apparently.

I couldn't bring myself to call

I'm trying to do too many things at once here. I keep typing sentences into this box and erasing them, and then I keep working my way through the reading that I'm going to have my class tackle tomorrow, and then I get dismayed because not only am I not getting a journal entry done, I am realizing that my class had trouble handling the philosophical implications of Sim City, and that this essay deals in some depth with dialectical materialism. We're all totally fucked.

Not that class has been bad. It hasn't. But as usual, you run up against a handful of minds so tightly closed that it makes your head spin just a little, and so you go through this hopeless phase, because you are an idealistic young instructor, where you bemoan the state of the whole planet because your students are unwilling to try and wrap their brains around things. That was a convoluted sentence. Shit, so was the second sentence of this entry. Do as I say, not as I do. Apparently.

Actually, now that I think about it, I should actually be doing blogs along with my students right now. That was probably a bad move on my part, the whole "hey I'll keep up with YOU GUYS" thing, because I forget that I really have too much other crap to do to also take my own class.

I don't even know what I'm saying anymore. I'm actually pretty glad that I gave up the 365 blog thing; I had this moment of my life where I was convinced that the internet was going to be my ticket out of oppressed academic-dom, but it's not, and I'm not oppressed, and I think the more time I spend away from the internet, the better. I am such a pendulum.

Except to call it quits

So, yes. Not a whole lot else is going on, except that Daniel is back in town and Geffrey, damn him, is leaving, but I get to trade one best friend for another, and now nishmaelkimble will not have a hetero-life-partner in town and so maybe we'll hang out more. (Yes, Adam? YES. In fact I think I'm going to see you tonight. This is exciting.)

Regular poetry meetings, I think, will resume in their independent summer form at some point next week. Also terribly exciting. Because I am going to need to carry that through the whole year next year, if I can rope people into doing extra-workshop work. I think being outside of workshop is going to be about the best thing, but also harrowing, in that I am going to have to make up and KEEP my own schedule. I am bad at this, because I am, apparently, still in high school when it comes to temporal regulation. I need someone else to do it for me in neat little blocks. Alas.

Back to friends, however: am looking very much forward now that I am not traveling ANY MORE THANK YOU this summer, to really get back down to the business of hanging out regularly, kind of like the end of the semester when I was just about the happiest person alive because I could feel all these good communities solidifying around me - back at that, thank you very much.

...and I am officially dreadfully sorry about that title.

A Rare Moment of Peace
I've got about forty five minutes here until I have to head over to the gym. THEN, after I am good and aerobics-classed-out, I will do some more work. In the meantime though, I have bounced strangely back from that SINKHOLE that I had fallen into not four days ago. I have a moment of free time, and I am using it to do something I like - journaling - as opposed to freaking myself out over all the 139571309481 tasks that I COULD be doing, but that can also, mercifully, wait until tomorrow.

Bob the cat fell on the guinea pigs late last night. :( This did not result in anyone getting hurt, but it did result in a minor pig freak out, the breakage of those plastic grid connector jobbies, and me kicking Bob out of the house rather unceremoniously, as I didn't want him EATING the suddenly-vulnerable walking flesh-potatoes. Which is, really, what guinea pigs actually are to anything with pointy teeth. Poor things. They are so...prey-like. Annnnd that's enough hyphens for one post, kthx.

Classes are winding down. I am not entirely sure how I coped last semester with having two seminar papers due - actually, come to think of it, the only time I've really had TWO full-length seminar papers due at the end of the semester, I did poorly on one, and only did well on the other because the instructor sympathized that I came into the class with NO relevant knowledge and did a huge amount of work researching. Not because I produce a workable paper - because I didn't, really. I mean, maybe the *germ* of something that could be interesting about collaborative technologies and writing is in there somewhere, but I'll be damned if I know where it is.

In other words, the life of an MA student, which entails often having THREE seminar papers, all of which should *theoretically* look a little bit like articles, due at the same time? NOOOO THANKS. Which also makes me think - and here's reason #1985712309! - that I would not be a good doctoral candidate at this point in my life. I've got too much other shit to do.

Not the least of which, at the moment, is to get into digital photography and web design. These are two extremely minor, peripheral interests of mine that I haven't had the time or, frankly, the inclination to do ANYTHING with until sort of recently. Not that I have the time now. But I do have the inclination. Right now my Flickr page consists of pictures of my pigs. While cute, what I'd really like to do is actually use that account for post-processed work - after I learn how to post-process. This also will require me to get that Canon that I've been pining away after for months now. I can haz Christmas present?

SIGH. It's my interest-ADHD, at it again. For shame! For shame. This is why I am not good at anything. Because I have an interest in everything. Web design is SO FAR out of my realm of technical expertise that it's positively laughable. But I want to do it, and I want to understand it. This has given me many headaches, and will continue to give me headaches, as I intend to spend the inordinate amount of time over break doing website crap. I hope my mother didn't think she was actually going to get to USE her desktop, because she's not gonna.

The Break That Wasn't

I am actually going to be away from the proverbial desk for the vast majority of winter break this year. This is because, in a situation akin to the one where you're trying to turn left out of a side street and cars just keep coming at JUST THE RIGHT INTERVALS to keep you from going, I have all sorts of stuff scheduled back in the valley from the 17th to the 3rd.

This is okay, because being away from the office for a while means that I hate it less when I have to be there for 12 hours at a stretch, or whatever, but it also means that I am going to have to do some major battle choosing. I have 2 articles that are, respectively, patently terrible and sort of terrible, that need to be worked up into something-less-terrible. I have no idea when I am going to do this, and I thought break might be a good time to get a jump on that. But no can do, when I don't have access to several million books courtesy of Large University Library.

And you know what? I AM OKAY WITH THIS.

Instead, I will focus on my own website, the website I'm supposed to revamp for the department's community outreach program thing, photography/Photoshop, a loooooong poem (maybe; maybe just revisions of really early poems) and other things that I genuinely enjoy doing. And maybe I will do a little job hunting/resume-sending/connection-begging while I'm at it.

The articles can wait. At this point, in my life, they are not a priority. When I decide in a fit of last-minute panic that the economy sucks enough that my only option is to go back to school, THEN I'll rethink. But until then, I'm going to do stuff that I enjoy, and hopefully find a non-generic job that pays the bills, and that will be that. For now.

You know I'm saying this when in reality, Dreamweaver at 4AM makes me want to kill myself. BUT IN A GOOD WAY?