February 13, 2024
4:23 am – I wake up and look at the clock. My alarm is set for 5:05. This is awkward timing—I’m tired & don’t feel like I’ve slept enough; it’s going to take me a while to fall back to sleep probably; doing so might make me wake up feeling more tired; and I might get weird dreams. Nonetheless I do my back-to-sleep routine, which is to breathe mindfully and count my breaths. I kinda-sorta fall back to sleep, the song “Linger” by the Cranberries, which has been in my mind lately, intermittently coursing through my head. At
5:05 the alarm goes off & I get up & walk to the living room to do my twice-weekly yoga/PT routine. I try to do this mindfully. “Linger” is still in my head, annoyingly. What is that song even about? Later in the routine, I start thinking about today’s meetings, especially a 5 o’clock discussion for students and faculty of SB 202, one of those Republican higher ed bills that have laid the groundwork for political firings in Florida and Texas.
As I’m doing the last bit of PT, which involves moving side to side through the room with a plastic band around my ankles (strengthening the hip muscles), I remember that it’s diary day. I finish the routine with the archer pose, trying to be mindful, noting the opening of the chest, noting also the sharp pain in my scapula, which I have to get an x-ray for later in the week. Then I stand in mountain pose and internally recite my morning mantra: “Waking up, I smile/24 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 walk to the kitchen and see, on the stove clock, that it’s
5:55. This activates the morning sense of a stopwatch ticking, which I try to resist. I make coffee, pouring water, rinsing the pot, grinding beans, working on being mindful of all this. I go to the bathroom and floss, brush, shower, thinking, while I shower, about how the day diary both promotes mindfulness (prompting attention to the moment) and, in a way, limits it (by translating sensations into language).
Once I’ve showered, C. is up in the bedroom, making the bed, and we rehearse our morning comedy routine about how I hog the blankets. Today will be a better-than-routine day: 1) we’re having my homemade hummus which I LOVE for breakfast, 2) C. is coming to work with me. She’s meeting a friend and hanging out in Muncie. Having dressed, I warm the hummus in the microwave, put a plastic bag of cut carrots and celery on the table, fill a coffee mug, sprinkle whole chickpeas and olive oil on the warm hummus. We sit at the dining room table (we don’t usually do this, but hummus requires a communal bowl and careful dipping) and eat breakfast.
When we’ve finished eating it’s
6:58 and time to get rolling. We gather our things (computers, bags, my lunch), put on coats and are rolling towards Muncie by
7:10. I drive. It’s brightening and the sun comes up to our right as we head north on I-69. I have the classical music on, turning it up and down to adjust for conversation. We talk about this and that. We’re going to the jazz kitchen with F. and A. on Saturday…no, wait, this Saturday is K’s birthday…right! That kind of thing. A brooding, booming orchestral piece by Grieg plays, which seems intense for first thing in the morning. “That Grieg isn’t messing around,” I say. “He is not,” C. replies. At
8 am — we’re pulling into the campus area, and I turn on the IPR news. The items are the same as yesterday, and I turn it off. At the intersection of Jackson and McKinley, I say to C., jocosely, “Look, it’s Muncie Indiana, subject of the famous quasi-sociological Middletown Study of 1929.” And “You lived here for a year.” “I did,” she says, reminding me that it was the fourth- or so snowiest winter in Indiana history and she was driving to the state house for work. That was the 2000-2001 school year, my first year here, and the last year the World Trade Center stood.
We park and walk to my office. I point to the are museum, where C. will be meeting her friend, and C. peels off and goes into the Success Hub to grab a seat and work. I grab my water bottle and fill it at a fountain. My boss is in my colleague’s office; I declare “Buongiorno!” But they don’t respond; they seem to be in serious convo.
It’s 8:21 and I need to read scholarship applications.
At 8:30 M.S. comes into the office and we catch up for a few minutes. At
9:05 C. comes into the office and we chat for a few minutes. She’s heading over to the museum to meet her friend. In between these chats, I read scholarship applications.
At 9:30 my doctor’s office calls with test results from my annual physical. Everything’s normal except my blood glucose is 103, pre-diabetic. (100 is the top of the normal range). I need to avoid simple carbohydrates, lose weight, exercise five times a week, the PA says. This is kind of a bummer. That number’s been close but I was expecting it to be down. Well, I’ve been changing my diet and will accelerate some changes, I suppose. I’m getting plenty of exercise already.
