Mike’s Musings

So today starts spring break.  I’m already at loose ends.  I can’t leave the computer alone.  I can’t stop thinking teacherly thoughts.  I just can’t stop myself period. 

It’s called a break for a reason — to point out to me how broken I am, how out of balance I am.  My pendulum swings way too far to the work side of the continuum.

Time to stop.  Time to enjoy.  Time to walk away.

 Time to just take a break.

Namaste… MS

So “mid-semester” break officially begins on Monday, but as far as I’m concerned, it begins now.  I have graded close to seventy essays this week, and you can stick a fork right in me because I am done.  I can hear the tofu frying up in the skillet where my brains should be.  I just finished the last fourteen for my online class.  It’s over.  No more.  Not tonight.

Maybe what I should do is really make sure that I use the break to oh, I don’t know, take a break from work.  So that means by Wednesday, I should be done doing whatever work I feel I need to, then spend the rest of the week relaxing and just enjoying life.  Actually unwind.  That’s a foreign concept for me these last few weeks.

The final round of interviews seemed to go well.  I thought I’d know by tomorrow, but now it won’t be decided until the middle of March, apparently.  These hiring processes take a long time, so I’ll just be patient.  Not much else I can do anyway.  Either way, keep the good energy flowing for me, if that’s something you care to do.

Namaste… MS

So tomorrow wraps up my interviews for the tenure-track position.  I meet with two deans and the division chair in the morning.  I’ll be happy to have that part behind me, and just await what the hiring committee’s final decision.  There will be one before Friday, from my understanding, so I’ll know pretty quickly if I do, or don’t, get the position.  Either way, I’m back next year, but I’m still keeping my eyes on converting from one-year-renewable to tenure-track.

Dan asked if I was nervous about tomorrow’s interviews, and I can’t say I’m nervous in a bad way.  The deans will be a bit intimidating, but I’ve interviewed with one of them already (when I was interviewing for the position I have now) so I’m familiar with his style.  The other one I have not interviewed with, but she’s very real and approachable, and I think we’ll have a good conversation.  The division chair will be a good conversation, too.  At this point, I’ve answered most of the questions they’ll likely ask already, and I’m an open book.  I’ll share my strengths and my weaknesses, my successes and my failures.  I don’t have anything to hide and I want to be very open and honest with everyone involved in this process.  I refuse to say what I think someone will want to hear; I want to be authentic all the way through.  So far, I think I have been.  I don’t want to change that now.

Stephen Covey says, “Begin with the end in mind.”  This whole journey I’ve been on is one I’ve envisioned myself earning this position.  I can see myself moving up.  I want to move up.  More than wanting, I’ve worked hard and I’ve got successes under my belt.  I’m ready for it. 

Here’s hoping all the parties involved feel the same way.  Wish me luck one more time!

Namaste… MS

So today I have a teaching demo to give.  In fact, it begins in about a half-hour.  I’m a little edgy, but not too nervous, which is a good sign.  I’m treating it the way I would a performance; it’s such an artificial experience in many ways, it’s very staged, and it’s being taped.  So in a way, I’m playing a part, but I’m also delivering substance, like an actor in a meaty play.  I’m just glad it’s the first thing I have to do, so I can get it out of the way.  If it were later in the in-person interview process, I think I’d be more nervous.  As it is, it’s a group of my peers, people who I know.  I also know what they look for, what their biases are.  I’m still going to be me up there, and I will take it seriously; I just know what I’m going into for the most part, and that’s a big help.

Any of you out there reading this, wish me luck!  Every little bit helps.

 Namaste… MS

****************************************UPDATE****************************************

The teaching demo seemed to go well, according the limited feedback I got.  My concern is the interview with the search committee.  There are times I felt I didn’t give good answers, or could have clarified my answers better.  Toward the end of the committee interview, I felt a bit tired and out of focus.  If I felt that way, I can only imagine how the committee felt, since they went four solid hours of teaching demos and interviews.  (There was another candidate going today, as well.)

So the final interviews in the process will take place Wednesday, and a decision will be reached before spring break.  I’m hoping that my hard work and dedication will pay off.  I really want to go from one-year-renewable to tenure-track.  I want that job security.  I want to keep growing and deepening and improving where I’m at.  I love it there.  I don’t want to be anywhere else.  Dan says I’m the total package, and there are days I believe that, and days where I don’t.  Today’s a day I’m not so sure.  But when did how I feel about myself mean that’s what I am?  Others see what I can’t and I need to trust that. 

