EDLM Diary
May 15, 2019
I wake briefly probably around 4 o’clock and lie there. There’s no birdsong so I know the sun hasn’t risen yet. I start counting my breaths—my first step to making myself go back to sleep….
The alarm goes off at 5:15:–staticky radio with a Ravel piano piece. I only know this because the DJ comes on and tells me. I get out of bed, creaky and sore, and into my home office to meditate for 10 minutes. I say to C., “I’m going to meditate.” She says, “I’ll make coffee.” I say, “That would be awesome.” This is a joke: we say the exact same thing like 4 mornings out of 7 or so.
Toothbrushing, shower. I had been dreaming about a big conference at work; I felt out of place; a friend asked me to care for his pet, some kind of weird herd mammal; another friend took me to a food truck in New Orleans.
Mind already busy as I shower, thinking about the day’s work—never quite got into that quiet, meditative state.
I start dressing, put toast down and start water boiling for an egg, finish dressing, going back and forth between the kitchen and our bedroom, in our small one-story house. C. and I get in each other’s way in the kitchen, talking and joking. Topics include her work projects for the day and whether you can eat guacamole that’s turned slightly brown if you just scrape off the brown bits. (C. is a stickler for food safety.) I assemble breakfast: berries & banana slices, toast, guacamole (bacteria be damned!) and a soft-boiled egg. I’ve never quite mastered soft-boiled egg shell removal.
At about 6:15 I’m on the couch & eat this quickly with the morning news on, with C. on the other end of the couch. I go to the kitchen once to fetch my fruit & refill coffee. We chat about the news & things. At
6:46 – I pack up gym stuff, briefcase, lunch and get into the car, parked at the curb. Windows dewy. The time of departure means most things (traffic) have to go right for me to be on time for my 8 o’clock meeting in Muncie (I live in Indy.) I drive on potholed streets in silence till 7, trying to settle and quiet my mind; feeling mildly anxious without any particular reason. Long and busy workday ahead. The sun is up and it’s nice outside, brisk with very, very light fog.
I drive up I69, flipping between the news and the Grateful Dead channel on the radio, zoning in and out. Thinking that I don’t want to start the day angry or depressed by the news. Lately I’ve also been listening to the Seen on the Radio podcast about the history of race in America, which is brilliant & amazing & infuriating—also not starting the day with that. My mind drifts until about
7:55 — In Muncie, where there’s construction on University Ave and I have to make a big looping square to park my car in front of the student center. I get into the meeting room 2 minutes before the start of this large meeting of academic leaders. There’s a seat at one of the round tables near the front near M, an old friend who’s now a senior administrator, and I put my bag down by her. I go to the coffee bar and pour a small paper cup full, thinking I drink too much coffee & need a detox.
The meeting is an hour of listening, a lot of it important information that I need for my work as administrator of a large department. It requires concentration and note-taking and so goes quickly. I feel upbeat leaving it—the leaders presenting seem on top of things, and there are some good systems improvements coming. The meeting breaks up at
9 a.m. — & I mill about and talk to a few colleagues. I walk downstairs with M. and we chat; as longtime friends we thread back and forth between work and personal stuff as we chat for perhaps 10 minutes, interrupted by people we know passing by. This includes a pleasant chat with a former secretary in my department who just got her degree and has been appointed to a good admin job; she’s very smart & dynamic & nice. Then we part & I sit down in the cafeteria in the student center, open my computer, check email & my calendar, and write this. At
9:55—I drive my car to the office, greet the staff, stow my lunch, open the window (using a special key to open the windows in our 1970s Soviet-style building), & do emails & answer queries and make tiny decisions for an hour. Cool May air coming through the window along with the sounds of a large gaggle of little kids being led around by daycare folks. At
11—I go to the library across the street for training on our new course management system. The training annoys me to the edge of desperate rage. Poorly run; the instructor only got through half of the material; there were contradictory instructions from two people running the session—BAH. I consciousness-cleanse by tuning into the lovely weather as I cross the street. So at
12:05 p.m. — I’m back in the office where I answer a couple quick questions from my assistant, warm my lunch (turkey meatloaf, a potato, peas, a small blob of ketchup); & eat & read about baseball on the internet & look at Twitter for a bit; then write this. Now it’s
1:12 — and time to buckle down. I have a big report due next Monday and want to make a lot of progress on it today. At the moment I’m thinking: my desk is messy. And I’m feeling: fine, pretty good energy, ready to focus.
