Thursday, September 6, 2012

Busyness as Usual

At the beginning of the semester I have everything to do. And right now, a week in, is when it hits me: until December, I won't not be busy. Every second of every day, I've got something to do—something I could be doing. As I write this, I could be grading essays or working on my conference paper or finishing my gradebook or preparing for next week's classes or smoothing out Blackboard.

I'm wasting my time writing all this.

But no, I'm not. It's not because it's almost 2 am and past time when I can competently grade. It's not because this is a form of mental work and mental work is good. It's not so I can build up a body of blog posts or even for me to look back on when I'm feeling the squeeze at the first of next semester or next year.

I'm doing this because I want to, because I find it rewarding. Writing down my thoughts makes me feel good, right now, and feeling good, though it is a tautology, *makes me feel good*.

I'm not getting behind every second I sleep instead of grade. I'm not getting behind every time I watch an episode of Doctor Who instead of grade. I'll get my work done, but what makes me good at my job—if I am—is that I am human, and being human means caring about stuff, doing things because they make me feel good.

It also means not watching *another* episode of Doctor Who, or fussing with my gradebook instead of grading essays, let alone checking Twitter again. Tomorrow, I need to grade a bunch of essays. And really, I'll enjoy it, and feel better with it done than I did before. And then I'll work some more.

But right now, I wanted this time to write.