April 4, 2022
I wake at 3:55 briefly and look at the clock, then go back to sleep, where I dream about a meeting with some Native Americans. It was taking place on the second floor of a house. The rooms had a dark, warm feel. My aunt, long deceased, was there, and was preparing food. The Native Americans processed semi-ceremonially through the rooms and then retired to a room where they were going to plan for the meeting. As they walked through we greeted them. I shook hands with a few, including an older woman. I wondered if this was appropriate. Later, the white people were helping themselves to food and sitting down at a long table. Shouldn’t we be waiting for our guests to go first, I thought?
At 5 a.m. the alarm goes off, and I hit snooze, but don’t fall back to sleep, and I get out of bed five minutes later. I pick up a pad and go into my office and jot down the dream. Weird one: not like any other I’ve had. Then I go to the living room, turning on lights, lay down my yoga mat, and do my PT exercises. These are for an arthritic hip and a persistent groin injury. The new quad stretch doesn’t work—it triggers the groin pain. Otherwise the stretches leave my creaky body feeling pretty good, as I shower and floss &c.
Waking up, I smile. Twenty-four brand new hours are given to me. May I live every moment to its fullest, And look on all creatures with eyes of compassion. I’ve been saying this Buddhist prayer, which I got from a Thich Nhat Hahn book, ritually for a few weeks. An attempt to mitigate, manage, ultimately (hopefully) beat back depression. Which has been hanging around lately. I’ve not been relishing much; not looking forward to things. Anhedonia: inability to feel pleasure. For instance, I may have a beer with a new colleague who I like a lot at 5. He’s not confirmed it yet. And when I think about it, I’m like, “whatever.” Also poor attitude towards work tasks. My therapist remarks on the effects of prolonged stress. Suggests I ritualize something that helps me get in a positive frame. Thus: waking up I smile…. I say it to myself as I stretch and breathe, as I shower. At
6:30 I’m out of the shower, and I peek at my phone to see what the weather looks like. Dress: blue shirt, olive khakis, green sweater. High of 62 today, rainy. Chat with C. as we both dress. Pour coffee and deliver it to the living room. Toast an English muffin; put lunch items in a canvas bag; on the muffin, pile cottage cheese; grab a banana. Sit down and eat and watch the morning news, chatting.
At 7 I am in the car, having run back to get my phone. Listening options: the news, This American Life, music. I kind of want to hear some news, but it’s not the best mental hygiene. I drive in silence for a few minutes, then at 7:10 turn on NPR. It’s the most horrifying stuff from the northern suburbs of Ukraine, which I listen to, feeling ethically compelled; then I switch to This American Life, which has this cool quirky story about a guy who figured out a way to investigate bike thefts and retrieve stolen bikes, which he does for strangers, because he wants to. Then the second story is about Poles helping out Ukrainian refugees. I flip back to the radio: the Georgia legislature preparing to eliminate gun permits (which Indiana did), and crack down on teaching about race in schools. Turn it off, drive in silence, through dry patches then light mist and occasional spritzy rain, up I69 and into dear old Middletown.
At a couple minutes after 8, I walk from the parking garage to my office through very light drops, thinking about the psychological weather for today: kind of meh, not terrible. May I live every moment to its fullest. On the roof of Emens Auditorium a bunch of Canada geese are making a racket. …and look on all creatures with eyes of compassion. Except the geese, who are assholes.
In the office, T. says, “How was your weekend” and observes that hers went incredibly fast. In the office kitchen, as I stow my lunch, M. says, “How do these weekends go so fast, and the weeks go so slowly? …Maybe it’s because the weeks are twice as long.” I don’t quibble.
I check my calendar and go through a few budget numbers I need clarified before I talk to my boss about a project at 8:30…and the work day is underway. Two meetings, both short, finished by about 9:20, after which I troubleshoot a couple email lists, answer a few emails, reschedule a meeting. Then I sit down and write this, do the Wordle, which I get in five: subpar. Wordle: an unmitigated good that came from reading Twitter. Maybe the only one.
It’s 10:30, and I dive into the to-do list, poring over my day book and my plethora of yellow-stickies which are trying to direct my energies. (I need better organizational practices). I find that I have a meeting of an antiracism group this afternoon for which I have to finish reading a book. Then I find, upon picking up the book, that I did finish it (it’s all marked up with highlights and underlines), though that was a while ago, so I spend some time looking over my markups and looking at the discussion prompts the group’s leader sent out. In the book, Brittney Cooper’s Eloquent Rage, I find this:
Joy, as I have heard countless Black preachers say, is different from happiness, because happiness is predicated on “happenings,” on what’s occurring, on whether your life is going right, and whether all is well. Joy arises from an internal clarity about our purpose. My purpose is justice. And the fight for justice brings me joy.
This is a helpful reframing. I got into my current job because I want to help enact positive change at a higher level, to use my gifts and energies to make things better for people. Of late I’ve been feeling bogged down in tasks, tasks, tasks, through which the true north is hard to visualize. The therapist recently remarked, “There is a path, even if you can’t see it right now.”
