The coffee’s not cutting it today.
Two conference calls and not enough moving around so far and not enough sleep last night either. Probly too much news too, all of it bad of course.I wonder if anyone’s ever made anything of Sisyphus as coffee cup, trying to roll the rock of a human consciousness to the top of the hill of wakefulness, never getting there. Someone should. One must imagine Sisyphus something something bean, am I right?
Today one of the conference calls I was on, the agenda had a weird insertion of the phrase “promise ring perfect lines” which is likely a phrase I googled and which somehow got copied and pasted into the document - it was my meeting. Strange thing, I have no idea how it happened and no recollection of it. Typos and loss of recollection: a short but unreadable memoir.
Writing this little blog has made clear to me the small scope of my life at least when teaching is in full swing. I have to start reading more, expand beyond those limits a little more.
The conference call with the typo in the agenda that I mentioned was a faculty writing group I co-convene. That was good. Nice to see everyone and talk about writing, how it’s going and the work that was shared to workshop today. The group has something of an institutionalized life which has gotten to be a pain in the neck, honestly, in a way that has begun to create headaches, but the group itself is nice, nice to be part of. The other call was me being a reference for a coworker who has applied somewhere else and this place requires a phone call for references, the people I spoke with were very apologetic about that as it’s not their policy. That was a bit of a sad occasion as this coworker is definitely going to leave, in all likelihood, though it is also nice to spend time praising someone sincerely.
I was thinking it’s a funny idea to imagine this practice more generalized, like friends you’ve lost touch with using you as a reference for starting a new friendship. ‘If he comes over, will he bring a drink or snack, and will it taste any good?
I took two short naps today, about 10 minutes each, before my different conference calls. I can tell I got an alertness boost from those, however temporary, and it also meant spending more of my day in the drowsy just-woke-up headspace, which is pleasant in some ways but also annoying to have to think during. One of the nicest parts of a quick nap is the free associative state that’s right on the border between asleep and awake. I was thinking about books and road signs, I think. I didn’t dream about this but that thought gave me the thought of a library of road signs, where you could check them out. Get yourself a stop sign for two weeks, or a yield or do not enter, and they’d actually be in force. I like the idea of a law library that way too: check out a piece of legislation and it goes into force for two weeks on your block. Could be dangerous, though - you might try to check out a lower drinking age and accidentally bring home Murphy’s law, or the law of the jungle.
