S. left for Atlanta this afternoon, as tomorrow is her first day of employment with the NGO whose international headquarters are located there.  You could say this officially launches a lifestyle that will return us to Asia later this spring and end my current work with the University of Kentucky Writing Program in May.

Yesterday S. and I pampered ourselves in honor of Valentines Day–treating ourselves to manicures and pedicures, a late lunch and shopping at Joseph Beth, our favorite bookstore in Lexington.  I purchased Norah Vincent’s Voluntary Madness,  her most recent work,  narrating her year long immersion in and expose of  in-patient psychiatric hospitals–so far a fascinating study.  In fact, I want to hurry and finish this post, so I can return to reading it before bed this evening.  However, I must also discipline myself to write, dedicating enough energy and time to making this blog meaningful and fun.

Yet, often, as I mentioned the other day, I feel as if I’m merely going through the motions of writing–typing words and assembling them into sentences that amount to nothing more than discipline, to little more than exercises in commitment keeping.  I said I would do this, so I must and shall.  I know no other way.

I’ve spent much of the day grading papers, reading student prose until, exhausted, I fell asleep around  noon and remained sleeping for four solid hours.  I returned to reading soon after waking, and have only in the past 30 minutes or so put the papers away, completely depleted by the process.  Trying to get through too many essays in one day inevitably leaves me irritated and overwhelmed.

In the meantime, I’m not at all pleased with the quality of writing I’m producing here.  My sentences seem to limp along with little energy, as I stumble from one lame idea to the next.  I don’t feel able to accomplish what I ask my students to achieve–a vigorous prose style that maintains reader interest and compels audiences to return for more.  Some student work amazes me.  And it seems I should be able, at the very least, to accomplish what I ask these kids to.  So far I’ve failed.

Clearly, succeeding as a writer, rather than simply making it as one who teaches the skill to another, requires an ability  that, as of yet, I seem to lack.  Surely an exotic location, such as Thailand, doesn’t suddenly in and of  itself make one a more effective writer.  I must succeed here, if I’m to succeed in that setting.  Yes, the richness of the experience may lend itself to better prose at the beginning.  However, newness will eventually  be replaced by  routine.  Good writing requires one to make even the mundane more meaningful and engaging.

I’ve finished my last day of teaching for the week.  It’s not like the past few days have exhausted me and it’s energy depletion that makes me excited about three days away from school.  Rather, I’m concerned about the number of papers I have to grade and wanting to return them to my students before their next drafts are due a week from today.  Then again, it’s Valentines Day weekend and I look forward to spending it with  S.  I’m acutely aware of her departure for Atlanta on Sunday and her traveling to India in March.  Our time together is limited, and I want to capitalize on each and every opportunity.

Also, today I attended a committee meeting for the Evening with the Mountain Keepers event, which was far superior to last week’s gathering.  At that time my frustration was enormous, as I thought I was facing the group’s inability to use the drawing I had completed for them a couple of weeks ago.  That concern left me feeling like I had little if anything to contribute.  The other women in the group are exceptionally gifted in managing the logistics of such an event–a skill I most certainly lack.  I guess, I felt inferior and useless–especially if  my creative contributions weren’t able to be used.  Yet things look much different this week.  Anne is now wanting to sell signed prints of my drawing at the event.  And that prospect thrills me.  I am genuinely enthused.

Teaching went well today.  Nothing totally dreadful.  Nothing amazing either.  Just you basic okay day, until I got home and S. and I began to argue.  Then things began to feel less okay, even though what we were arguing about was meaningless–ridiculous really.  Now I feel deflated.  Now I can’t lift myself from this pit of moderate misery.  I no longer feel happy, and, in fact, I had felt happy earlier in the day.  I had wanted to read this evening.  Now I don’t care about even that, which is sad, as I consider reading one of life’s greatest pleasures.  Blah, blah, blah–I have nothing to say–so good night.

This afternoon I told Deborah  my plans to not teach in the fall, and fortunately she responded as I had hoped.  Read yesterday’s post to appreciate the importance of this.  Clearly, my revelation did not merit the anxiety I had attached to it.  And this is a good thing–a very good thing!  Deborah expressed excitement for me and seemed to suggest I would be welcome to return in a year or two or whenever we stop traveling.

This morning reference librarians oriented my students to databases that will allow them to do the research necessary for this essay and the next.  I love listening to others teach my classes.  I left school this afternoon as energized as I arrived there this morning. 

It’s hard to believe we’ve completed a quarter of the semester already.  May will arrive in a few short months.  And, in fact, it should be easier than originally anticipated to survive my separation from S., as we learned yesterday, that she will not leave the US before March and may return home between a trip to India scheduled for then and her eventual departure for  Thailand.  This may allow us to travel to Atlanta in mid March for Millard Fuller’s memorial service and visit with friends from Americus who will attend the same event at Ebenezer Baptist Church.  So all in all I may skip myself through the spring and hop scotch my way  into May with a lot less struggle and a good deal more merriment than I originally thought possible.  Hooray for blessings big and small.