I finish reviewing this book, map out the rest of the day, then dart to the cafeteria to get a salad to augment my lunch. Crossing the quad I see a goose flying south. (Sensing a motif?) Coming back I wave at a colleague from the History Department and ask how she is. “I’m hanging in there, is how I am,” she says. Back in the office, at
11:45, I do an email check and then warm my green pork stew/chili, cover it with a lid, and traipse west on the quad to meet my friend B. for lunch. We sit in his conference room and he tells me about the new condo he bought, the craziness of his job and moving etc. all coming together at once. We finish eating and then take a couple turns walking around the quad and back to the cafeteria, where I get my afternoon coffee. We see a dark brown squirrel and speculate about cross-breeding among the local squirrel sub-species. As we approach the cafeteria, a goose is eyeing us from the edge of one of the paths on the quad. B. remarks on how much he hates geese. I tell him about the Buddhist prayer. On the question of geese, we are agreed.
This transitions into a discussion of the ethics of meat-eating. (He’s been reading Ruth Ozeki’s My Year of Meats, a brilliant novel). We both eat meat moderately; I feel guiltier about it than B. does; I don’t know that an ethical case can be made for meat-eating. I quit beef in January and will quit pork next January, though I don’t know that I’ll quit eating fowl and certainly I’ll keep eating fish. I sip my coffee as we walk; we part in front of my building.
- made me laugh heartily a couple times. If I can laugh that deeply, I musn’t be that depressed.
When I get back into HQ it’s 1:10. On the bench across the hall from the office sits a kid who can be seen on that bench for hours and hours a week, perpetually reading his phone. During mask mandates he frequently had his mask pulled under his nose; I never said anything but silently branded him a jackass, in that Covid-Mask-Rage phenomenon you may know, reader. I have softened towards him since the mask mandate was lifted. When I go into the office I ask M. “How many hours a week does that kid sit on that bench?” She and T. laugh, and M. says that she told him once that there are lots of comfortable seats in the lounge down the hall. But apparently this is where he’s comfortable.
- has some routine procedures for me to sign off on, with a few questions and minor complexities. I visit my teammate in the next office with a question about enrollments; he pulls up a spreadsheet and we look at it together. Then we chat for a bit.
I’ve been updating this for about 10 minutes and now it’s 1:56 and time to churn out some tasks.
Which I do for the next two hours—write emails, scratch things off my list, field a phone call, organize. It flies by, and at about 3:50 I start packing up for my 4 o’clock meeting. I wash my lunch dishes, pack my bags, and head north to the Letterman Building for the antiracism group meeting. I’m almost 10 minutes late when I arrive. The crew is clustered at the front of the room—a large lecture hall, and there are 6 or 7 of us, with some others on the Zoom. We share our takeaways from the book, in a nice, focused give and take. This is a good group, including a couple close friends and others whom I’ve just gotten to know a little bit this year or so. At
4:59 I’m packing up as the leader concludes the conversation. As I’m walking out I realize I probably underestimated my travel time, and I’m going to be late for my beer with R., my new(ish) colleague. I walk down McKinley in the partial sun. Today’s been nicer than they predicted—it’s comfortable with some blue sky and the sun peeping in and out. As I get to the parking garage I see that R. has texted me to say, “I got us a table by the bar.” I text back “Probably 5 minutes late sorry thank you.”
So yes, late again. I follow Siri directions since I’m not used to driving downtown from the garage, even though I’ve been to Elm Street a dozen times. I get in probably 8 minutes late. R. is gracious; has a beer half-drunk in front of him, has ordered food. I order a beer and the hummus/guacamole appetizer; the waiter comes by to say they’re out of both. I order an alternative beer and look at a food menu. All the other appetizers are fried things or carbohydrate bombs, so I pass on food. The waiter comes back with a tiny taster and an apology that my second beer choice wasn’t on hand either. Ridiculous! We laugh about it.
- and I have a good conversation, mostly work-related (and some career/backstory/philosophy of higher ed.) We share our analyses of the bureaucratic landscape. In the midst of which he tells me his very interesting life story. He’s very open, energetic, professional. I’m glad to have invited him and had the convo.
I get back in the car outside, thinking this has turned out to be a good day, with the pivot having come when I was reading Brittney Cooper, and the turn given momentum hanging out with B., and getting a couple hours of focused task work in, and capped off with an absorbing conversation with an interesting and committed colleague. Who’s depressed?
As I pull out it’s 6:45. I drive home flipping between Joni Mitchell and bits of This American Life. Traffic is light, the sky is a vast variegated landscape of light and dark clouds, the sun alternately coming out or setting lines and quadrants ablaze. The drive goes fast. I back into the garage and find that I can’t open the back door (very tight two-car garage), because it’s blocked by the Weber grill. So I think, shoot, it’s time to start grilling anyway, so I carefully wrangle the grill through the little space alongside the car and put it outside, open the back door to get my brief case, and head inside.
Since I’m late, C. has already eaten. I make up a bowl of brown rice and pintos (I cooked the pintos on Sunday), put it in the microwave, and change into sweats and a t-shirt. I sit on the couch with my dinner, chatting with C.. She tells me about her (busy) day and we talk about our upcoming mini-vacation to Santa Fe, which we spent a bunch of time planning on the weekend. I do my dishes and pack a lunch (another serving of rice and beans) for tomorrow. We watch Jeopardy; I’m half attentive, with the other half focused on my phone, where I’m downloading an app. At about
9:20 I turn on the basketball game and declare I’m going to watch the first half. C. goes to bed. I sit on the couch with the game, less than half-attentive, while typing this, which brings us to this moment: 9:57.
5 a.m. comes around early, so a few minutes later I’m shuffling off to bed. I’ll watch the second half while cycling in the morning.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.