This I do know:  I’m an effective teacher.  Here’s hoping the committee sees that in me enough to give me the faith of a tenure-track position!

Namaste redux… MS

So, I really need to get motivated.  I need to get things done.  I need to work on my work, to reduce the pile.  I need to stop feeling paralyzed and overwhelmed.  I need to take charge of my time.  I need to use my time.  I need to make my time work for me, rather than let my lack of managing it get the best of me.

I need to lock myself in a room.  I need to get rid of every distraction, human, canine or otherwise.  I need to get out a pen and start marking.  I need to get with it, get in the zone, get it done.  I need to not make excuses.  I need to walk my talk.  I need to work by my own standards.

I need to stop feel stuck, feeling plugged, feeling backed up, feeling f***ed up.  I need to stop screwing myself over.  I need to snap out of it.

I need to just stop.  Then do.

Namaste… MS

So, John Phillips was so right when he wrote that song for the Mamas and the Papas.  You’re gonna trip, trip, stumble, stumble, and fall…Today has felt like that, and the landing has been no fun at all.  It hasn’t been a horrible day, but it’s been a full day, a day of pressure, a day of wondering how I’m going to get it all done and stay sane.  I feel buried.  Submerged.  (Mixed metaphors, I know.)  Like I’m hitting every crack in the sidewalk. Splay me out on the floor, let the stacks tumble down on me, and let me have some peace.  Just for a few minutes.  To pretend I’m top of things, even when I’m buried under the very things I need to be on top of.  To pretend I can hide from what needs to be done.

We all need some pretending, don’t we?  Illusions?  Delusions?  Flights of fantasy?

Sleep will help.  Immensely.  Dark, silky oblivion.  Wrap me in its ribbons.  Pull me down.  I will not resist.  I will give in.

Namaste… MS

So today the nephew went with his paternal grandfather and step-grandmother for a weekend of bowling, movies, shopping, and Lord knows what else.  That child is just as spoiled and indulged as my dog, Phineas, right now, the only difference really being that he doesn’t go outside to pee and poop.  That I know of.

It’s been interesting to have the house quiet again in his absence.  I can feel my old rhythms again, the slow shuffle of my internal pace, the silence that is like a warm, soft sweater.  I had forgotten what that felt like in these two weeks, what with Josh creating his own energy in the house, and his own noises of farts, video games, computer key strokes, and play with Finny.  Finny misses Josh today, too; he’s definitely bored.  When I came home from dropping Josh off, Finny kept looking past me to see if he could see Josh.  After that, he’s mostly laid around, moping the way he does after Danger leaves, like his best friend has just left for a two-year world tour.

I haven’t done anything terribly high minded in my solitude today, nothing like reading books or the magazines I told myself I’d read.  I’m not much of a reader of my magazines these past few months, and that actually bothers me.  There’s a reason I bring those publications into my home and I need to feed my brain.  It seems I’d rather sit at the computer, interact with a screen in a non-linear way.  Why is that?  Is that a by-product of my online teaching tenure?  For nearly two years, my life was live in front of a screen, and I never really got out of that habit.  It’s something I’ve wanted to change, but I also enjoy the electronic life, so I don’t feel it’s all bad.  I need to learn to moderate it more.  Moderate it, period, since right now it’s very electronically lop-sided.

I can smell the breakfast bars I’m making baking in the oven.  It smells of oats, sweetened milk, dates, and almonds right now.  Just wait until the raisins and dried cranberries start chiming in; we’ll have a real symphony going then.

All in all, a good day off for this uncle daddy.

 Namaste…  MS

So Josh and I got back home a bit ago from the city by the bay.  We went to meet Chey and Sue at the Harvest coffeehouse, but they weren’t there.  It was supposed to be a stitch-n-bitch night; they must have decided to cancel it.  Either way, Josh and I went after we had the best BBQ chicken pizza.

While Josh chatted on his laptop, I read some Natalie Goldberg, her book Thunder and Lightning.  It’s the third book about writing, after Writing Down the Bones and Wild Mind.  The parts I read dealt with tapping into the wild writer’s mind to our truths, to our first thoughts, and then what to do with them once they’re written.  In other words, how to create after we generate.  I keep going back to that thought with one of my classes, my memoir class, and how some students have a hard time seeing the difference.  It was good to see Natalie address the idea that in order to publish, or even to know what we have in our notebooks, we need to create order out of the chaos.  We have to give the words shape.  Perhaps she can help me get that lesson across.

