What Now?

Living the Dream

So, remember how I suck at ukulele?

Well, it became clear when the faculty folk band began rehearsals this fall that my summer lessons actually worked -- I really had gotten better than I was in spring, even though I didn't practice nearly as much as I should have or meant to.

And what a fun fall of rehearsals we had! Almost every Friday afternoon, we meet in the chorus room, gather with our instruments around the keyboard that resides there, and play for an hour or so. It really is a fabulous way to end the week -- about as much laughing and wisecracking as there is playing.

We had to give our annual "concert" (during the 15-minute all-school meeting we have in the mornings) earlier than usual this year because the two central members of the faculty band will be gone in the spring, for sabbatical and paternity leave respectively. So we were under a little more pressure than usual this fall, and we made our set list a little easier than usual. Plus there was the added complication that we were going to share the stage with the student rock band and perform one piece together. It was funny rehearsing with the students in the last week; they clearly thought it was weird (a) to hear us call each other by our first names, rather than "Dr. or Ms. or Mr. So-and-so," which we kept forgetting to do in front of them, and (b) that we took rehearsing seriously. Sure, we may laugh a lot, but by gum we practice hard and work to get our pieces really tight, whereas the students take a more lackadaisical attitude toward their music.

During our performance last year, I kind of hid at the back of the stage, sitting down behind a music stand and other musicians. This year, I had learned to play the uke standing up (a little harder than it seems, since there's no instrument strap as there is for a guitar or banjo), and I had the music memorized (although the banjo player and I did have the sheet music on a stand in the corner, just for that feeling of security), so I found myself standing right up front on the stage -- not by plan, just the way we ended up blocking things.

And I felt so confident up there! Last year, right before the performance, I was feeling kind of sick to my stomach, and once we started playing, I couldn't really see anything beyond the first row of the audience; my vision narrowed, and I think I was having shortness of breath the whole time (which, of course, was only a quarter of an hour). But this time -- I just had a blast the entire time!

Plus, here's another bonus: The photos from last year's performance were the moment that it became clear to me just how overweight I was. It really appalled me; I was mortified! Within a month, I'd joined Weight Watchers. For this year's performance, I was 25 pounds lighter than last year, and I wore a shirt tucked into my jeans for the first time in several years. I felt awesome -- strong, healthy, talented, fun -- it was excellent.

And wait, there's more: For one of the songs we played, the entire band sang the chorus. The banjo player and I were both over the moon at getting to sing as well as play; a colleague laughed at us the night before in our final rehearsal, saying that the look on our faces when we were singing was hilarious, we were both clearly so happy; she called it a "folk-gasm"! We laughed and admitted that she was exactly right. We were getting to stand on a stage and sing and play in front of an audience -- it was totally my performance fantasy come to life.

And indeed, during the performance I had the experience that I rarely have, of being entirely present in the moment. And when we were singing that first song, and I was playing my uke and singing out during the chorus, I was entirely happy and was completely aware of how happy I was in that moment. Plus, the students love the faculty folk band -- and of course there was the added bonus that we were playing with the student band -- and they were screaming and cheering at each song. Really, the whole thing was great!

So there's the reward for being willing to suck -- I got to live the dream one morning this week!

Most relaxing Christmas ever

Wow, yesterday was great.

We didn't travel and have no plans to. (No MLA! Hurrah!)

We loved our presents.

We ate delicious meals, starting with the Christmas Eve tacos that we're thinking of making an annual tradition.

We talked to our families but otherwise did not interact with them. Don't get us wrong -- we love the folks. But at both family households, there were little Christmas dramas going on that inevitably arise when you get a bunch of folks together and add holiday excitement. A little part of me feels that we missed out on some essential experience by not being with extended family, but most of me recognizes that I would have been stressed and distressed if we'd been there. (Ah, I'm suddenly remembering the last Christmas that we slept over at my mom's and were there for the whole shootin' match; my mother was angry at me and said something really biting in the first moment we saw each other, and I cried off and on for the whole Christmas Eve evening. Yeah, I don't miss doing that again.) (Plus, I'm hoping to visit my family over the long Presidents' Day weekend -- a holiday that is much less fraught!)

