EDLM Diary 9/24/20
As the weather turns cooler, neither of us want to get out of bed. So, we keep setting Alexa for five more minutes of snuggling, but get up around 7:30.
Reading the morning news, the line “Do you remember when you were young and you wanted to set the world on fire?” from a song gets in my head and sticks for what is not the first time recently. Is it too late to want to set is on fire in my 40s? The world is already burning, I think. “We didn’t start the fire?” Well, we sure have stocked it. Yesterday I told my therapist I wondered if there’d be civil war in November, and how weird it is to have a brain that jumps to worst case scenarios, but to feel like they are completely plausible right now. She said “just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.”
I gave in and ate a cookie for breakfast. These peanut butter chocolate chip cookies are really good with coffee, so why not? We have breakfast by the open windows these days. The trees outside are really turning yellow.
The kitten, S, is very snuggly this morning. Yes, we became pandemic pet people and got a new kitten in July. She’s brought us so much joy. She has two modes: play and cuddle. This morning is cuddle, and she follows me during my routine insisting on some pets. It’s hard to push her off my lap after breakfast and go to work.
But I do, on schedule, as always. Routine is essential to me right now. I guess it’s my way of coping with an unpredictable world. So, four Pomodoro timers of research work, 2 hours including the breaks. Every morning from about 8:30-10:30. I haven’t missed one in months since I purposefully took a week away. Today I finish my penultimate transcript for my book, which is awesome. (Penultimate is one of my favorite words, btw.) I know a lot of people send transcriptions out to be done externally, but I feel like doing them myself is key to my process, maybe because I’m such an auditory person. Listening to the voices takes me back, and these are all over two years old, so… and yet, it’s funny how I anticipate what I’m going to say next most times. Anyway, transcribing myself has been good but I’m glad I’m almost ready to get back to writing. I live for the writing part.
After research time, I do small things knowing I have an afternoon packed with meetings. Kitten is now in play mode and is attacking her sister on my wife’s desk as she’s trying to work. So, I take her in the other room and start up her iPad game. Yes, I entertain my kitten with an iPad game. Kittens these days.
Doing a sort of puttering with work—responding to emails, of which there are few. Yes, most people are getting more emails these days and I’m getting fewer. It’s a bit baffling. But maybe they are all too busy writing each other to email me? I make an intro video for Week 6 for my asynchronous course. I’m loving the chance to do this. For awhile, I toyed with the idea of doing this before I taught online. Just explaining what the week is about, why I chose the readings I did, etc. etc. I just never fully got around to it before. But I hope it helps students see what’s what right now. Of course, I’ll see what the students think, but I feel like this course is streamlined and tight in a way that good writing is tight—and better than it’s ever been in person. But again, putting judgement on hold for now.
Noon lunch of grilled cheese and tomato soup. Been eating a lot of that—comfort food. Made the grilled cheese on some homemade bread some friends dropped off on our doorstep this weekend. Lunchtime walk around Canan Commons. Putting on a mask is like putting on shoes these days for us. It’s a beautiful day, and not too many people. Only about half of them have masks, but they are all good about crossing the street and whatnot to keep distance. Still, my heart races a little when I see anyone without a mask. We gather a Target package on our way in. Still ordering most things online for delivery, and Target makes it easy with the app. A few snuggles before going back to work. I’ve gotten used to this routine, and it’s comforting.
News: Trump apparently has active plans for not stepping down if/when he loses in November. So, that’s terrifying. And he’s saying anti-Semitic things. I remember when the comparison to Hitler seemed exaggerated, but it seems less and less so over time. There’s such a contrast right now between my internal world and the external world that feels surreal and irreconcilable. I’m safe. Comfortable. Happy even. But it feels like I shouldn’t be.
In the afternoon, I often work in the recliner in the bedroom because I have meetings, and it’s a bit farther away from my wife having her meetings. First, I have a one-on-one with a member of my team. I’ve learned a lot about management from observing my wife work and talking to her. She manages a team, too. And she does a one-on-one weekly with each member of her team with the idea being that they drive the conversation with how they are doing, their concerns, etc. It’s a space that’s different from a group meeting where not everything is relevant to each person. Of course we like our independence in academia, and none of my team members are “mine” for all of their load. So, I do them once a month with each individual team member, and this has been great. And it’s especially great now when I don’t run into them in person to check in. Mine tend to be a bit more task-oriented than the ones I hear my wife do, which are more coaching in some ways, but that’s the nature of the work, I think, and of only having them once a month.
Two other meetings, which go better than expected. Is this the new norm? Is my attitude better? Is a cat on my lap just making me more chill in this meeting? Having some different people involved is definitely one part of it. Or maybe I’m appreciating my own meetings after transcribing about the yelling matches my research participant told me about in his.
Can I say again how valuable it is to overhear my wife’s management work? Like I’m taking a break and overhearing a bit of a performance review meeting, and she’s asking about that person’s goals and how she can support them, and how they are looking out for their own health, and what they were learning. And like, in academia we get a little “you were satisfactory” by a vote of 5-0 letter or something equally meaningless for a file. And we put so much into those files. Heck, something that struck me recently was that a colleague sent me a note to say he thought I did a good job on something and prefaced it with “I hope this doesn’t sound condescending,” which strikes me as a good commentary on how little we give praise to each other. Anyway… this probably will be a blog post I do at some point and EDLM doesn’t need all my soapboxes. But I will say, work from home has some very interesting potential for what we learn about ways of working from others in different areas and industries.
After editing some captions for my video for my class and posting it, I have a research interview. That goes until about 6:15. My wife already ate, so I warm up some leftover lemongrass chicken, which was quite good. Lemongrass has been hard to get with groceries being delivered.
We watch this week’s episode of Lovecraft Country. The first half is all in the Korean War and doesn’t have the main characters, and by the time the main character shows up, I’d kind of forgotten I was watching that show. But it’s a very good episode.
The kitten likes the TV. And then she gets her head stuck in a tissue box and I finally get a video to post on Instagram before she falls off the coffee table and dislodges it. She’s very helpful for making us laugh right now.
After the show ends and we feed the cats, we play the collaborative videogame we’ve been playing—Spiritfarer. It’s a relaxing, sweet game and I get to play a cat, so it’s perfect.
The news continues to be bad. Pence—the local one—won’t debate Lake—guessing cause she’s a black female candidate. Trump is doing something with more with the banning antiracist training that I’m not even going to read right now.
A tweet for the night from someone else: “After handing down no consequence for killing a woman in her own home, a curfew says you may not take to the street, but stay in your homes—where we are safe from you but you are never safe from us.” A former student in Louisville posts a wishlist for the protesters, and I buy a first-aid kit. A few clicks of some buttons and, well, it still doesn’t feel like doing anything.
So, off to another fantasy world and reading before sleep.