What Now?

Overstimulated

Yesterday afternoon I was working on my biography project and thus reading about the histories of the high school and college that my subject attended.

Then, over dinner, D. and I watched an installment of Middlemarch, which we're enjoying.

Afterward, I took advantage of the spring break luxury of time and went to bed at 9:00 with a big stack of books.

First I re-read one chapter in my biography subject's memoir; I needed the info for the chapter I'm working on, and every time I read that memoir I fall in love again with her voice and get reenergized for the work of this biography project.

Then I read one chapter of Adam Nicolson's God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible. I'm finally getting around to reading this in honor of the KJV's 400th anniversary, but it's also working so beautifully with the prep work I'm doing for teaching Macbeth again this spring. And it's just so interesting in its own right!

Then I turned to Bill Bryson's At Home: A Short History of Private Life; I'd been reading it the night before and enjoying it but had gotten sleepy in the middle of a chapter and so wanted to finish up that chapter (on "The Hall," so I'm near the beginning).

Finally, I opened David Levithan's Boy Meets Boy, a young adult novel about a romance between two tenth-grade boys. I meant to read just a few chapters, but it's such a sweet and engaging story that I got swept away and kept saying "Oh, just one more chapter; they're short, after all."

Suddenly it was well after midnight and clearly time to turn out the lights.

But not so easy to turn off my brain, with all of these different stories swirling around in my mind. Causabon and medieval houses and King James I and teenage romance and nineteenth-century  education for women, all mixed up together until I felt like I was going crazy! I tossed, I turned, I tried concentrating on only one of the stories, I muttered, I tried wiping my mind entirely clear and thinking about no stories at all, I sighed gustily -- still, no sleep. Finally I guess I wore myself out, for I know that I did eventually fall asleep, but I was not especially rested this morning.

Note to self: Reading in bed is fine, but choose just ONE book at a time.

Having survived October, ...

I kind of thought that life would somehow get easier. Silly, silly me.

October was a seriously hectic, crazy, exhausting month at school (Parents' Weekend plus re-accreditation visiting committee plus midterm reports), such that the head of the high school actually sent out a congratulatory email to the faculty on Nov. 1 to say "hurrah, we made it!" And yet, where's the break I need? Where's the end to the work? We're on a trimester system, which means that this is the end of the term and we are all therefore insane. And I'll get to spend my Thanksgiving "break" grading exams. Yippee.

I headed into the week in a major mental slump, and as much as I keep telling myself that being overwhelmed is about my attitude rather than the sheer amount of work, I'm feeling overwhelmed nonetheless. Plus there's some family stuff going on, and I haven't slept well in a few nights, and the days are getting shorter and shorter, and I'm seriously, seriously blue.

This morning, as I was stewing in my own grumpiness, I decided that I needed some variation on my helpful "suck less" mantra. That mantra isn't really applicable in this situation, since in fact I'm not sucking at all but rather am working really hard, which is no doubt partly why I'm so blue. My initial thought for a replacement mantra was "Suck it up, get over your damn self, and shut the hell up with your whining," but I decided that this was a little negative for a mantra. Plus, too wordy.

On my way home this afternoon -- tired and dispirited even though it has been a fine teaching week thus far -- I decided on a new mantra to try out: "Do something good." I've been working plenty hard, but there are good things I could be doing for myself that would help my spirits; even if they didn't put me on top of the world, I'd probably feel better about life if I did some good things -- good life things, not just good school things.

So here's what I did this afternoon and evening, inspired by my new mantra:

• made an appointment for a mammogram
• exercised
• made the last-minute changes to an article that were requested by the journal editor (in the same email in which he told me they were already late for press, so could I get back to him ASAP -- 'cause that's just what my November mood needed)
• typed up the freshman course assignment sheet for the rest of this trimester -- it's all feasible, really, so I just need to hold onto that fact and stop feeling panicky
• did two loads of laundry
• finally got around to taking some summer clothes down to the cedar closet to store for the winter; they'd been sitting on the desk the entire fall, which goes to show the state of housekeeping in chez WN
• made up a big pot of steel-cut oatmeal so that I can have a tasty, healthy breakfast for the next few days
• ordered my niece's birthday present
• and my goal is to be in bed by 10:00 (so I have 8 minutes to finish this post and brush my teeth!)

