Something that was coherent and then went off into rambling mess

Somehow, I have become about a week and a half late. (No, no, no. Late in my work. Sheesh.) Last week, I was right on target, and everything was great, then there was this great celebration of dead white men (some of whom were crazy), and now I am so very, very behind. About a week and a half behind.

What I have learned from this is that Mondays are very important to me and I can't take them off. I put in two hours of teaching and about seven hours of planning and prep on Mondays. That seven hours means the rest of my week can be spent grading, reading drafts, doing service stuff, working on funding applications, writing letters of recommendation, writing, etc. Not having that seven hours means that I'm a big mess.

Tuesdays are a wash for me. I teach for three hours and take a class for three hours--there's travel between campuses and reading to do between those three-hour chunks. Today, I've played catch-up grading all day (not caught up), and did a few minor things, but not the big stuff--like lesson plans and handouts, recommendation letters whose deadlines sneaked up on me, writing my section of the intro for a book project--that I had planned to do today.

Tomorrow will be meeting to work on the book project (for which I will have nothing), finishing the behind grading (I haven't even gotten to the stuff I took up this week yet), and writing the recommendation letters. Lesson plans? Handouts for assignment I'm supposed to hand out in the morning? The intro? Funding apps? ha! I bet I won't get to a single thing after grading and letters. Oh I'll try, but there's only so much one person can do.

Friday can be a catch-up day, or it can be what I have planned--a writing and research day, as I still have a seminar paper to write for last semester (I took an incomplete).

I don't work on Saturday. God got a day off. I think it's justified.

Sunday has to be to work on my assignment due on Tuesday for the class I'm taking. And to sleep late and do something fun, as Saturdays are often just a recovery day from the work week.

And next, Monday? Well, I'm getting on a plane Wednesday to fly to the East Coast--ten hours in the air, forty-eight hours on the coast, ten hours back. I have an important wedding to attend (obviously it's important, or I wouldn't be making this trip). I'll have a lot to do on Monday.

Yeah. So I'm not complaining.

I just watched this "last lecture" video Orange posted. The lecture is given by Randy Pausch, a professor with a short amount of time left before he dies (it's Oprah, you'll cry--I didn't make it very long at all as I just starting thinking about my dad). And one of his last things is about not complaining. And yet that is what his lecture inspired me to do. All this is less about the complaining as it is about the realization that I really, really need Mondays--a day dedicated to planning and handouts (and nothing else) so the rest of the week and be all of the other stuff.

Is any of this important? Probably not.

I don't really agree with everything he said (even though I cried)--most of it, but. . . Well, I would have liked to see it the first time he gave it. It's sincere, but well rehearsed. And I'm not sure what that has to do with whether or not I believe him. There's just something in his tone of voice that makes me want to disagree. It's not a logic or argument or message thing, so it's not going to make any sense. Maybe it was the Tigger/Eeyore binary he invoked, and I hate the way Disney de-complicated the characters and made them both mental patients. Yeah, that's it. The honesty, sincerity, taking responsibility, believing in the good in people, showing thanks--all of that I like. Disney though, that just pisses me off.