December 11: Things

Prompt: What are 11 things your life doesn’t need in 2011? How will you go about eliminating them? How will getting rid of these 11 things change your life? (Author: Sam Davidson)

I confess that the first thing I thought of when I read this prompt was, "Clean ALL The Things!" I would sing the praises of Hyperbole and a Half except I'm laughing much too hard. I can catch my breath just enough to say that "The God of Cake," contains this passage: "if I was allowed even a tiny amount of sugar, not only would I become intensely hyperactive, but the entire scope of my existence would funnel down to the singular goal of obtaining and ingesting more sugar. My need for sugar would become so massive, that it would collapse in upon itself and create a vacuum into which even more sugar would be drawn until all the world had been stripped of sweetness."

That is totally me. Not just at six, but now. Like today, at age 43. Like, if I were to eat even one M&M right now, I would end the weekend lying on the sofa, drinking eggnog straight out of the carton, face smeared with chocolate, amid a pile of candy wrappers. That would just be the beginning of a binge that might not end until June.

But that's not the point here is it? The point is to make a list of 11 things in order to change my life. Whoo Hoo! To which I respond, "only eleven?" and "why eleven?"

I jest. But, then, my knee jerk response to that wisdom prompt was that I am not wise, I am a fool, which is a sort of jester, isn't it? Like I always say, since my grandfather's last name was the same as one of the actors who originally interpreted Shakespeare's comic roles, I like to pretend that we are related. Foolishness does seem to be a genetic trait in my family.

In all seriousness, the number of things I need to eliminate is probably very short. The first thing on the list would be at least one, preferably two, classes from my teaching schedule; and, at least one of those, preferably both, should be online classes. My job exhausts me in about eight hundred different ways, and the number of classes that I have to teach sits at the top of that list. The rest of the list might sort itself out, in fact, if I had fewer classes. Five is far to many to stay on top of anything; but that's a post for another time.

Fewer classes would, in turn, allow me to be a better teacher because my students would not seem so much like this swarm of locusts, this gigantic mob, but would return once again to individuals. As individuals, I tend to like the majority of them. As a gigantic mob, they peck me to death.

Fewer classes would also allow me more time to read, both to keep up with the literature in the subjects that I'm teaching them and with my own research. The research is most important to me because the research is where my passion lies and the research is where I feel I have something to contribute to the world. Heresy, I know!: Teaching is shaping the future! I just doesn't always feel that way. It usually feels like overwork and being pecked to death. The truth of the matter is, I like teaching well enough, but I NEED to do my research and I NEED to write and I NEED more time for that.

Fewer classes, then, would allow me to work on my own stuff, which would go a considerable way to making me less resentful and stressed out. Sadly, I cannot do a goddam thing about this. (ETA:)To ruminate on that would lead me to answer my own prompt about the most distrubing thing I learned about myself this year. We'll save that for another time.

Anyway, this all leads me to my alternate prompt for the day:

Prompt: What do you need to write?

Because, really, I need to write, and the things that I need to get rid of all relate to making more time to write. I think of Virginia Woolf's musty old chestnut: a room of one's own and a little bit of money. Sure, that passage has become a cliche, almost devoid of meaning; but really, this is serious business, not bong time. Research, writing, and the subsequent publishing all require space, time, and funding.

Getting all three also requires all three because one must write grants to secure future space, time and funding. If you lack even one -- time, in my case -- you end up in a cycle that turns you into an growly automaton and not an active and engaged scholar. The thing I need most to write is time. More than that, I need productive time, not a few minutes at the beginning or end of the day when I'm either waking up or collapsing, and the amount of time is, in fact, only a few minutes, not nearly enough to get going on complicated ideas.

Also, I need caffeine.

I'm learning, too, that I need other people with whom to discuss ideas, who allow me to hear my ideas out loud and who can echo them back to me and help me develop them. This, perhaps, relates to that community prompt. This is also the reason that I felt so great going to conferences this year (despite certain moments of bad behavior on the part of people who should know better), and so depressed upon returning.

Also, I need caffeine.

Of course this is all what I wrote in that second (or was it third?) prompt about writing. You can see that it is a major concern of mine, what with a deadline and all. That particular prompt actually led to a revelation. I was telling my analyst about it when I suddenly realized that I no longer need to fight the Smoke Monster -- at least not as often -- when I begin to write. My struggle to write is finding that time conducive to productivity, not facing my gremlins. They have plenty of other gears to gum up, but the gargoyles seem to have fortified the writing tower very well. I suppose that's progress.

Also, I need caffeine.

I'm not joking about caffeine, either. When I was in college, I went to a party where someone had a book filled with these sort of prompt things. "Where does your creativity come from?" someone read out. The other people at the party said things like, "god" or "my spirituality" or some such thing like that. I knew I sounded shallow, but out of my mouth popped the word, "caffeine." I still need caffeine just as much as space, time and money, in order to write.

Yes, Caffeine is my muse. She's the lesser known tenth one.