Heavy Fog

I’ve been sleeping too much these days. This summer may stand as the longest stretch of time I’ve gone without working. Well, since I started working regularly. Maybe that’s why I’m so interested in production and structure lately. It’s as though I can’t get anything done because I have too much free time. When I have a work schedule to plan around, I give myself specific time slots, focused time, to get other things done. But it’s hard to focus when the whole day lays open. This bothers me.

At first it was relaxing, but now I feel bad not working - not getting anything done. Aside from spending money without earning any, it bothers me to feel unproductive. Why? Is it a cultural value that I’ve been drilled on growing up? Is it part of wanting to be an adult, feeling like I’m making good use of my time? I’m cautious of both those reasons, not as possible answers but as valid reasons for feeling guilty. They are too external. Driven more by learned cultural value than discovered, individual value.

Maybe it’s an internal push, not an external pressure. There’s so much I want to do. So much to experience and learn, and I know that I have limited time (and even less youth). Maybe I feel I’m betraying this knowledge. But what do I think I should be doing instead? I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be right now than in Virginia, spending time with Alix. Yet I can’t shake this feeling that I should be doing more. That I’m dulling, not sharpening.

I remember one of the first days of student teaching, before school officially started. During the summer I’d read all the books we would cover during my semester at the high school. I’d talked with my cooperating teacher to get an idea of what we wanted to do in the first few weeks. Aside from that, though, there wasn’t much I could do to prepare for the year. As a student teacher I would start out observing, then eventually teach a whole unit. But it was too early to know what I’d cover and with which class. Still, I wanted to do something in those first days before students arrived. I wanted to work hard. I wanted to get ready, to be prepared for the coming months.

My cooperating teacher had been given two classrooms for the year, one on the first floor and the other on the second. He was to share them with another teacher. We didn’t know why this was, but it was quickly decided that it made more sense to give each teacher his own room. The only problem was moving all the stuff my cooperating teacher had already piled into the first floor room. But damn if that wasn’t the most satisfying thing I did in those early days. Amidst all that uncertainty - sitting around, imagining, wondering – I knew I was getting something done by hauling those crates up the stairs to our new room.