Mountains Made Low

I was looking forward to PBS BritComs last night. Turned on the TV in the midst of Antiques Roadshow, to turn it down and continue reading one of my Christmas books (Jim Butcher’s Fool Moon, the second of the Dresden Files books, which I’ve finally gotten round to reading). I haven’t read much, lately. The fall semester was hell on wheels on a number of fronts (reading, writing, exercising), what with teaching six classes and learning the ins and outs of running my program — the spring term should be much better (here’s hoping!).

Anyway, I was reading some brain candy (after having finished the first Dresden book, Storm Front, earlier in the day), getting ready for some mindless British humor, and otherwise enjoying a quiet Saturday night in. But sometime between 9:00 and 9:30, I just couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer, and I have no clue why (well, not entirely true, but we’re going to go with it — those of you reading who know will know what I think).

I faded in and out of sleep on my couch for several hours after that. I remember, briefly, being awake during As Time Goes By (10:00-10:30), again during The Vicar of Dibley (11:00-11:30), and once more during the post-BritCom fare, Our Ohio (11:30-12:00). Sometime right around 12, I turned off the TV, became ever so briefly aware enough to put on my pjs and go to bed, in the bed. Around 3, I awoke to terrible cramping, the solution to which is best left no further described, and then went back to sleep. At which point I slept soundly until a little before 8 this morning.

So the last time I remember being truly awake was 9pm. The first time I remember being anything resembling functional was 8am. That’s 11 hours. I know I’ve had a full-blown, followed by a half-assed, cold since last Friday (Christmas day). I know that New Year’s and me just don’t get along. But 11 hours of sleep? Really? And I feel like I could take a nap now?

But there’s something else here, too, because though I was (granted, off-and-on) asleep for 11 hours, the word unconscious in the title of this post may be somewhat misleading, because I don’t think the processor in my brain switched off at all. While it was not at all “active sleep” in the traditional sense of tossing and turning and tearing up the bedclothes, to which I have been somewhat subject recently (either that, or as I’m becoming convinced, the sheets that are on the bed at the moment, just don’t fit quite right), my brain did not stop working.

But I’m not convinced that my active brain did anything good, either. Oftentimes, when my brain doesn’t turn off as I sleep (and I’m not talking about typical dreaming here, but the sort of dreaming which seems to last all night), I wake up raring to go, because — no matter how much I may or may not remember, apart from that I was chasing something all night long — my conscious mind seems to be…I don’t know, is reassured the word I’m looking for?…by the nocturnal exertions of my unconscious mind.

Not so, today. There is, it seems, still more work to do, and that bothers me, because it’s stealing my waking focus.

Which is annoying.

Very, very annoying.

People, it seems, often harbor a strong dislike for one holiday or another. Some people loathe Christmas, others Thanksgiving, and still others one of the many holidays that we mark on our calendars. Their reasons for these dislikes are many and varied, and most times, people have very good reasons for disliking the holidays they do.

If you’ve read here a while, you know that I’m not a strong proponent of the “Hallmark Holidays,” generally speaking. That comes and goes, and I can’t say that I actually dislike them, because they’re, honestly, easy enough to ignore when you want to; they simply are what they are, and there’s really nothing surrounding them to hate, at least from where I stand.

And those who know me know that I love Hallowe’en, I love the patriotic holidays (Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Veterans’ Day), I have a profound respect for Thanksgiving, and it’s impossible for me not to get caught up in all that Christmas signifies.

But here’s another of those places where I’m a little weird: I hate New Year’s.

With a passion.

Do I have good reasons? Well, I think so, but as such things always go, I don’t know that I’m qualified to judge my own reasons behind this feeling; so often, after all, we’re not. But let me explain, and I’ll let you be the judge.

I trace the roots of my loathing to when I was a kid. These roots have much more to do with New Year’s Day than with New Year’s Eve, which is more the focus of my adult feelings, but I know I started hating the whole Eve/Day complex when I was a child. And it has to do with food. Think about it: Most holidays bring with them a veritable smorgasbord of good eats, from cookouts at the summer holidays to traditional Thanksgiving and Christmas fare, to candy on Hallowe’en, to (as an adult) green beer on St. Patrick’s Day. But what does New Year’s bring?

Sauerkraut.

Really? I’m not a huge fan of pickled anything — jalapeños come about the closest, though I’d still much rather have fresh. But pickled cabbage? Again, I ask: Really?

And the traditional kraut (along with, typically, pork roast cooked in the kraut) was de rigeur on New Year’s Day in my family growing up.

So that’s the root. I know, though, that sauerkraut alone is not reason enough to hate the holiday. Just duck the kraut and all’s well, right?