After I read those chapters, I did what I always feel like doing after reading her work:  I did writing practice.  I got out my composition book and my pen, and I freewrote.  I filled four pages.  I could tell when I was getting deep because my writing got loose and free and I was in the zone.  I wrote about cycles, and how Josh and I were both victims of cycles, and how we both have to remember the lessons our downward spirals and ultimate upward swings taught us.  I compared our parents to eels thrashing about in acid.  Metaphors help me understand my life.  I’m glad I made the time and space to write tonight.

I also wrote my first poem since August.  That felt good, too.  I called it “The Harvest”, in honor of how that coffeehouse gave me the chance to be creative tonight.

Namaste… MS

So, this weekend was all about the creative arts.  It was all about having a mental buffet, with repeated trips once the numerous plates were consumed.  How exhilarating!  Daniel and I dedicated ourselves to the mind and its creative possibilities, and I felt so inspired, so uplifted.  I also felt like a lazy slacker for not contributing to the creative world.  One lesson learned:  I need to create.  Not just generate — create.  There’s a huge difference. 

First thing we did was see The Bucket List and what a moving experience that was, especially in light of Grandma Bohil’s recent death.  What is there we can do to make our lives more meaningful?  What are the big ideas we want to live out before we die?  It gave me the ideas for the next essay prompts for my Comp 1 class:  What did you learn about death from reading Tuesdays With Morrie or What is your relationship with death?  Both very deep and both potentially fraught with difficulty, but I don’t care.  Death as a concept must be faced. 

Then we saw The Vagina Monologues at Alma College.  As usual, I am moved by the power of Eve Ensler’s work, and how she brings to light something we as a culture disvalue and denegrate:  A woman’s vagina.  A woman’s whole body tends to be on the block in our culture, but in particular, this piece taps into the primal force, mystery, potency, and primacy of that most sacred of vehicles of human life.  It should be standard viewing or reading for everyone.  My only regret was that I waited until after the show to go to buy a T-shirt that read “Cunt”.  I waited too long. 

And today was Chey’s reading in Lansing of her new collection of poetry, Bad Dog Behaviour.  Her collection showcased her humor and depth, and I felt honored to hear her deliver those poems in her own voice.  There is much I don’t, and didn’t, know about Chey, and I realized I need to make deeper relationships, especially with her.  I think she and I can create together, that we can foster one another.  I’m so happy for her and her art!  Her book will be published in August, and I can’t wait!  Until then, her chapbook will be dog eared, for sure.

All in all, an amazingly edifying weekend.  I feel like myself again, in the deep way.

Namaste… MS

So tonight the nephew is at the kitchen table, waiting for a friend to write him back on MySpace, and I am here in the living room, on my computer.  A mix-CD I made for Dan, featuring Natasha Bedingfield and Fergie songs, was playing, and has now stopped.  It’s fairly quiet except for the clicking of keys on the keyboard and the furnace blowing warm air.  Phineas is curled up on the couch, in doggie dreamland judging by the twitching he’s doing.  I feel at peace tonight, like I’m connecting with myself in a meaningful way.  That’s saying alot, considering how dissected and scattered I’ve been this past week.

I graded 60-some essays today.  I feel like my brain is baked tofu.  But the words and thoughts my students put out inspired me.  Not in the classic Sunday-sermon sense, but in the sense that my job is perfect for me.  I get to read other people’s thoughts.  I get to learn from them, through their written words.  To me, that’s bliss.  That’s inspiration.  That makes me want to put my own words down somewhere, and this is where they are being put down tonight.

Related to the title of tonight’s entry, I Googled my name and my college newspaper’s name.  I found articles I wrote archived, and how neat to look back to things I wrote 11 years ago now.  The same basic Mike style is there; even when I look at things I wrote in middle and high school, I see the style emerging.  It makes me realize the time of my life with the most bylines was about 10 years ago now, and I don’t want that to be the story of my archived writing.  The archive of news stories inspires me to make more bylines, to get myself out there more.  I have to do that.  I need to stop being lazy.  Ten-year-old archives are not my only stories.  There are more.  The archive dates will show forward momentum. 

Namaste… MS