I peck away at this report, interrupted by other tasks (showing up in email, brought to me by my admin assistant) here and there. A bit before 2 a colleague stops in to talk about a complex and vexing student issue. We talk it through and come to a plan which involves me making a few phone calls. Making those calls and then writing the follow-up email to my colleague takes me to a little after
3 o’clock — at which point I walk to the Atrium in search of non-tepid coffee, thinking I drink too much coffee and need a detox. It’s nice outside, and I breathe and tune into the sights and sounds as I walk. The coffee is just a tad warmer than tepid; I also buy a banana (it’s energy I’m after), and I go back outside and walk back, sipping coffee. I go the bathroom and throw away about a third of it, go back to the office, eat the banana, and go back to work on the report.
This report involves a combination of careful, rhetorical writing; organization of a large amount of material, and mind-numbing plugging in of data. I bounce among these tasks, slowly pushing this rather large task forward in dribs and drabs. I punctuate this with email checks and little social media breaks, and finish with a good half-hour doing mindless data formatting, until
5 o’clock—when I take a brisk walk to the village to get a Poke bowl. I had been debating about going to the gym or changing into workout clothes and taking a brisk walk by the river. But I worked through too late to allow for that. So I’m settling for a brisk walk to the village to pick up dinner. The weather is a nice, a little humid, a few bugs about, but finally some real May weather. (For the second climate-change May in a row, it’s been cold and rainy, more late March-ish; and in the next few days it’s going to get into the high 80s.) I breathe and try to quiet my mind, though I spend a good deal of time thinking about tonight’s event. I have to get my presentation together (easy; I’ve talked about this project lots of times before), but in any case it remains to be done.
At the Poke place, the young woman working behind the counter is very thin and in absurdly short jean shorts and wearing long false eyelashes. She builds my Poke bowl to order; I pay with a card and walk back, mind somewhat quieter on the walk to the village. Walking north on McKinley I look at the library—I’ve always liked that building, the way it looks from the outside: it’s my favorite of the later 20th-c buildings on campus. Campus is extremely quiet—I see maybe four people and four cars on the walk—Twilight Zone-ish. It’s
5:40 by the time I get back to the office. I start putting together a Powerpoint for the 7 p.m. event, cutting and pasting, making title cards, etc. I do this while dipping into my Poke bowl with chopsticks. I’m still pulling this together when the phone rings at
6:30 and it’s an upper administrator wanting to talk about the difficult complex student issue. We talk for a bit and then I realize that it’s almost 6:45 and I have to get to the event immediately. Now I’m actually running behind, but I remain fairly calm—it’s not like they can start without me. I get to the site at 6:58 and get the PowerPoint booted up and we start at
7:02. The event goes well; I’m a bit underprepared but talk my way through it. Good crowd of about 25 people (for a Wednesday night in Muncie); really good work from the volunteers who did part of the program; good chat and contacts made. Good! I stay around after to talk to people, get phone numbers, chat, and at about
8:15 I’m back in the car. I stop for gas at the Meijer on McGalliard and head home, listening to baseball on the radio and admiring the beautiful dusk sky, which changes its mix of shades—dark slate blue clouds; bright reddish orange glows behind white clouds (over the Texas Roadhouse at exit 26); fading to brownish orange (over the Skyline Chili at exit 22); streaked by vapor trails. It’s 65 degrees. The Phillies are losing but the game is engaging. Baseball lends ritual and comforting routine to my days during the season. I’m back on Indy city streets by about
9:10 and its pretty dark and I have to be careful to watch out for potholes. I’m home at
9:25; set down my various bags, and sit on the couch with C and recount the day: the good meeting; the bad training; the complex vexing student issue; the report; the event. She has a pad of graph paper on which she’s crossed out tasks she’s completed during the day.
I’m tired; if you include the commute this has been a sixteen-hour day, and if you add up a lunchbreak of about 45 minutes and maybe 40 minutes of walking and 10 minutes of procrastinating online, a vast majority of it has been work.
I go to the kitchen and grab a handful of nuts. C. watches a taped sitcom while I type this, looking at the score of the baseball game intermittently.
I’m getting up at 5:45 tomorrow morning to play racquetball then meet my friend for writing-accountability-coffee (coffee again!) afterwards, so it’s past time for bed by
10:21, at which point I hit “save” on this and tuck myself in.