I can't tell

I worked for about an hour and a half this morning on the rewrite. Got one data table made (they want tables for EVERYTHING. I wish I had done it earlier). Was almost late to class because I got my head in the work so much.

Worked another hour between classes, and then, instead of taking my knitting to the exam I had to invigilate, I took the rewrite. (there were only 12 people there - a couple were away for a meeting with an excused absence and make-up time, one takes the exam at the Disability Concerns because they need a quiet place, so I could spread the students out and be fairly sure there'd be no cheating).

I think I see the way out but it's a lot of work between then and now. I melted down a little over the lunch hour because somehow I had got the idea in my head that today was the 10th and not the 3rd, and I had promised the rewrite in on the 16th.

I originally had plans to go to Sherman for better grocery shopping and to maybe get myself some small treat (I was talking about a hot-oil hair masque, because my hair is seriously trashed right now from all the hot/cold dry/wet weather). At first I was just going to cancel that and make do for another week with whatever I could forage at the local wal-mart (aka The Most Depressing Place On Earth) but now I don't know.

I am taking the eco exams home and grading them tomorrow morning while watching cartoons, I think, instead of trying to do them here.

I just.....I get into this horrible mindset where I feel like I have to put off anything that's even remotely nicer for me than the barest minimum because "must get work done." People tell me "you deserve to be happy, too" but then my inner critic pops up and says, "Yes, but once you're dead it won't matter how happy you were, it will only matter what you did and what you left behind" and I just don't KNOW because this is the same inner critic who tells me five people at most will read the papers I manage to publish, so....I've lost any ability to judge whether a trip to Sherman is okay or if it's being dangerously self-indulgent, and I should put a solid day in working over here....

(I can't go during the week, even if I could break away earlier; it's a half-hour down and a half-hour back and I can't drive the interstate in the dark any more, I learned that, and it's gonna be getting dark earlier now).

The problem is urgent stuff keeps coming up that keeps me from doing the longer-term but important stuff - keeping classes going day in and day out is no joke. (And I found out I made a boneheaded mistake on the ecology exam, because I was rushing to get it ready and copied. I will just have to "spot" everyone the four points or so on that question, and it's KILLING me because I HATE making mistakes and looking incompetent.)

Honestly, if a student came to me now asking about becoming a professor? I'd counsel them not to. Either I'm just not sufficiently competent at it to juggle everything or else it's changed so much from my dad's era.....I could work solidly seven days a week and still not get everything done I wanted, and sometimes not even get done what I need to do.

My office is an unbearable mess and I suspect Safety is going to come after me for it being a hazard (they have before) and I don't know when I'd clean it. I guess I break my ironclad rule of keeping the Sabbath some weekend and come up here on a Sunday and muck out....

I feel like I'm running as fast as I humanly can but am still getting behind.

Part of me says: "You need a day out to get the things you need and also get your head out of your work" but another part of me is saying "HELL NO. You need to work until the work is done, and then if there's time, go have fun."

This HAS to get better at some point. I'm hoping once this rewrite is done and once I'm done teaching the new class, things will be smoother.


****

Okay. It's after 5 pm. I found one file of analyses I thought I had lost. I rewrote the thing up to the Results section (and just barely started on that). I got the homework from last week graded and compiled the grades for the most recent exam. I still have the eco exams to grade. But I did everything else on  my list today.

I do need to practice more piano and I need to do my Sunday school lesson some time. But I think I need to quit the rewrite for now and leave it until Monday.

I also have laundry that badly needs doing and other laundry that badly needs to be put away. And I should change the sheets on my bed - when it got cold out, I put the all-poly "Treefort" ones from Target on there and now it's warmed back up they're too hot and also the blanket slides off them so I wake up in the middle of the night with the blanket all twisted and I don't like that.

I think I AM going to Sherman tomorrow. Am telling myself I deserve it after:

- about four hours work on the (expletive deleted) rewrite
- checking and watering the research plots in my student's absence (she had good reason: she is presenting at meetings. Meetings I wanted to go to but could not)
- grading the homeworks for one class
- compiling the grades for the latest biostat exam
- writing two review guides for two classes
- typing up the minutes of last night's AAUW meeting


I don't think ANYONE can fault me for diligence today. (And I will grade the eco exam tomorrow morning, with cartoons as a background). And I would hope no one would fault me for taking the weekend off and going to Sherman for better shopping than can be had locally, and taking the Sabbath off as is my custom. I mean, people who have kids take time to spend with their kids, right? I don't have kids so that time, it's okay to spend it shopping for cosmetics or going to the natural foods store? I hope? I don't know any more....

Part of my distress is feeling like the entire world is in chaos right now - teaching isn't going as well as I want it to (I have some students who are doing spectacularly poorly, and I can't tell if it's me, if it's their lacking background, if it's their having lives that really aren't conducive to being a student, or what). I'm frustrated over this rewrite because I wanted the paper to just be smoothly accepted without too much revising. I'm frustrated over the state of higher ed in the US and my state's budget and how it seems like our level of responsibility is creeping ever upward but we don't have more authority in addition to it (and in fact, have less), the feeling that no one respects what I do.....and I just found out the first Friday in December I have to set aside 90 minutes because all the faculty must attend a mandatory Title IX program and if this is because some person in some other department donked up and broke the rules....so help me.

I just want ONE thing to go smoothly and go right.  I just want to feel like one area of my life is under control. I feel like that plate-spinner on the old Ed Sullivan show, constantly running to keep the plates going so they don't fall off their poles and smash....