This is my first attempt at camera phone blogging, so you can't see that the roof is gone and most of the windows are blown out. It makes me sad. I guess they're building "green space" where all the old buildings are. Stupid. This is supposed to be an urban campus. Trees are great but I'm not a fan of trying to make UA look like every other college campus in the country. I like my dirty, gritty sidewalks and old looking buildings. Boo.
Busy week. Exhausted Sara.
There's a lot going on in Ohio/Akron these days. Thursday, Cate Marvin and Jay Hopler (I think I spelled his name wrong, but too lazy to go check--or make links, sorry!) read at UA, and it was a great reading. Very well attended, very engaging, and the cheering and clapping from the room next door just added to the excitment. Monday, Mary, Michael Dumanis, and Zachary Schomburg will be reading. (Did I spell that wrong too?) I love reading season, especially now that I've graduated, because it reminds me what this is all about.
Today, I'll be helping Jay format his thesis, reading some manuscripts, and then having wine and girl talk with Jen and Lindsay. Again, too lazy for links, plus Lindsay doesn't have a blog. I need some good girl talk. Too many boys around sometimes.
There's something new going on in my life completely unrelated to poetry, teaching, PhD stress, etc. that is taking up a lot of energy and I'm not sure if that's a good thing. Trying to be in the moment. We'll see.
I shouldn't be blogging. Yesterday I was supposed to get a bunch of work done, but then I had to take Jay out for celebratory beers and after that I went to hang out with another friend for a few hours and I got nothing done--except a giant batch of spaghetti sauce and meatballs, which I'll put in the freezer today. I love getting unexpected invitations, especially since I'm usually a hermit on weekends, but it totally effed up my plans.
But the sun is shining today, and although it's not great weather, it is above freezing with no snow in the forecast. Hallelujah!
I just spent the last 48 hours begging for money. Okay...not exactly. But writing fellowship and assistantship applications. It's not that fun to sell yourself, you know? Although going through the process (especially with the application I just finished) reminded me of all the awesome stuff I've done with the last 6 years and how much I learned in my HR days, even though sometimes it was tedious.
And now I wait. Hopefully I only wait a couple weeks. I'd really, really like to have a plan by April 15, but I don't see that happening. The crazy thing is that one of the assistantships I applied for has a start date of May 19, which means that I could be moving in less than 2 months. Let's not even think about that right now.
Next week, I visit Chicago.
This is one crazy beautiful life. Who'da thought I'd be here? I've been rushing around so much, worrying so much, pulling down my hat and sticking my hands in my pockets and trying to ignore the cold, that I haven't stopped to appreciate how happy I am, despite (or because of?) the stress. It's all good. I forget that too often.
Mary (and the rest of the Akron crew), you better buck up, because I'm gonna need a drinking buddy tomorrow. To celebrate the finishing of the app-writing, you know? To celebrate the waiting.
Everytime I think that, I hear the tune of "I feel pretty." So my song is: I feel icky, I feel icky and shitty and gross." Creative, huh?
I don't know what my deal is. Granted, the St. Patrick's festivities and little sleep that night didn't help, but that was Monday, and it is now Wednesday. Definitely not still hung over. I couldn't sleep last night, was up until 6 a.m., and now, I have tons of stuff to do but feel like I spent the morning in a dumpster.
I'm sorry to be back to whining. But I do have a point.
On days like this, I consider my lifestyle. My pack-a-day habit, my caffeine addiction, my love of salty, crispy, and sweet foods, and my aversion to exercise. If I could change just one of these things, I'd probably feel ten times better. If I changed them all, I'd probably have the energy of a 12-year-old. And I know it's all within my control. I've decided to climb other moutains with much success, but the healthy living mountain has giant "Keep Out" signs all around it. My mom always tells me she doesn't understand why I accomplish everything I say I will accomplish except quitting smoking and taking better care of myself. I don't know either.
The way I prioritize my life, work (grading, class plans, writing) comes first, friends and family second, reading and blogging comes next, watching TV and sleeping after that. Healthy eating and excercise get bumped to the bottom and so when I'm stressed out I smoke and eat chips. Great. See how well that's working.
Jay & Dawson, two of the healthiest people I know, gave me the "just ten minutes a day" speech last week. Actually, Jay has been giving me the "quit whining and do something" speech since about 5 minutes after I met him, but I haven't been taking his advice. Maybe I will reevaluate my priorities. Maybe I will stop whining and do something.
For now, I'm going to go make an omelet and clean my apartment. We'll see what happens after that.