I don't want this new mantra to become an excuse to pile more work on myself -- that's not the point -- but rather to make sure that I'm doing things that I think will make life better. So this is the mantra for November: "Do something good."

A relaxing family visit (Is that an oxymoron?)

D picked me up from the airport yesterday morning after my short flight back from the land of my youth.

Well, my mom actually lives more than an hour away from the specific land of my youth, so there is no revisiting of my haunts of yore when I visit my family. My 25th high school reunion is next weekend, which would have involved such revisiting, but this past weekend worked better for everyone for my visit, and I didn't actually enjoy either my 10th or my 20th reunions, so I didn't feel particularly motivated to attend this upcoming reunion. But I digress.

The interesting thing is that it was actually a good visit with my mother! As I was unpacking last night, D commented that I seemed much less anxiety-ridden and emotionally overwrought than is my usual state upon returning from a family visit, and it's also true that I didn't once call her over the weekend to cry or complain or just get a reality check. (I sent her some emails, but they were of the "I love you -- hope you're having a good weekend" variety.)

Here's why I think it was a good trip (and I'm writing these out so that I can replicate them on future trips):

• I've lost weight, which my mother approves of because for her that represents self-deprivation, which she's in favor of. (Have I ever mentioned the strong Calvinist streak in my family?) Now, this weight loss has not actually meant self-deprivation for me, which is the one reason I've stuck with it, but she approved nonetheless. Also, she wants to lose weight but hasn't done so, so she couldn't hold this over me. The moral high ground is very, very important in my family dynamic, and I usually am occupying the low ground!

• We had a project in which she was instructing me. I learned this lesson a couple of years ago, and it's made a huge difference in our visits. This time, she was teaching me the basics of crochet, which she learned in the last year. Now, I don't actually care for most crochet, but all I wanted to be able to do was to add trim to knitting projects, and I think I successfully learned to do so. This meant that my mom and I spent time sitting side-by-side on the couch, her showing me what to do and my mimicking her, and in the end her teaching and my learning were successful. She felt needed, and we had spent time focusing on something external to us and our relationship: a recipe for a less fraught visit.

• My mom and I had a day and a half together before my brother and his family descended on the house, and we had a little time afterward with only my nieces around. In many ways, having the whole family there makes the time go faster, but I think it helps my relationship with my mom when we have some mother-daughter time as well as grandmother-aunt time.

• As part of that mother-daughter time, we went to the outlet mall, where I bought clothes for the new school year. This was fun (see the weight loss above!), and I think it helped her feel involved in my "real life." Plus, she bought me some pairs of chinos, which was nice. My mother tends to be so very critical that I keep her at arm's length and don't tell her a lot of what is going on in my life -- an understandable defense mechanism, I think, but one that naturally keeps us apart, which then causes her anxiety and unhappiness. Oh, families!

• Speaking of her criticism: Both before and after my brother and his family arrived, my mom kept telling critical stories about my sister-in-law; my SIL is actually a great person, and my mother usually holds her up as a model to me, but this weekend she could do no right. At one point, my mom even caught herself being particularly critical and said, "Of course, I love SIL!" My SIL is also someone I didn't grow up with and don't have a long, complicated history with, which means that I have a pretty clear-eyed view of her strengths and weaknesses, so I could put my mom's criticisms in clear context and see that what my mother found so lamentable are things that are not weaknesses at all or that are so minor that it is silly to even point them out. I found this very eye-opening, since I tend to internalize and/or resent my mother's criticisms of me and D.; but clearly her critical eye is always roving and finding new things to pick on, and clearly those things usually don't amount to anything at all. Also, I've been interested over the past few years to observe how both my brother and SIL try to let my mom's criticisms just roll off of them like water off a duck's back, and how they even make her comments a source of inside jokes between them -- so maybe in this respect, my mother is right that my SIL is a good model for me!

• I also borrowed my mom's car a couple of times and had lunch with my dad and his wife and had breakfast with Another Damned Medievalist (who lives in the area), and SIL and I also took my nieces to the neighbor's pool one afternoon, so I didn't feel as trapped in my mom's house as I sometimes do.

All of which is to say that it was actually an enjoyable trip, and I was kind of sad when my mom took me to the airport, mostly because I wish I lived closer to my nieces (but they're coming up next summer for a whole week with their aunties!). But it's really a short and often fairly cheap flight, and if visits weren't so fraught, maybe I could run down for an easy weekend more often. Food for thought.