Layers

I've had my nose in The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal these past few days. I can't seem to figure out how to balance myself and this new life, and my Hopkins prof nonchalantly mentioned it during our class last Wednesday. I think it was the droopy, dark eyes that inspired her to check on the entire class's well-being. All of us are dragging ourselves through hell, not because it is hell but because we're young, new, and naive and don't know how to do this teaching as advocate thing very well.

So yes this book is geared towards a lot of people I don't know how to even relate to, but the concepts are logical. We'll never have more time, no matter how many time-saving tricks we try to evoke. Therefore, all we can do is prioritize purposes and maximize our energy flow throughout the day. I'm going to power-through this book and see if there's some common sense that can be applied to the every day. I'll let you know whether it's worth a purchase, as I'm still not sold.

In the meantime, I continue to yo-yo between teaching, planning, social life, cocktail parties for the non-profit, mayoral visit, grad classes, etc. I'm hoping for two snow days in a row. Now that would be fucking awesome. Especially after being thrown into the waves of administrative chaos this past week. I went from being yelled at, to nurtured, to receiving roses and certificates (5 - jeez) during our staff meeting after school today. We'll see.

Badness just creeps into people's lives. Like these past two weeks. Awful. Especially today. I think most of the bad is only of a mild nature, but too much of this mild bad really makes me want to be in therapy - seriously. If you have a license to tell me I'm okay, then I must be. Mild bad is the creepy kind, where you have the rationale to know things could be worse, but you're still swept up in it.

This thundering head is slowing down, barely, but now I'm at the place I love the most in Baltimore. I'm drinking from a huge, powder blue cup, sitting next to a plant that has crept along an entire wall, listening to sultry music, and getting ready to fall into a linguistics textbook. Funny how academia is always there to put the other things on pause, you know the things we don't know how to deal with properly. I'm going to use all the logic I'm capable of performing to take a break from all the other bad emotional thingys. This is how I balance myself out.

Grandfather is in the hospital then out. Now home, he prepares to finally want to fight for his life. This slow descent into death, with no other family but my parents around, is core numbing. It's time like these when I realize pettiness is absolute and absolutely a waste of time. I've traversed that myself but have learned that lesson early. One internal bleeding incident, heart attack, and family battle later, I know more about being human.

It's a good thing that I have solid friends here in Baltimore and students that make me feel too connected to something that should just be considered my job.