Neither of us did one lick of work, nor thought about work at all (although I'll confess that I dreamed about it last night).

We had a fire going all day, music on the stereo, cats snuggling, lights on the tree -- delightful.

We were also reminded forcefully to be grateful for this time together. One of our beloved next-door neighbors spent Christmas in the hospital with meningitis, with her husband and daughter with her; I think/hope that she'll recover, but it has functioned for me as yet another reminder (why do I need these so often?) not to take blessings for granted. [Update: Our neighbor is home from the hospital and is doing well -- hurrah!]

So that was Christmas -- most relaxing ever. Safe travels to those of you heading to MLA, and I hope that you have fun. And blessings to us all as we wrap up 2009 and prepare to head into 2010.

New uses for personal energy and attention

As long-time readers know, 2005-06 was a hellish year for D and me. (I date everything by academic year, of course.) I was going through the tenure torture at St. Martyr's, and D. was getting screwed every which way by the Episcopal diocese in which we resided. So we were being abused by two different denominations -- quite a feat.

And then in Summer 2006 we declared "enough," washed the dust from our feet, moved to Adventure City, and started getting on with our lives. After a little bit of searching and floundering, I landed well, winding up at FGS by Spring 2007 and working there happily ever since; it's a good career that supports a good life. I feel blessed.

D. has had a more difficult time, both personally and professionally. She's had a hard life anyway, and the last four years have thrown her some punches that make it truly impressive that she's still on her feet. I very much admire that she's held on and kept striving ... but this post is all about me, not her.

Over these past years, I've done my best to be the supportive spouse, hanging in there through the bleak times, trying to function as a safety net and a source of optimistic encouragement, much as D. has done for me at other points in our lives together. Given that I actually tend more toward pessimism and catastrophic thinking, I have not always succeeded in this supportive role as well as she did, but I have tried my best and done well enough, I think. I have also regularly found myself in hyper-vigilant mode, watching carefully to read her mood and respond appropriately and to scan the environment for potentially upsetting things that I might be able to head off. Sometimes I have gotten worn out and thus temporarily failed in my role as hyper-vigilant safety net (which, I know, is a nonsensical image), and sometimes I've let my pessimistic, catastrophic self come to the fore, and so I've had an unhealthy dose of guilt and anger accompanying me as well for the last few years. I should hasten to add that the constant worry, the looking for and trying to respond to all negative stimuli, is not necessarily what was always called for by D's situation or what she was asking of me; anxiety and the overwhelming desire for control are my typical response to difficult situations, and I recognize that many of my responses did more to make the world seem safer and more dependable for me than to help D. particularly. And of course, worrying about her was sometimes a fail-safe way to avoid thinking about other things going on with me -- classic caretaker mode of not tending to one's own needs. Ah well -- we do the best we can with what we have.

But here's the good news: Summer 2009 seems to have been a turning point for D. We had that whole "darkest before the dawn" period In May and June, but that dawn seems to have arrived in July. Three years ago, in July 2006, I claimed a new life for myself, and D seems to have claimed a new life for herself in July 2009. Notice all of the "seems" here, of course; this is new, and she's finding her way toward the new goals that she's now letting herself imagine, and it will take awhile to put into place all of the pieces of this new life ... but she knows what those pieces are, she's working on them, and it really does feel most of the time as though I've got the old D. back. I hope that, years from now, we'll be able to look back and say, "Ah yes, it was in Summer 2009 that this great new life of ours began. That was definitely the turning point."

But one of the challenges I'm facing, unexpectedly, is figuring out what to do if I'm not the hyper-vigilant safety net anymore. What do I do with all of that nervous energy, that scanning the environment, that being on the lookout for potential trouble? If I'm not worrying, what do I do instead?

It's not even a matter of going back to how things were before D's long season of troubles, because then I was pouring all of that anxious energy into worrying about and working on my academic career, and I certainly don't want to return to the way I was at St. Martyr's, or to the anxious self I was in grad school. No, none of the old models will suffice; a new way of being is needed here.