Today Deborah, the assistant director of the Writing Program, didn’t come into the office, so I was unable to meet with her or share my plans for the upcoming academic year.  This disappoints me.  I had hoped to get that revelation out of the way and be done with my anxiety about it.  Interestingly, though, I’m not at all aware why this makes me anxious  in the first place.  Perhaps, it has something to do with my wanting a response from her the nature of which I’m unable to articulate.  Do I want her to express disappointment about my departure?  Certainly, but I think it’s a difficult to define balanced response I’m hoping to hear.  I want a fairly strong expression of sadness, coupled with both a willingness to have me back in the future and a desire for me to do what most benefits my relationship with S.  Maybe I should script the most desirable response and send it to Deborah, so she can get her lines right. 

At any rate, S. and I removed the disgusting brown carpet from Rachel’s room this afternoon.  It’s good to have the smelly stuff bundled at the curb.  Now I only dread our having to sand and refinish the floors–a dusty, dirty task however you stack it.  Yet, we have made considerable progress in the past couple of weeks.  In fact, recently the room was piled high with paraphernalia from power tools to Christmas cards, from miter saws to merry-go-rounds.  Okay, I exaggerate.  There may have been no ferris wheels or other state fair attractions stored in the space.  But it was one hell of a Kings Island to our cats who don’t know that their  brown carpeted theme park  is now housed in the attic or passed on to  Goodwill for good keeping.

I head back to classes  in the morning.  But all in all, I’d say, the weekend has been fairly productive, both in terms of work done on the house, especially in Rachel’s room, and tasks associated with school.  Perhaps, I’ve not accomplished quite as much as I’d like academically, but I have done enough to get by, and then some.

More important, however, is the fact that I plan to meet in the morning with Deborah, the assistant director of the Writing Program, to let her know about my plans for next year, to give her a heads up that I will likely not be teaching in the fall.  I’m both anxious to get that revelation over with and excited that I will now be able to share our Asian plans with other friends and colleagues in the English Department.  Keeping this information under wraps has challenged me considerably over the past month.

Less challenging this weekend has been the weather.  Temperatures have hovered in the 50’s, and tomorrow it’s supposed to hit the low 60’s–a far cry from the single digits we dealt with last week.  Our local weather forecaster, Bill Meck, is surely lamenting the lack of meteorological drama.

This morning S. and I hung the ceiling fan in Rachel’s room.  It looks great with the gray walls.  Yet another step in the right direction.

By the way, I forgot to mention yesterday that S. received a call from human resources at the NGO she’ll be working for, letting us  know that her first day of employment will be a week from this coming Monday,  February 16th.  It looks like she will have to spend the week of the 16th at the organization’s headquarters in Atlanta.  After that she’ll return home to Lexington for a week or so and probably be gone to Bangkok by the end of the month, which was when we had originally anticipated she’d be leaving.  The only difficult detail in this is that we will likely be apart for a solid 2 months before I’ll be able to join her in Thailand during the first week of May.  That will be our longest time away from one another.  Previously we had only been apart for six weeks–which I remember as agonizingly long.  I can only hope that our relationship has matured to the point that the separation will be a little less painful.  In the past I suspect the newness of our connection left me feeling insecure.  I believe that we have now built a strong enough foundation that I will feel more grounded when S. is away.  At least I hope that’s the case.

S. and I finished painting Rachel’s room today.  Hip, hip, hooray!  This represents significant progress in getting the  house ready for our eventual departure overseas.  I had begun to fear we would never get what had been our junk room emptied of its considerable content.  That part of the task in and of itself was enormous.  Now the space is not only free of stuff, it is painted, as well.  This makes my entire weekend worthwhile!  Even if I don’t accomplish another thing before Monday, I’ll feel confident having gotten that room moving toward  its new incarnation.  Thank God for small, or maybe not so small, miracles.

This afternoon I also managed to work out the daily schedule for my students’ second unit.  I had begun to worry about this, as I had to completely abandon the usual service learning project I do with Habitat for Humanity.  Instead my classes will be writing their second essays about problematic places on campus or in the local community.  Actually, I think they will enjoy this topic more than the one focused on volunteerism, and in the long run I think this will be less labor intensive for me.  Hip, hip, hooray, all over again!

S. is asleep in the bed next to me, and it is suffocatingly hot in our room, as both the heated mattress pad  and the electric space heater are on high.  S. is cold.   Perhaps, I’m at an age where I am beginning to suffer from hot flashes, but good god, I can’t tolerate the heat.  It’s the tropical temperatures that I dread most about Bangkok.  Actually that’s the only part of Southeast Asia I am not looking forward to.  What I remember about Thailand from a couple of years ago makes me think I will enjoy much about the country and its culture–especially the mangos. 

Today I returned to the classroom for the first time in over a week, which felt wonderful.  I can’t help but love my students.  They delight, to say the least.  Interacting with them and watching them learn pleases and fulfills me.  Probably I will miss teaching next year.  In many regards I think that getting out regularly,  interacting with others,  benfits my thinking and alleviates my anxiety, helps to normalize life for me and my mood-disordered self.

That being said, I must admit that I look forward to time off this weekend.  I want to hep S. finish painting Rachel’s room, have the freedom to nap in the afternoons and read for pleasure.  Certainly one of my greatest pleasures is curling up in bed with a book,  an activity I find little time for during the week.  God, it’s still too hot in here.