No, not really. Not so much. Because of the other things that this holiday visits upon us, at least upon me, that I don’t find festive at all.

First of all, it marks the passage of time. Okay, okay, I know I don’t hate my birthday, which is a much more personal marker of time’s passage. But that’s precisely because it is personal. New Year’s marks the impersonal passage of time: Time marches on, and all that. It does not, like a birthday, mark that time has passed for a specific person, but that time has passed for the whole world. When my birthday rolls around, in May, I can look at the year that has passed, and know that a year has passed for me. New Year’s reminds me, though, that a year has passed and would have done so with or without me. I know that I am small and largely insignificant, but I can do without the reminder. And the fact that a year has passed with little change in areas of my life where I cannot change things alone — well, that’s just no fun at all.

Second, it is the one time of year that encourages us all to pause, take stock, and reflect. To make resolutions about the things we want to change in our lives. This bothers me. I do this all the time, year-round, on a continual basis, and perhaps even too much. The past three-plus years, in particular, have been a time of pretty much non-stop reflection, growth, change, and (I think) improvement for me. As first 2008 and then 2009 dawned, I still, though, made resolutions. And I did well enough by them (no need to recap, because this is part of what I’m on about here). But I’ve spent so much time working on myself in those years, that I don’t feel any special need to pause, reflect, resolve on the 31st of December, anymore. As someone put it to me, about me, a week or so ago, “You know who you are, and you’re proud of who you are.” I’d never thought of it in quite those terms, but I suppose on the face of it, it’s true enough. Also, though, part of who I know myself to be and who I’m proud to be is a person who reflects, takes stock, and makes changes all the time. So I don’t want a day for that, particularly a day tied to the passage of time, on which it becomes apparent just how little difference all I do, and all I have done, all that I am proud of in myself, makes to anyone outside of me. I am, that is, happy with and proud of, though not complacent about, the changes I have made in my life — that’s within myself; outside of that, though, it’s clearly not yet change enough.

Finally, though, the whole thing just rings false to me. This New Year’s Day, this day of “new beginnings” or “positive change” is really just (this year) a Friday. Nothing really changes. I’ll be back in the office on Monday, doing the same job — no matter that it’s a job I love. I’ll be hanging out with the same group of friends on Sunday night — no matter that they’re all people I truly like. And my life will go on as it has for nearly 35 years: moving from one day to the next, looking at what’s going on around me, examining (in minute detail) everything that happens — that I say, that I do, that I am — believing, mostly, that it is good, and wondering if it is ever good enough. And receiving feedback that confirms both my belief and my fears, in pretty much all areas: Good? Yes, definitely. Good enough? Well…. Because it’s just a Friday, and nothing changes.

Well, maybe a few things change. Here’s the deal for me on 31 December 2009: No resolutions, and no bottle of bourbon. I need no resolutions for 2010, because my life and the way I choose to live it are an ongoing resolution, and one I am happy with my progress toward. And unlike the 31st of December in 2006, 2007, and 2008 (for the clearing out of recent memory and exorcising those particular ghosts), I realize this about my life. I may still decine all social invitations, because I’m — simply put — a big ball of no fun to be around on New Year’s, and I may still spend the evening with my PlayStation and/or the DVD player and my little grey roommate, and that’s probably best for all concerned. I will not, however, be getting smashed on Beam white label this year (or anything else). And I think there’s as much realization in that as in anything: Today, New Year’s Eve, and tomorrow, New Year’s Day, are each just another day. Days to get the laundry done, the trash taken out, the house cleaned, some work for the upcoming semester done. Days neither to be celebrated, nor to be lamented based on “newness” or the lack thereof.

Some things change. Some things don’t. What changes on January 1st is nothing more or less than what could change on any day of the year. That’s how it works; that’s what I’ve learned this year. And I don’t need to lament the snail’s pace of change that I would like to see, to let the arbitrary marker of change influence what I know, what I believe, and how I feel about myself. Things that I would and can change will happen as I make them; things that will change on their own due to outside events, my own desire and contribution, and the desire and efforts of others will happen as they do. January 1st is only a day; it is not, in itself, an agent of change.

Except when it comes to getting a new calendar.

Which, somewhat frighteningly, scans (in the poetic sense) just like “the 5th of November.” No gunpowder, treason, or plot here today, though.

Well, maybe.

But it’s been 45 days since I’ve written here at all. That’s a whole password change on my computer at work. That’s six weeks that some of you have appear to have been patiently checking back, if not as often, still sometimes.

I could, I think, legitimately claim “busy” as my reason for not writing: Teaching six classes, doing various administrative things, having (as one of them put it to me this morning) “actual friends” close-by again.

No excuses, though.

