Sunday, January 29, 2006

Confessions of A Couch Potato

Eric is off! He left this morning for the great white north! I doubt he'll see the likes of the internet while he is gone; he was doubting the availability of a telephone. He has always been full of surprises, so who knows. He's flying in a Herk and I think he was a little nervous about the whole affair. It came out as a bit of a joke, you know the sort "Tell the boys I love 'em if I don't make it". I know, a little morbid, but such is the military lifestyle.

And funny how life is, as I sit and type this, the phone rings. It's Eric telling me that he'll be home. The Herk is in need of repair. So, we shall see him soon. (He was scheduled to be away for 2 weeks). So maybe Eric's flying fears are perfectly sound? Now that is a frightening thought. I spent the last week with my stomach in knots over the possibility that he was going to get shipped to Kandahar in a few weeks. This depended on someone else failing a medical exam. Fate rested entirely in this unknown physician and some guy named "Shorty" who has 2 herniated disks. On the day of his exam, there was a snowstorm, so the appointment got bumped ahead a week – which was this past Monday. Monday morning Eric called me, asking me something about something. I held my breath and asked about Shorty. He said his appointment was not until 3:00 that afternoon. At 2:45 Eric tumbles in the door proclaiming with glee that he was off early. And then I asked about Shorty. Eric said that we'd have to wait another day. At that point I nearly imploded with anxiety -and insisted that he call "Shorty" at home, since I could not stand the anticipation any longer. It took some convincing, but he did. And buddy passed. And how I have to worry about the duct tape the mechanics are using on this Herk to get it airborne. Great.

I've been greatly absent as of late. This week, I came to the conclusion that I am seriously going through SAD. The big wigs at the department of acronyms were clever and cheeky with this one - Season Affective Disorder. I'd much rather call it the winter blues. I've been reading some about this, and I seem to fit the bill. I've been melancholy. The world is not bleak nor horrible, but rather very uninteresting, and disengaging. I have no motivation or desire to do much other than being a couch potato. I've even lost my desire to read Jonathan Strange!! Fancy that! Being inspired to blog has been swept up in this sticky glum. I have a great deal of anxiety about my courses. Mostly this is a maniacal cycle of being tedious and wearisome, and knowing this is affecting my work, and then being concerned and rather paranoid that I am the worst instructor my department has ever hired, yet being so utterly inert to change it. Yet, I seem to want to waste so much of my energy worrying and being paranoid about it's effects. I am sort of a mess this way.

The good news, is that I am aware of this. That helps. And I am aware that it will pass. I have also admitted that I am utterly bored with what I am doing in class, and have proposed to the class a new direction that we will be heading in for a couple weeks – an area that has scholastic merit, and that I am excited about. But being a tad unhinged at the moment, I worry that this idea will flop and I will be the laughing stock on campus. I'll talk more about my grand idee in a later post. And I hate saying this, because I have this habit of not following up with these ideas. Bug me if I forget and you are interested in knowing
And look who just walked in the door!

Eric!

2 comments:

Hotboy said...

Terrible to be worried about your Eric getting sent to Kandahar. Let's hope he keeps safe. I realised you must be fed up. Even if it passes, it's still a drag. Hotboy.

onan the bavarian said...

Are couch potatoes in the same family as couch tomatoes?

Thanks for visiting my place. What's the Chinese for "to do nothing without doing?" That's the principle that Hotboy has helped me discover.

"The Celestial Venerable of the Mysterious Origin" could be a great blog name, if it wasn't already an album by Tangerine Dream.