We arrived at 7:45, when it was raining though not yet windy and cold. Three hours later, the rain has ended but the temperature has dropped and the wind has picked up, and welcome to spring in Maryland. We are taking shelter in my car for a little while until the 11:30 people arrive.
After an early wake up call yesterday, I got things done, until about 2 o'clock. And then I stopped. Hit with a combination of a lingering cold, tenacious jet lag, and the annual spring depression and anxiety cluster, I sat on the couch and watched reruns of “The West Wing,” and read my book and did practically nothing else. The word "inert" was coined to describe my level of activity .
Had I planned to do nothing all afternoon, I suppose I wouldn't feel bad about doing nothing all day. But I had planned to accomplish things. I did a few things, but I didn't do everything I wanted to do, and I didn't even try.
In The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis writes about a man who realizes too late that he spent too much of his life doing neither what he wanted to do nor what he should have been doing. (Or should have done. Not sure which tense is appropriate for that sentence. Also not sure if the comma after a title should also be italicized or not.) I suppose that a few hours on the couch don't necessarily pave the road to perdition. But I don't like the feeling that a day got away from me.
Had I planned to do nothing all afternoon, I suppose I wouldn't feel bad about doing nothing all day. But I had planned to accomplish things. I did a few things, but I didn't do everything I wanted to do, and I didn't even try.
In The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis writes about a man who realizes too late that he spent too much of his life doing neither what he wanted to do nor what he should have been doing. (Or should have done. Not sure which tense is appropriate for that sentence. Also not sure if the comma after a title should also be italicized or not.) I suppose that a few hours on the couch don't necessarily pave the road to perdition. But I don't like the feeling that a day got away from me.
*****
It's Monday now. Dinner (chicken thighs with onion and garlic) is cooking and the Capitals are playing one of their last regular season games, against the Florida Panthers. And that is all I have to say today. It's one of those days. I can't sleep and I can't keep a thought in my head and I can't shake this cold (which was probably the flu at some point) and it's been Lent since the beginning of time and I just want a piece of chocolate. Bloody hell.
*****
Well, that was delightful, wasn't it? I'm so much fun in April. Come back tomorrow and I'll tell you more about my panic attacks, heart-pounding anxiety, and crying spells. Supah fun.
*****
Here is the real test of my multitasking abilities. I'm substitute teaching an 8th grade CCD class, and they're taking an Archdiocese-wide standardized test tonight, so all I have to do is stroll about the classroom and remind everyone not to talk.
So what were we talking about? Oh, yes, multitasking. I do too much of it, to the detriment of my cognitive powers. Case in point: I just spent three minutes trying to pull the word "cognitive" out of the fog that surrounds what's left of my brain. I find myself so distracted and mentally disorganized that I can't remember from one minute to the next what I'm doing, or what I need or want to do. So I started using the Pomodoro method again. It's helpful. Very helpful, actually. I find that I can do just about anything for 25 minutes, and for the last three days, I have been an exemplar of productivity and organization.
It's Monday now. Dinner (chicken thighs with onion and garlic) is cooking and the Capitals are playing one of their last regular season games, against the Florida Panthers. And that is all I have to say today. It's one of those days. I can't sleep and I can't keep a thought in my head and I can't shake this cold (which was probably the flu at some point) and it's been Lent since the beginning of time and I just want a piece of chocolate. Bloody hell.
*****
Well, that was delightful, wasn't it? I'm so much fun in April. Come back tomorrow and I'll tell you more about my panic attacks, heart-pounding anxiety, and crying spells. Supah fun.
*****
Here is the real test of my multitasking abilities. I'm substitute teaching an 8th grade CCD class, and they're taking an Archdiocese-wide standardized test tonight, so all I have to do is stroll about the classroom and remind everyone not to talk.
So what were we talking about? Oh, yes, multitasking. I do too much of it, to the detriment of my cognitive powers. Case in point: I just spent three minutes trying to pull the word "cognitive" out of the fog that surrounds what's left of my brain. I find myself so distracted and mentally disorganized that I can't remember from one minute to the next what I'm doing, or what I need or want to do. So I started using the Pomodoro method again. It's helpful. Very helpful, actually. I find that I can do just about anything for 25 minutes, and for the last three days, I have been an exemplar of productivity and organization.
*****
But back to the eighth graders. I love eighth graders. I own one, in fact. However, I should have known that a Director of Religious Education who claims to a potential substitute teacher that the Archdiocesan assessment will take up the entire class period and that she won't have to teach anything is about as truthful as the animal shelter volunteer who tells the potential dog parents that the dog they're considering adopting is three years old and has reached his full growth. In both examples, the unsuspecting, good-hearted sucker is walking headlong into a wind tunnel of adolescent energy that's just hitting a growth spurt.
The kids finished their tests in 15 minutes, leaving me with almost an hour of what-the-hell-do-I-do-now time to fill. Since it's a Confirmation class, I went around the room and made them all tell me about their Confirmation saints and why they chose them. Then we read the Gospel reading for the day. Then we prayed a decade of the Rosary for their teacher, who just had a baby. That left me with 20 minutes to fill, so I let them talk and socialize for the rest of the class. Then I had to explain that the blanket terms "talking" and "socializing" do not encompass activities such as arm-wrestling and paper-throwing and punching. Really. Really.
*****
It's Thursday now and my state of mind has improved somewhat. Or I should say that my mood has improved, because my mind, which isn't a steel trap on its best day, is a pile of pudding. Case in point: "Pile of pudding" is the best metaphor I can conjure right now. You can't pile pudding anyway. And I can't think so good.
*****
It's Thursday now and my state of mind has improved somewhat. Or I should say that my mood has improved, because my mind, which isn't a steel trap on its best day, is a pile of pudding. Case in point: "Pile of pudding" is the best metaphor I can conjure right now. You can't pile pudding anyway. And I can't think so good.
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