Pursuing Calefaction

I realize I’m dropping plates only after I’ve dropped them. This is getting very old, very fast. I forgot some important paperwork that is due tomorrow; I am barely keeping pace with my lesson plans, and I don’t know how to fix this broken cycle I’m in. I don’t want to get fired. I just want to get straight with everything.

I guess this is what it feels like to get run over by a tank?

[Update 2/14] OK, I slightly overdramatized things in my exhaustion. The sky is not falling. Yet.

We’re in full swing now. My weekends are frantic catch-up sessions (usually spoiled by my brain shutting down, leading to panic on Sundays), and the weekdays are just rolling from period to period, struggling to stay one step ahead of my students. The number of things I must do piles up higher and higher, but you know what? I’ll get them done.

I have several masters now: grad school, wherein I am conducting a literacy intervention; Latin teaching, which is actually the least difficult to navigate of my various occupations; Beginning Teacher orientation, which is paperwork beyond measure; and the HCoop, of which I am the treasurer (for what reason I allowed my friend Clinton to convince me into doing I know not). This reminds me of all the times I have put too many irons in the fire and ended up burning myself badly. I guess this is life with ADHD. But for the first time, I think I can actually manage it. Things slip, it’s true. I’m not doing everything perfectly, and I could do much better by my friends. But perhaps for the first time in my life, I’m doing concrete good in the world instead of just marking time. So I’ll take it. Light a man on fire, indeed.

I opened a couple of my beers from last year. (I had set aside a bottle from each batch, for just this purpose.) The special bitter, my first, was a full year old. It tasted very nearly exactly like feet. The sorghum was a bit better for being 11 months old, but it was decidedly off. I dumped most of both down the sink. The IPA was still vaguely hoppy, but again, the foot flavor permeated the malt body, and so most of it, too, went down the drain. The big surprise was the hefeweizen. Now, it was only 8 months old, so I’m sure that played a role in its qualities, but it was surprisingly free of funk. Much of the original citrusy blood orange flavor was gone, but had I been interested in it, I would have finished the whole thing. Also, so far, no gushers, so no sign of bottle infections yet. Hooray, good sanitation technique!

I officially have a collection of Scotch now. Last year, my sister and I went down to the Judge’s Bench in Ellicott City, MD to engage in a scotch tasting. We ended up working our way through 2 full flights (4 different scotches in each), under the soft tones of proprietor Mike Johnson’s narration of the different regions and malts we were drinking. He’s quite the whisky nerd. So, I know that I’m not yet inclined to drink an Islay, but Speyside and Highland varieties hit the spot all right. Well, to celebrate my status as a full-time, salaried employee of Wake County teaching Latin, I secured a bottle of Dalwhinnie 15 year, a scotch I remember liking rather a great deal when we tasted it. And that choice has not done me wrong! On top of this, the Sidhe, knowing my predilection for  delicious alcohol, took me to the booze store for an early Valentine’s Day present. We were looking at the Balvenie 14, a Speyside, but we settled on a bottle of Macallan 12 year (a Highland), which I had read about in various whisky threads as worth considering. Again, not disappointed in the slightest. So, in the last 4 weeks, we have spent $110 on Scotch.

This could get very expensive.

I quit Twitter. Not because I don’t want to talk to anyone–I desperately do–but it is far too easy to kill time. Minecraft, too, sits unused. But these are good developments. When I was a child, I engaged in childish things. Now that I am an adult, well, time to do the things that adults do. And yet: etsi provectus in sententiis sis, esse parvulus in spiritu debes!

I am all too aware that my consciousness is a small craft in a sea of chemicals. Sometimes the neurotransmitter tide swells, and waves wash over me, inundating this poor vessel. Other times the squalls clear, leaving dopamine-blue skies and smooth sailing. (I should go look up Horace and his ode to the ship of state again, but it’s late.) I have made it through the recent storms, or at least into a quiet, which may simply prove to be the eye of the maelstrom. I am on my way to becoming a full-time teacher, which will give me insurance and thus medication. Then we’ll have ourselves a real ballgame.

As it stands, I’ve made it this far–no reason not to keep on trucking. These kids of mine are actually learning some Latin, and a little corner of the Internet keeps on humming, and suicidal thoughts don’t plague me nearly as much. I remain Chesterton’s impatient man, though unlike him, I sail for truly undiscovered country rather than back to familiar haunts and ports with eyes anew. I have been brooding over things, and I shall write up my items of resolve in short order.

The semester begins again very soon. My first class at NCSU is next Wednesday, and the spring semester begins two weeks after that. I still have some shlepping to do before I am ready, but I am no longer bogged down by the beast’s tentacles. At least, I’ve won a reprieve. So, I’ll take it, despite the stress and anxiety.

Not giving up!