But today is the first day of the last month of 2009, and I got to thinking overnight. I was thinking about the blogging and lack there of, for various reasons, and I was thinking about a quotation from Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead; the character Howard Roark says, “My work done my way. A private, personal, selfish, egotistical motivation. That’s the only way I function. That’s all I am.” And I really started thinking about that.

That’s why, I think, that for two years I frantically blogged. And I do mean frantically: I averaged more than one post per day for over two years. Some of the things I wrote were somewhat deep, some were mostly drivel, and some were mostly uninteresting as I talked about books I was reading, movies I was watching, women I was (mostly not) dating. I get that.

But, though a number of people read here almost as religiously as I wrote, and though I knew who some of those people were/are, I mostly did this for me. So when people, readers, told me that they only skimmed the stuff about books and movies, I said, “fine” — it was no problem for me — and kept right on writing those things.

So why did I stop, or pause, or take a break, or go on hiatus though continually promising that I was not doing, and would not do, those things?

Because I got to a point where I was honestly and actually living my life according to the principle by which I had blogged for the previous two years. I had found the place — and it’s not about the new position, about the administrative aspect of that position, about being “in charge” of anything (and those who have done any academic administration know that there is precious little “in charge” to go around) — the place in which it is possible to do my work my way.

I’d been slowly coming to terms with that through my first year here. Part of that coming to terms had to do with the fact that I was forced to rethink some things that my education had pounded into me. Part of it had to do with the fact that it was just uneffinbelievable. I had come to believe, on some core level, that the place in which I could be me and do my work did not exist. That I might be better picking up the hammer and going back to swinging it for a living.

But I found the place. And once I started to believe that, I didn’t quite so much need this space in order to maintain my sanity. I do, though, miss this space, and it’s due for more than just this visit. It’s due for a refit; it’s due for an update. It might even be due for new technology.

But it’s probably due for a more stable, not to say staid, approach. The bottom line is, I can’t have this — in whatever form it ends up — be an all-or-nothing proposition. More measured. Less frenetic.

Because it’s still a space in which I can do my work, my way, and if anyone else is interested in going along for the ride, I’m happy to have them.

No sweeping proclamations about being “back” today. That’s bitten me in the backside more than once this summer already. But here’s a new post for the first time in a long while.

What have I been doing since last I posted (regularly), you might find yourself asking. The most accurate answer to that question that I can come up with is, simply put: I’m not quite sure.

I’ve been teaching summer classes; that’s all over but the grading. I’ve been jumping headlong into the new lead faculty job at work (working several hours per day on staffing and scheduling beyond the summer teaching). I’ve watched a couple of movies (Iron Man and V for Vendetta — let’s hear it for comic book movies). I don’t think I’ve finished any books (I am reading Dean Koontz’s Relentless and Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov — schizoid, I know). I haven’t written a thing. It’s been a while since I’ve been on a date, but I have been spending time with friends regularly. I’ve gone to Mom and Dad’s four times in the past 3½ weeks. I’ve started watching True Blood on DVD, and I do have some thoughts to share about that a later date.

So I guess that something — a number of somethings. But it feels like the past five or six weeks have really been a blur.

We’ll see where things go from here — though I’m planning, at this point, on being able to be able to take at least three days of my last week of summer off (not in a row, though, that would be too easy). Then “start-up week” starts on the 17th and fall classes start on the 24th.

And I’m still here.

Ish.

Two and almost three books to write about. Still haven’t decided on whether the direct-to-DVD movie release (TV spinoff category) counts as a movie or not. No news related to Monday’s post about the interview — which honestly irks me just a little bit — oh well.

Beyond that, I spent the week getting ready for summer school to start on Monday, and I succeeded in my goal of being ready for Monday by Friday night. Imagine that — at least in terms of work, I’m ahead.

So book posts coming soon. Job/interview update coming (hopefully soon). Further bulletins as events warrant.

So today’s outing ended up not being to Mohican State Park, but to Malabar Farm State Park, instead. This was a last-minute change, but it ended up being a good idea particularly because the day was so beautiful — Mohican would have been overrun (like Maumee Bay was when I went camping in April — and for those of you outside the Buckeye State who are wondering, yes, indeed, Ohio does have some state parks that don’t begin with the letter M). Here are some pictures from the park. Enjoy!

A great day!

I’m going to spend this afternoon at Mohican State Park, near Loudonville, Ohio. Which means that I should get on the road soon, since it’s already a quarter past eleven, and my goal is to be there by 2.

Look for pictures here and/or on Facebook. Probably not today, probably not tomorrow, probably not on Monday, but soon.

And given that last statement, a question: Why do things always seem to happen at once? I mean, the story of my life seems to be: Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Everything. Nothing. Nothing.

That might bear further reflection.