I hang up and read scholarship applications. At 10:35, my boss comes in and chats about this and that.
[Somewhere in this 2.5-hour span I got up and refilled my water bottle]. At
10:45 – I check email; write an apologetic email to someone whose email I ignored. I am now entering a part of the day for which I have been pre-annoyed, because I have meetings from 11-2. When am I going to eat? Now, it turns out, and then again later: I go to the office kitchen and peel a banana, and slice off brown spots with a butter knife. I’m debating in my head when I’m going to go to the bathroom. This is crazy: now, I decide, and go to the bathroom down the hall, making me a couple minutes late for our office staff meeting, which I tramp into at
11:02. In this meeting, we’re relatively focused and directed. I eat a Lara Bar while we work. At 11:55, I’m like that student who is packing up before class is over, because I have to go to my next meeting, where we’ll talk about those scholarship applications. I walk out of the building, noting that it’s very nice outside, sunny and warm-ish.
At just after Noon — I get to Honors house, only to find that due to a scheduling error the room’s not available, so now we’re going to mill about in the hall for 15 minutes. I join some colleagues who have gathered in E’s office. From a table I pick up Vivek Murthy’s Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World, which E. (smartly) has first-year students reading, and glance at the intro before setting it down and chatting with colleagues who are discussing the finer points of scholarships and financial aid. (I really know how to live).
Once the meeting gets going it’s good: lots of engagement, good natured folk, focused. We’re done at 1:35; I follow E. back into her office and consult about the meeting about the Senate bill.
By 1:45 I am at the Atrium where I will get something to drink. I’m interrupted by C.S., who has some idea about scholarships that she wants me to bring to the attention of The Powers. (C.S. has a lot of ideas. Despite the banana and the Lara Bar, I’m quite hungry and mildly annoyed, though her point is valid.) I snag some salad dressing and Iced Tea and walk back to my office, “Linger” careening around in my head again. Minutes after I arrive at the office, at 2:03, C. (my wife, not C.S. my colleague) comes into the office (I hear the secretaries talking to her). She sits down in the chair across from my desk and we chat while I eat my salad. She tells me about her visit with her friend. I tell her about discussions of replacing me. (Reader: I’ve filed my paperwork to retire from the University, at age 60, in about 6 months).
C. leaves just before 2:30– I do a few emails and delay talking to a department chair who is waiting for me in the vestibule. Then I’m with him for 15 minutes, going over instructions for a report. Then I do emails for a bit and look up the lyrics of “Linger,” wanting to at least know what the hell that song is about. It’s a pretty straightforward love-lost song. It remains obscure what is the antecedent of “it” in its hook-line, “Do you have to let it linger?” (The longing? The pain of separation? With sexual entendre as well? I do not know.) Then I email C., who is now working in the library, and say I’m on my way for coffee. The song is still coursing through my head. I’m at the library at 3, fill my coffee mug, and sit for 15 minutes on couches and talk some more with C, about the Senate bill and various informal lobbying efforts happening among faculty. Then I walk back to the office, “Linger” still lingering.
At 3:30 I’m back at it, doing emails, and some research on the university’s (multiple, incommensurate, confusing, difficult to find) policies about posting on bulletin boards. I call someone who might be able to clarify; he’s in a meeting. In between reading various policies, I remember this diary, and jump in here and write some notes.
Now it’s 4:05, and the question is: what can I finish in the hour before the 5 pm meeting? I decide to get back into the fresh groove I’ve worn and keep working on the bulletin boards thing. The colleague I’d reached out to calls me back at 4:45. Our conversation forestalls sending a long email I just drafted, but the work won’t go to waste; I’ll leave it in drafts and re-purpose it later.
At 4:54 I’m packing up & waiting for E., only to learn, via text message while I’m walking, that she was caught up in a conversation and won’t be able to walk to the Senate Bill meeting with me. I arrive at the meeting, which I learned in the last hour is a “teach-in” geared mainly to students, getting there about 5 minutes late and saying Hi to a couple colleagues staffing the check-in table, before removing my coat and settling in at the back of the room, on the floor, with my back against the wall.