There is a Scylla in my brain, that grabs my executive function and wrests it away from me every time I catch a glimpse of the way forward. Writhing tentacles whip around in there, gripping my motivations. Sometimes it will dangle them in front of me, taunting me with what I already know. I have spent this vacation first sick, and now paralyzed, with enormous responsibility ahead to wrap up the semester. And the guilt about not mastering my fears and problems spirals in, tightening the chains still more.

Whining about it doesn’t accomplish anything in the way of goals. But I don’t know what to do, so I’m at least trying to describe the shape of the problem.

So, time to come back to things uttered in the fever pitch of self-improvement. As Chesterton says, it is the patient who is to be cured of an illness, but a man requires impatience to cure himself of his faults. (Sins, he says, but I have also no patience for that metaphysical shorthand.) To reiterate, here were my goals:

• write, edit, and submit one novel OR three short stories
• read 25 new books (that’s two books a month–slow pace, but one must crawl before walking)
• brew 12 distinct styles of beer on my stove
• find paying work in the teaching/tutoring field
• volunteer 50 hours in the local community
• write 50 letters (actual, printed and/or hand-written correspondence)

So, let’s see. I didn’t do any volunteer work, though I did sign up for it; I had to bail in the face of grad school deadlines. (Read: I painted myself into a corner. Same as it ever was.) I did some writing, though it amounts to less than 4,500 words in toto. Only one short story draft out of the bunch, and certainly no submissions to magazines. My editor friend Fox was an amazing help in creating the metacognitive structure to help hang my thinking on, though, and you would do well to work with her (link: Editness) if you’re serious about getting an actualfacts book published. She knows her shit, and can deliver. To sum up these two: volunteering, 0%. Writing, 10%. Credit for words on the page, at least. Other words on the page: I did manage to write 9 letters to friends. Mostly early in the year, and mostly no replies. My dear friends Anderson, Sparrow, and Fox were definitely the most receptive, but then I allowed myself to slip in replying to them. Final effort: 18%.

Still more words on the page, though not my own, were the 6 new books I managed to read. I had begun Jim Butcher’s Codex Alera last fall, and so I finished that before the summer (Captain’s Fury, Princeps’ Fury, First Lord’s Fury). Also chewed into some 19th century lit. First with, at long last, Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and then just recently GK Chesterton’s Orthodoxy (having read his shorter Why I Am A Catholic and Lewis’ Mere Christianity in the past couple years). Excellent perspective of those times by minds of great privilege. I also tucked into Tom Holland’s well-researched Rubicon, an account of the waning days of the Roman Republic. I still only managed 24% of my reading goal, though.

I did meet with some success this year. My beer efforts were on-track to be a complete success; by August, I had my 10th batch in fermenter, with plenty of time for the last two to age well before the end of the year. (I had my eye on a strong Belgian and a stout, both styles which benefit from nothing more than time.) However, time was something I rather dramatically ran out of shortly thereafter. What started as an inquiry for a teaching job interview for the sake of interview practice rapidly steamrolled into taking over full teaching duties as Middle Creek High School’s Latin instructor mid-semester. Suffice it to say, my brewing has come to a halt, and I might get that beer from August bottled tomorrow. I also might not, and I’m ok with that. So, my beer goal stands at 75%. But my pie-in-the-sky goal, the very thing I aspired to do only when the stars were right and I was properly accredited, I have managed to accomplish wholly and completely! Finding paying work as a teacher: 100%.

Cockadoodledoo!

It is a couple days before 2013 begins, and I don’t go in to school until the 2nd, but my vacation is over. It has been restful, explicitly doing nothing, though being sick has made that somewhat mandatory. And now I must do all the preparation work that I have put off while doing nothing. Time for a couple days of terrified frenzied activity while I get my ducks in a row for January.

I must plan for my students the week just before finals, when I’ll be engaged in professional development (not allowed in the classroom!). The spring semester begins concurrently with my development. I must actually write the final. I must prepare make-up packets for students to earn back points from homework missed during the semester. (OK, it’s not a must, but I can’t very well just give them free points for being lazy.) Gotta finish entering grades. Gotta clean for our New Year’s party, a list unto itself. Yes, I could have done all of these things over the break piecemeal, but surprise, I didn’t get motivated. It’s my own damned fault.

The West Wing, that amazing piece of television, has become available to stream over Netflix. The very first episode ends with President Bartlet reminding his staff that it’s time to kick it back into high gear. And so it must be with me. I have expended my time of frivolity. Break’s over.

So, I passed the PRAXIS. With flying colors! As if I ought to have had any doubt at all. So that means I am on the path to becoming a bonified, full time teacher-man, with all the professional development that entails. I survived until the winter break, though my immune system just about gave up at that point, so the first few days after solstice (our last day in school) I lay in bed with a fever. Good times.