Had much fun hanging out with Mary and the MFA crew yesterday (good thing Mary is Irish, since the rest of us sure aren't) in Highland Square. That'll be just about the extent of my spring break excitement...now it's back to the grind stone. Still have tons of papers to grade and various other important stuff to deal with. And so I'm off...to do important stuff.
This is cracking me up. All my thesis writing friends should read it.
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I finally, finally, heard from the last school I applied to, and it was a yes, but no assistantship. I'm on a waiting list. I'm thrilled that I've been accepted, but this is just more waiting. No decisions made yet.
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I am going to read a Nora Roberts novel tonight. Giving a big ole middle finger to my to do list. It is spring break after all.
I haven't posted past midnight in a while...it's that early teaching schedule. But I'm on spring break, so schedules be damned.
I have a huge mental block on finishing and submitting my manuscript, but I just finished whittling it down to a neat 26 page chapbook. I'll be sending it out next week. I'm not asking anyone to read it and I'm not telling anyone what the title is until it's printed and mailed. I have a serious issue with indecisiveness, so I'm trusting my gut on this one.
I think this is the right step--the hesitation for my thesis-turned-ms is partially fear, but also partially an awareness that, although I'm very happy with it, it isn't finished. There are still poems I want to write, poems I want to revise, and it just isn't time yet. Summer or fall, maybe, but I'm not going to push it. I want to be totally in love with my first book when it comes out. And I'm totally in love with my chapbook. Then again, this was just the first date, and I have a tendency to get attatched too soon. Ask me how I feel about it in the morning. But not before 10, since it's almost 2 now.
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I still haven't heard anything from the last school...but I got another annoying graduate newsletter email from them today. I get excited every time I see the name in my inbox, but then I read the email and at the bottom, it says "Contact your department for the status of your application" and I realize that they're just teasing me. If I don't hear anything tomorrow I'm calling Monday. Wait, make that Tuesday. Monday is St. Patrick's day, and even though I'm not Irish, my friends are.
Okay...I'm in a good mood. Better blog about it before it goes away!
In 24 hours, I will be on Spring Break! Thank God! Probably not much exciting...Dinner with MB and EW, hanging out with family over Easter Weekend, perhaps some green beer on Monday. Mostly hoping to catch up on grading, class plans, poetry (writing and reading) and watching movies (I finally caved and got a Netflix account).
Today, my Comp 2 students will be playing pictionary. Between spring break and the MAC championships, it is absolutely pointless to try to teach something today... Instead, I bought cookies and twizzlers and we're going to blow off some steam with stick figures on the chalk board.
Plus, it's sunny and 50-ish today. It feels like--gasp--spring!
For being such a whiny blogger lately. I go through phases. Right now, I'm in a "This sucks. What's next?" phase and not doing a very good job of being in the moment. Half-assing just about everything from doing the dishes to grading papers. I've been trying to write, but even that is lack-luster--although I did get a new Bisbee poem out on Saturday; better yet, it's a Stella in Bisbee poem, so it can actually go in the manuscript. I've also got 10 pages of the memoir written, but that is such slow work...oy! And really, it's kind of boring. I may not stick with it. I keep saying that, but I'll keep pounding at the keys when I can, and eventually I'll have a first draft. Then comes the fun part--revising.
I'll blame it on the weather, and, as Anne calls it, Daylight Stupid Time. Who wants to get out of bed when it's still dark at 7:30?
Something funny happened today though. A couple of my Tues-Thurs students said they wouldn't be in class on Thursday because of the big game (what big game? I wondered)--one is on the dance team and the other is a basketball fanatic. Anyway, it turns out UA's basketball team is playing in the MAC championships for the first time. And I said, "Oh, that's why Darryl's out all week." He gave me one of those athlete "I'm traveling for the team" letters last week, but I didn't think much of it. So, A., the basketball fanatic, said, "Who's Darryl?" and I said, "the guy who usually sits over there" (pointing). A. gets this funny look on his face and says, "What's his last name?" So, I tell him, and then A. says, "Shut up! You mean D-Rob is in this class?" He goes nuts, like I just told him Lebron James was in the class or something. Apparently, D-Rob (aka Darryl) looks a lot different on the court than quietly sitting in the class...and apparently D-Rob is quite the basketball player. A celebrity, in my class. Who knew?
Last fall, when I went to the UA/KSU football game, I kept looking for former students on the field, but none of them were playing. I guess if I went to the basketball game that wouldn't be the case.
I hope someday he's on ESPN and I can brag about grading his papers.