I listen to colleagues present main, concerning aspects of the bill (post-tenure review for ideological correctness, an invitation to rat out your teachers and colleagues, etc.), then see a rep of the upper administration hijack the meeting to reiterate his “don’t worry, it’s not that bad, we’ve got your back” message, then watch the blowback (mainly from students, though faculty push back on specific points respectfully); meanwhile I’m texting “WTF”-type messages with friends around the room. I get up to leave right around 6—the meeting is still going on–and walk back to the parking garage, shaking my head and thinking, “bad, bad, bad.” As I approach the garage, I realize to my relief that George Harrison’s “What is Life?” has replaced the Cranberries on my internal tape loop. (“I’ll try my best to make everything succeed”—a mantra for all the associate deans out there.)
By about 6:15, C. is driving home and I’m in the passenger seat. I narrate an account of the meeting, vexed and agitated. I have to pause to direct her out of Muncie, as she drives this way infrequently. It’s getting dark as we get to the highway. I text with friends, “Tell me what I miss,” etc., and look at my email and text to try to set some things up for tomorrow: a lunch with a colleague (no good; she has Spanish class) and a meet-up at a coffee shop with a friend on the way home (good: set.) (He’s a Quaker minister and our topic for tomorrow is “help me deal with the awfulness of the world.”) I finally run out of bad things to say about our central admin and take some deep breaths and ask C. “are we home yet?” We chat sparsely but amiably for the rest of the ride about nothing in particular.
Back home, we change clothes (athleisure wear for me!), heat up dinner (frozen green chicken chili with potatoes), and ensconce on the couch, watching Jeopardy as we eat. (One of the contestants is an associate dean— No comment). I go to the kitchen to do the dishes—easy, a couple things go in the dishwasher and I wash a pot and a knife and some spoons and a cutting board, making a point to be mindful: I rub my fingers against the bowl of a plastic ladle to make sure it’s clean. I eat two triscuits from the box, grab my computer, and sit down on the couch to write these last couple paragraphs.
Now I’m taking a deep breath or two; George Harrison singing in my head; I’m drinking the dregs of a glass of seltzer and ice.
It’s 8:37 and I think, “What now?”
I continue to sit with my computer in my lap, using it to answer one email (I opened my work email, which was open in a tab, without thinking about it); log my food for the day and send it to my accountability partner (referred to above as “Quaker minister”); then quickly look at some sports headlines. Then I pick up the New Yorker and read aimlessly, mostly looking at the cartoons, one of which I photograph and send to K. (It’s a joke about movies being too long, which she’s been complaining about).
Now it’s 9:18 and I’m going to meditate for 15 minutes & go to bed. It’s been a day!
Post-script: Thinking about the EDLM prompt—“tell us what you do, and what you’re thinking and feeling”—I realize that there’s not much in here about how I was feeling on Tuesday, February 13, 2024. So, I add:
Having C. around during the work day was fun and broke the day up pleasantly, a very rare treat. And, I was extremely busy/scheduled, which allowed little time for dwelling on minor annoyances or on the vast political dread that has intermittently characterized the last—what, eight years?—and has been especially acute for the last couple months, with the Senate Bill and the Israel-Gaza war as well as some local episodes amping up everything on campus. But that feeling—the sense of political burden, if I can call it that–did come home powerfully during the 5 p.m. meeting and afterwards.
And, looking at the affective landscape more broadly, Tuesday was a relatively good day sandwiched in between a couple really difficult ones. On Monday, I was in a meeting where politically divisive content was on the table, and there was awkwardness, and I was gripped by a powerful desire to run out of the room. (I didn’t, of course, but the desire was intense and real.) Then on Wednesday, I had a number of meetings set up where I had to “perform”—meetings I had to run, or presentations, and I was underprepared and extremely anxious (by my personal standards), spending the day rushing to get ready with my eyes darting back and forth to check the time on my phone.
So, adding these details, I think, captures the broader landscape, which is marked by these ups and downs amidst a constant but variable sense of hauling around a political burden which one has responsibility for, but not power over. It’s a mix of moments of dread or heaviness or mental/spiritual fatigue, relieved by moments of a stoical “let’s take things one at a time” posture, punctuated by various, random, fleeting ups and downs.
A couple days after this, my basic, daily load of tasks lightened considerably, which helped, and made me feel more able to proceed and to put this being-ensnared-in-history situation into a more workable perspective. Which doesn’t at all mean that the near future will not hold terrible things, nationally and locally. It very well might.