Weather and the bug prevented me from traveling north, but that won’t stop me from enjoying a well-earned vacation. I have work to do before school starts again on the 2nd, but these last few days have been pretty nice. Lots of beer, very little of anything I don’t feel like.

I am trying to write more, to flesh out the universe in which my fictive thoughts dwell so often. So here’s a card to help push me over the boundary from dilettante to workman. (Shamelessly stolen from this site.)

First goal: One row by the end of January. 500 word minimum for each fill.

Yesterday I took the most difficult multiple choice test of my life. Even when the answer is guaranteed to be sitting in front of you, a well-constructed multiple choice test will provide other extremely plausible-seeming answers for the individual who does not know the answer, or is unsure. Suffice it to say, the writers of the Latin PRAXIS have a very good handle on multiple choice question construction. And, while I knew a good number of the answers without needing to sort through the chaff, the answers were often somewhat of a distraction, leading to a minor fit of second-guessing.

This test will determine a great many things about my future–and I am not at all sure how well I did on it. I am confident, at least, that I got enough questions correct that if I have failed, I have done so right at the edge of success. But my weakness in Latin is poetry, and of the five passage-based sections, three were, well, guess what? Poetry. The Vergil passage I think I comprehended better than the other two, and the bit with Helen and Paris I understood better than the one with the Giants raging against Jupiter. But I did a fair amount of educated guessing, especially in the questions that required strong sight vocabulary in addition to knowledge of grammar. And in a couple questions, I flat-out guessed.

On the other hand, I was also able to use the test against itself. The passages provided clues to understanding words I didn’t understand in the straight answer section. One example: a straight-answer question asked for the meaning of the ensiform. I had no clue when I first ran into it, but the Helen/Paris passage had “ensis something something oculos” when talking about Paris’s duel with Menelaus, so I figured (correctly) that it was about stabbing eyes. So, sword-shaped.  I also felt very strong about the two prose passages. One was from Cicero’s In Catilinam, which I have read and still remember much of, and the other was from a speech about public speaking by Gaius Gracchus. Again, sight vocabulary was tough, but with less intricate structure, the meanings of words become more apparent. This is the essence of language–using words to shape the meaning of other words–so I must remain positive about my performance.

But with the test over, I can now put it out of my mind and teach with abandon. No need to split my time between studying for the test, planning for my students, and completing my grad school tasks. Now it’s just planning and grad school. I am not foolish enough to think that I have more free time now, but I have a little more time to spend actually doing the worthy things. I am learning to become a more efficient human. Having 90 students depending on my ability to gaze into a crystal ball will do that, I am learning. My dear friend Fox has shown me how effective someone can truly be when necessity forces her into it, raising two children with a loving spouse, full-time work, and continuing her writing. So, I have no excuses, and, frankly, all the time in the world, provided I don’t squander it.

So, it turns out that lightning struck while I was busy feeling great about my progress in the MAT program. I applied for a Latin teaching position at a local high school, thinking it would turn out to be great interview practice, but I impressed the assistant principal well enough that he moved heaven and earth to get me into the position. I’ve been teaching now for two weeks, but it feels like an eternity. I’ve got more than a handful of work, but this is the dream. Absolutely, without condition. I must become the person who can plan, for my students are depending on me to be able to. But first things first: I must pass the Latin PRAXIS, scheduled for 3 Nov. If I don’t, none of this matters. If I do, I open the door to (potentially) a lifetime of perpetuating the glory of lingua Latina!

The greatest challenge is figuring out how to get the attention of the Latin I kids in 4th block, the last period before school ends. They’ve had lunch and the day is nearly over, so they’ve lots of energy. I need to find a way to channel it judo-style to trick them into learning despite their best efforts. It’s not helped that this week they’ve missed two full days of instruction due to the PSAT and then the pep rally before homecoming. My 1st block Latin Is are doing a little better, both because they’re not as rambunctious and because they’ve not been missing as much instruction, so I must take care not to let them slip too far ahead.

My Latin III students are another facet entirely in this gem of joy. Though their retention of the forms is not solid, they are adjusting to my increased expectations, and I think we will do some profound things before the semester is over. I have adjusted their curriculum; we’re now reading actual Latin instead of the constructs in Fabulae Romanae, and I think they’re catching on quickly. Eutropius, as late as he is, is a very regular writer, so they aren’t flipping out at the difficulty. I have them on a regimen of noun declensions at night and verb synopses in the morning, so that soon they will begin to differentiate between the two as we read.

And, in all of this, I am rekindling my own love of Latin. I thought I had set it aside, allowed it to become the faintest hope of achievement. Now I am faced with the fact that I must actually teach it after dreaming for so long. And I catch myself returning to it in odd moments, doing it because it is simply fun.

I can be only thankful for this opportunity I have prepared for and finally received. Now to make the most of it!