I learned the word "ennui" when I was taking an ekphrastic workshop a couple years ago. We were writing about this painting, by Walter Richard Sickert (I thought it was Degas...oops). I don't remember what I wrote about, but it probably sucked, like most of my ekphrastic poems did.
Hey, remember those contributor interviews I promised? The first one, with poet Jeff Newberry, is up and running.
And you probably already know about this, but BOR Editor-in-Chief, Mary B., is
Anti-'s featured poet!
It's a good day to be an owl. Not, however, a good day to dig your car out of 2' of snow.
The waiting continues. There was nothing exciting in my mailbox at all. There's just one unknown left and it's the one I want the most. For Pete's sake...what's taking so long?
We're supposed to get about a foot of snow this weekend. Good thing I'm not planning to go anywhere. Just 23 hours until I can check the mailbox again.
Okay, this is going to be incredibly cheesy. But I'm going to say it.
Yesterday, I was sitting in my office waiting for students to not show up (does anyone ever come to office hours besides grad students?) and all I could think about was how PhD decisions are supposed to come my way this week. And how on Wednesdays, I don't usually get home until after 10 p.m. A letter from Nebraska or OU or FSU could have been sitting there in the mailbox, lonely and cold, for 8 or 9 hours. So I decided to go home between office hours and workshop--something I never do.
I rushed home (standing up Rick, who was planning to come by to talk thesis formatting) and checked the mail...but there was only a letter from the cable company. Nothing special. Nothing worth driving home for.
Needless to say, I was annoyed. Annoyed that I wasted the time and gas driving home when I didn't need to. Annoyed that I had to wait at least another 24 hours before I knew anything. Just annoyed. I've been having some cabin fever/mental exhaustion crankiness lately and the annoyance happens easily.
At any rate, I decided to make the best of it and had pancakes for lunch before heading back to school. I was driving down rt 8 kind of half-there when the traffic slowed down for no obvious reason and the sun came out (it had been cloudy all day). It was around 4:30, so it was pretty low, and I was almost stopped next to the only tree-lined portion of rt 8 between my house and school, and the trees, covered in ice, back-lit with brilliant sunlight, looked amazing. Like something out of a science fiction movie. Like something completely unnatural--except that it was completely natural. I rolled past these trees at 10 mph, and the second I was past them, the traffic sped up, the clouds came back, and it was just another gray, ugly winter afternoon. But for a second, everything slowed down. For a second, I forgot how annoyed and frustrated I was and just thought about something beautiful.
A God Moment.
It's been a long time since I've been to church, since I've considered myself a religious person, but I've never lost my faith in a higher power. Sometimes I don't call it God, but fate or the universe, or something new-agey like that, but it's still the same thing I prayed to when I was sitting in a church or at a youth group retreat. And even though sometimes I forget about it, there are moments when I'm too lost in the day-to-day and whatever It is slows me down, reminds me that there's something bigger.
I was in a great mood last night, and maybe that is why.
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My mom saw my post on the six word memoir and she sent me one of her own:
New lung.
New life.
New world.
I like hers better than mine.
Feeling blah today. Maybe because of the weather: rain, wind, ice. And it's just going to get worse. I'm so ready for spring--and spring break. I need some time to gather my thoughts.
Found this at Kelly's and couldn't resist. The first is from my blog, the second is from my manuscript, which looks way more melodramatic than it is.
Praying for 50 degrees and sunshine sometime soon. Right now, 27 and sunshine. Half's not so bad, right?
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I'm going to tag myself. The six word memoir:
What would you say if you had to summarize your life in only six words? Bookbabie got the idea from a book written by Larry Smith and Rachel Fershleiser, Not Quite What I was Expecting: Six Word Memoirs by Famous and Obscure. It is a compilation based on the story that Hemingway once bet ten dollars that he could sum up his life in six words. His words were—For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.
Here are the rules:
1. Write your own six word memoir
2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like
3. Link to the person that tagged you in your post and to this original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere
4. Tag five more blogs with links
5. And don’t forget to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play!
Here's mine: She always wants to go back.
I'm not playing tag. Do it if you want.
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I've started my "real" memoir. That's why I posted the picture of me and my mom. I'm writing about how my mother's illness(es) impacted me as I grew up, and how her health has effected me as an adult.
Since I started writing, I wanted to write about myself. I thought you had to be famous or at least extra special to write a memoir, but I guess that's not the case. We'll see if I stick with it. Poetry has taught me the joy of being able to finish a draft in 45 minutes. I'm not sure I have the tenacity to write a draft that will take months to complete.
