12 posts tagged “work”

Wanted to post yesterday to keep up with my pledge, but Dingle was on the computer until after I went to bed, trying to do her English class "DEJs," or double-entry journals, on To Kill a Mockingbird. She said she was supposed to turn them in for chapters eleven through twenty-two or -three. I asked her how many she'd gotten done, and she said, "I'm finishing eleven now." I doubt she made it to chapter twelve.

It's time to get back on the bus. I go back to work tomorrow, but only for an hour and a half a day. Instead of looking at it as a black hole in the middle of my sunny summer days, I've decided to re-imagine it as an incentive to keep a sensible schedule. In other words, I can't stay up all night if I've got to get up and go to work. Even if it is only for an hour and a half. Especially if it is only an hour and a half! And then because I am yoked to this strange schedule, I plan to exploit the trace element of discipline involved to build a writing schedule around it. I have also told the kids that I when I get back home, around 12:30, I want to have two hours of electronics-free living. From 12:30 to 2:30, we can eat lunch, read, clean, exercise, study, or work on projects. What we cannot do is sit on the computer, growing ever larger asses, talk on the phone, play video games on the phone, send text messages, play on Jinx's new XBOX (that he bought himself with his own savings), or anything else of that nature, with the possible exception of digital photography. (What do you think? Should shooting pictures or videos with an electronic camera be an exception to my no-electronics edict?) I will write during that time on paper, as the ancients did, avoiding the temptations of the machine.

I have to go to sleep.

I have to go to sleep because I have to go to work in the morning.

I have to go to work in the morning because I need the money. Besides, I like my job. Right?

I like my job, but I don't like to get up in the morning.

But this is the last week I have daytime hours. I just need to get through this week and then I can sleep in again.

At least until school starts up. It will feel like only minutes have passed from now until then.

But that's life. It goes by fast. It's difficult to make it slow down. Sometimes I stay up late, trying to slow it down. Like now.

But I have to go to sleep.

Instead of thinking about how much I don't want to get up in the morning and go to work, I should sleep. Let it all go; it doesn't matter anyway. I have to go. And it will be over fast. And then it will start up again. And there is no changing it.

Come on.

Tonight was my last night of working for this semester. I'll have a couple weeks off, then start up my summer schedule. But it's fewer hours than I have now, so that will be all right. It will still feel like summer, I think. And when I got off tonight, at 9 p.m., the sun hadn't quite set. It was the first time this year that it wasn't completely dark when I left work. It felt as if summer were welcoming me.

I'm at home in the afternoon for the first time (except for days off) since I started this job October 18. I will work this evening for four hours only and I'm thrilled about it. I love the idea of extra money but working nearly full time has been hard on me/us.

Of course, nothing is ever so easy. I've been summoned to jury duty on Friday, and if I don't have to serve, I'm supposed to sub for a co-worker who is out this week. But then next week, next week I'm gonna be part time.

The job itself is good. I'm a little concerned that I'm going to lose faith in the younger generation, because essentially all the students I work with are remedial. I have to keep reminding myself that they're not all like this. Just the hundreds upon hundreds who come to my lab and know, on balance, almost nothing. Don't worry; I'm almost unfaiIingly nice. I don't hold it against them. But I have never been faced with so many blank looks. They are writing about violence and genocide, but by and large they don't understand my references to the Sudan, Rwanda, Stalin, Mao. The only thing they know is Hitler. Hitler, Hitler, Hitler. Many of them are under the impression that the U.S. entered World War II to save the Jews.

When I told Duff all this, he told me about Godwin's Law:

As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.

Quick update: I started my new job about a week ago. So far so good except my wardrobe is completely unsuitable (pardon the pun).Seriously, what do you people wear to work? Suggestions appreciated.

Basically they've got me working full time while I'm training, so I don't have time to do anything else. I know, other people would have time, but I don't. It's just the way I am, I guess. I'll be glad when it switches to part time, which is what I signed on for.

I did that thing again, where I Google myself and try to decide, based on the results, if I have lived well or poorly. Usually I'm more depressed than impressed. But I felt a little better this time around. No, you won't find any links to my Vox blog, or any of my better writing, unfortunately; and the only picture of me that comes up is one I can't stand. But I've got a few more bylines out there, and you can tell that I volunteer in my community. That's something. I even spoke at a City Council meeting, comments that were paraphrased (albeit poorly) for the minutes. And I've been thanked in the acknowledgements section of three books. Three! One of which I didn't even know about! OK, it's a little bitty something, but I like it. Maybe I'm not such a complete loser after all.

Today we start school. The girls are off to the middle school while Jinx and I will attempt to get back on track here at home. I've also got lots of writing and editing work to finish this week in my spare time. True to form, here I sit posting to Vox while he is downstairs inexplicably polishing his soccer trophies. But don't worry; we'll make our way to the books in a few minutes.

Rojo, my nephew (OK, grand-nephew) had a soccer tournament this weekend and we went to watch him play. Duff actually line-ref'ed all four of his games. And on Saturday, my actual nephew Damien--Rojo's uncle--and his family were at the park, too, for his wife's company picnic. So I had the opportunity (super-rare) to get a picture containing almost everyone in my immediate family (including my Mom, whom to everyone's surprise my sister carted out to the park). My Mom came home from the care center last Wednesday and she is doing much better, by the way.

In the recent NY1 interview, Mr. Halberstam summed up his approach to work by quoting a basketball player. “There’s a great quote by Julius Erving,” he said, “that went, ‘Being a professional is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don’t feel like doing them.’ ”

1. I'm losing hope about my Mom. Yesterday and today she seems different. Worse.

2. I found out from Duff that the fellow I've been freelancing for is being "let go" as part of a corporate restructuring/bloodletting. In the trickle-down scheme of things, that may mean I get "let go" (or set adrift) too. Oh well.

3. Virginia Tech. It doesn't affect me personally, but it's horrible, and you can't help but think about it.