My job is insane

As in, you have to be a bit weird to do it, I think. And before you think I'm being ablist, I'm using 'insane' in its reclaimed sense, to mean unusual, non-standard, special, rather than anything perjorative. 

This semester has been relentless.

I can't decide if it's because we're back to being fully in-person now, and it was always this intense, but I forgot what it was like. Or it really is more intense because everyone is adapting again and trying to make up for lost time. Either way, much as it's invigorating to get to breathe the same air as students again, to make eye contact and feel like you're actually communicating, and much as their relief and gratitude is evident in every moment..............it's beyond exhausting. 

This time last year I was folding laundry during staff meetings, prepping dinner while I made lunch, returning socks to their homes while i nipped to the loo. Now I collect hungry kids on my way home and we open the front door to reveal pyjamas strewn adown the stairs, cereal bowls on the sofa, while a hundred realisations - i forgot we ran out of milk, i didn't put the bins out, i missed a delivery, i have no idea what's in the fridge, let alone what we might eat now - hit me at once. Some people complained that they were never off-duty during lock-down, with no distinction between work time and home time. I get it. But now that my lunchtimes are back to sprinting to a local shop to haemorrhage cash on empty carbohydrates before dashing back to try and remember who is scheduled to knock on my door next and what i'm supposed to be sounding like an expert about......well there just isn't any time any more.

I got sick a few weeks back. Just a cold, no official virus to declare, but it was bad enough to put me out of action for a day and a half, during which emails blurred into dancing fonts on the page and i was forced to reschedule a couple of things. The catch-up was then nightmarish, because my timetable didn't have any wiggle room in the first place. 

It didn't *have* to be so bad but, reader, i can only say that my semester of research leave generated HEROIC levels of naivety concerning what i can fit in on top of a semester of regular teaching service. How I sob with mirth at the sheer audacity with which i accepted invitations and requests. Sure i can referee that book manuscript, said prior Ellen, from the vulgar indulgence of her empty diary back in June. Yes, let's shackle future Ellen to three months of no lunch-breaks, constant apologies and poor sleep, she may as well have said, the fool. 

This week I've been trying to catch up on admin (fixing the deadlines and asssessment i should have sorted ages ago) and a backlog of one-to-one supervisions while doing eleventh hour prep for undergraduate logic lectures, completing a refereeing job on which I'm *five months late*, all in time to prep for a talk i'm giving at the workshop in Washington next week.

It's been a bare-knuckle fight to get the absolutely essential things done and apologise sufficiently for the rest. I haven't slept properly all week. I've got a headache and a sore throat. My house is filthy and i missed the bin men three weeks in a row. I'm pledging to get a tattoo on the back of my hand that reads 'Say no to all requests and invitations during term time!'

But, reader, here is the insane part. The bare-knuckle fight having concluded, I gave my last lecture for a fortnight today, scheduled the last few urgent emails, and came home to finally start thinking about the talk i'll give in America in just a few days. Finding myself starving hungry, i started to cook food, and staring at the tiles i've long hated above my stove, decided to multitask by repurposing the space as a black board.

A glass of red is sipped while i leaf through the pages of a book. Words are scrawled in white chalk pen. 

Mere minutes have passed and i am transformed. The resentful, stressed-out harridan is gone. It's just me and the wide open space of ideas, flying free. Everything is possible. I love my job. All is forgiven.