Journal Entry: September 15, 2009

Yesterday sucked.

I mean, actually, I had a pretty pleasant chat with Julie, and one with N--, too. That was nice. And I got a call from B-- that was news-packed, and at least half of it was good! That was nice.

But really I wasted most of the day (and significant parts of each of those conversations) feeling sick about my class today. I've got to get over that.

On the drive home from work, I cranked up some inspirational music, and made plans to work out when I got home. AB wanted to play with her daddy, though, and that wasn't something I could turn down. So we talked and read a book and watched TV for a while.

Then D-- brought over leftover brisket from last Saturday's birthday party. T-- made up some homemade mashed potatoes for a side, and it was a phenomenal dinner. After that I moved to the couch and played WoW for three hours, hoping to distract myself. It didn't really work, but I got a lot done in WoW. We also watched a new Leverage and a new Psych, both of which were great.

Then around ten D-- went home, and I went to the office to do a little more prep work for my class. I spent about half an hour on that, then headed to bed.

And lay there. And did not fall asleep. My mind was racing, fixated on class and everything that could go wrong.

So after about half an hour of that I jumped up and went back to the office. I read through all my students' business letters again, I watched Gail Nash's online lecture on document layout and design again, I reworked my class notes extensively, and I prepped some exercise materials for class today. All told, it was well after midnight when I went back to bed.

And lay there. And did not fall asleep. I wasn't really worried by that point -- over the course of that last hour in the office, I'd completely worked through every minute of today's class, and I knew I was thoroughly prepared. I'd go so far as to say scripted. But I couldn't stop thinking about it -- about which words to put with certain ideas, which ideas to cut if I ran out of time, and which ones to abbreviate, what sections of the discussion could (and should) be moved around and where, whether I'd captured all the necessary changes to the syllabus, and how to get that information across clearly.

Not just that, but I also found myself cutting material from today's lecture and moving it forward to future lectures, and when I was working on how to adapt that material to the other lecture's topic, I started working on those lectures, building them up. It was all useful work, but not at one thirty in the morning.

By that point, I wasn't worrying about today's class anymore. I was just wishing I could go ahead and give the class so I could get on with my life. Instead, I kept on obsessing.

I knew it, too. I kept trying to put it away, to stop thinking about it, and I kept failing at that. At two o'clock, AB cried out in her sleep and I went to check on her, thinking she'd woken up. At three, frustrated, I sat up in bed just to see how late it really was, and then lay back down. My alarm went off at seven, and I was already awake, but I got up and turned it off and went back to bed. Not to sleep, just to get a few more minutes of rest. Soon enough AB came to jump on the bed, and T-- was getting ready to leave for a doctor's appointment, and I was late enough for work that I couldn't justify waiting any longer. So I got up, and I went to work.

I'll let you guess what I've been thinking about all morning.

Other than that, though, it's just things and stuff.