So I'm not sure what will happen next, what uses I'll find for my energy and attention. What I don't want to do, but what I recognize is always a temptation for me, is to find something new to worry about. Dr. Avuncular and I are talking in therapy about anxiety and control and perfectionism, and perhaps we'll make some progress on that front, although I'm a little skeptical about how useful these conversations are; mostly I bore myself with my whining, which perhaps has some therapeutic value that I'm not yet seeing. I've also tried, at D's suggestion, having a few days in recent weeks in which I don't do anything more than lie around reading a novel and watching TV, to experiment with what feels like the opposite of hyper-vigilance; plus, summer probably should include several of those lazy days. And my various summer projects to learn new things -- gardening, quilting, jogging, fiction-writing -- are probably, in hind sight, attempts to find new avenues for my personal energy and attention.

So Summer 2009 is mostly the beginning of a new era for D., but maybe also it's the beginning of a new era for me as well, although I have a much fuzzier view of what this new era might look like for me than for her.

Bodies matter too

Thursday's post was all about emotional upheaval, but this weekend I've been reminded that bodies matter too.

Friday, the day that I thought would include not one but two emotional challenges, actually became a day of physical challenge instead. I woke up in the throes of an allergic reaction to what we think was a spider or insect bite, such that my left eye was swollen entirely shut, there were blisters on the corners of my mouth, the underside of my chin was swollen, and there was a rash on my neck and arms. I felt fine, especially after my shower when my eye opened up a little bit, so I decided to go to school even though I looked just awful. (My students were very sweet about my hideousness.) By the end of the day, there were little blisters inside my nose, and the rash on my neck was spreading up behind my earlobe, which had swollen to twice its usual size, and was hot and prickly -- all very uncomfortable as well as embarrassingly ugly.

The good news is that my meeting with the student and her mom and her advisor and the head of the high school went really well, and I'm glad that I decided to go to school so that we could get it over with instead of fretting about it over the weekend. It was one of those nice moments when five people who are all decent and well-intentioned manage to communicate effectively and work together toward the best outcome. We all know that this is not always the way things work out, so it was a good morning indeed, despite the fact that I was totally feeling like the the hunchback of Notre Dame.

The other good news is that I got to miss the dreaded afternoon meeting because I had to go to the doctor to get a steroid prescription for my allergic reaction. My co-advisor is undoubtedly going to be a martyr about it and take this as another sign that I'm incompetent, but I feel entirely justified at having made a doctor's appointment in my condition!

Which brings us to this morning. The original goal for the weekend was that I would lounge about recovering from my hideous allergic reaction, being pampered by D. while my steroid pills started taking effect (and indeed I'm afraid I am even more scabrous today than yesterday, although I have hope for tomorrow).Those plans went out the window when I drove D. to the emergency room at 6:00 this morning for what has now been diagnosed as gallstones, and she's having her gallbladder removed tomorrow morning. All the way around, it's been an overly exciting weekend in our household, and we're hoping for some relaxing boredom any day now. She's not thrilled at having a body part removed, of course, but it's a good hospital and a straightforward surgery, and she's in good spirits.

The odd (or maybe not so odd) thing about all of these physical challenges is that the emotional challenges of the week have now been put into perspective. Yes, it was a hard week, but darn it, life is mostly pretty good these days, and I'm grateful for the life that we have.

I'll update tomorrow with news of D's surgery.

Gratitude in two episodes

Episode 1: Last night I went to an official dinner at FGS, held to honor the new recipient of a named humanities chair. I work closely with the teacher who was being honored, so I went to the dinner even though it meant imposing on a colleague for a ride. (This two-person/one-car thing D. and I have going works really well except when it doesn't work at all.) Fortunately, I got in a solid hour's afternoon nap before getting dressed for the event, so I was in a very good mood despite the cold I've been fighting all week.

I'm really glad I went, for any number of reasons. The teacher I carpooled with showed me another route through our part of Adventure City, one she swears is faster and is certainly prettier, so I've got a potentially more pleasant commute to try next week. And we had an enjoyable conversation on both legs of the trip, so she was a good "date" for the evening. She's a person inclined to see the worst in things and to gossip about how bad things are, and it's clear to me in listening to her that FGS ain't got nothing when it comes to bad politics. The worst thing she could come up with to complain about is that one couldn't be guaranteed of getting a sabbatical in one's seventh year because they are competitive, and so sometimes one got turned down and had to apply again the next year, but that everyone always got it within a couple of years. Um, yeah, that's not institutional abuse; believe me, I know institutional abuse!

Plus I wound up sitting at a fun faculty table at dinner, and as we drank wine and laughed (and ate the most unbelievably fabulous tiramisu EVER for dessert), I felt a glow at recognizing once again how really lovely and compatible and all-around delightful my colleagues are.

And then, when the honoree teacher gave his speech, dadgum if I didn't get a mention! And it's not like he was dropping faculty names right and left. He used a conversation we'd had about teaching to support  his point about teaching as an art; in his speech he recounted the conversation we'd had and then said something along the lines that it was clear to him that Dr. Now was indeed an artist. So that was a delightful end to a delightful evening! Nice to be seen as an exemplary teacher in my first six months at the school.

Episode 2: I've had the laziest Saturday imaginable, which has been wonderful. Pretty much the only thing I've accomplished other than a little exercise is a long, two-hour conversation with a faculty member friend back at St. Martyr's. She was calling for a sympathetic ear about how miserable it is to work in the muck of St. Martyr's. Things sound really dire there. The endemic unhealthiness and misery from which the school culture suffers has seeped even into the English department; granted, it was never the healthiest place, but I was by the second year very fond of my colleagues and thought we were a solid department. But now it sounds like even some of them are cracking under the pressure (and I worry -- but refuse to feel guilty! -- that my leaving is part of that pressure). I was sad to hear about an episode of very bad behavior by my chair; I wasn't surprised by it, since I've seen him act in similar ways when under duress, but apparently things have gotten so much worse (and he had such a hard time dealing with stress in the first place) that he acted out in a worse way than he had during my time, and the whole thing makes me sad. One of the things that my friend wanted to know was who in Human Resources was trustworthy -- because the administration is just that screwed up that, in fact, one has to ask these questions -- so that she can protect herself if anything else happens. Really sad and horrible all around.

Plus the Catholic Identity Czar who was there in my time and who made it his personal mission to drive me out has now been promoted to some other position by the Archbishop (no doubt in part due to his labors against me) and has been replaced by an entire Catholic Identity committee headed by someone high up in the church hierarchy. And tenure stuff has gotten even more fucked up, and the consequences of failing the litmus test of "are you a good Catholic who doesn't make noise or question your superiors?" have gotten harsher. One fabulous colleague of mine had just gone through the torture of the tenure process and had been turned down in the final stage by the president -- on the most untenable of ostensible reasons, but clearly because she's a feisty nun who doesn't "know her place" as a woman -- although that decision was ultimately reversed; the friend I was talking to said that this other woman now walks around with a completely dead face and seems trapped in misery -- oh, how I remember that feeling. And another colleague was denied tenure this year. There is anxiety and frustration and depression all over.

So this friend and I talked through the various awful things, strategized about who would be a helpful resource for which problems, thought about who was in a position to do something on her behalf and who would use his or her position to do harm instead, who was in league with whom ... and on and on and on. And, oh man, I remember those days! The days of plotting and planning and trying to figure out how to hang on and not get ground down into nothingness by the overwhelming awfulness of the entire damned place. The days of feeling physically unsafe on campus, of looking over my shoulder literally as well as figuratively.

Things are so bad that this friend and I spent part of our phone call plotting her going on the job market next fall -- deciding who would write her letters, how to position herself, etc. One of the things I told her was that I found my entire St. Martyr's experience a frightening lesson in just how easy it is to get used to being miserable, and I that I didn't want her to have that experience as well. Things are bad there.

This second episode combined with the first to make me oh so very grateful to be where I am now. This isn't a schadenfreude thing; I'm not happier because folks at St. Martyr's are unhappy. It's just that hearing how things are going there crystalizes for me how much happier I am now, and I wish that all my former colleagues could break free as well.