Now is the time to list summer goals but I don't know how to proceed when the first item on the list has to be Stay sane--and how would I assess that outcome? If I fail, how will I know?
Maybe the best way to maintain sanity (assuming that I still possess a modicum thereof) is to list some goals appropriate to a normal summer and then adapt as necessary as time goes on. After all, we've all demonstrated a pretty good ability to adapt to changing circumstances, so maybe I can assume that I'll be able to manage further changes without utterly losing my mind.
On the other hand, current conditions can make goal-setting feel futile on an existential level. For example, today as I devoted long hours to working on my big research-and-writing project, I kept being haunted by a nagging voice wondering why I was bothering to focus on academic writing when the world is falling to pieces. If academe implodes and we're all selling pencils on the street-corner next year, who will care if I finish this project?
But that way lies madness, which violates my number-one goal. So I choose to ignore the fatalistic nagging voice and move forward boldly into a summer like no other, when I may make some progress on the goals listed below if I'm not eaten alive by murder hornets or whatever plague is coming next:
Teaching Goals
Significantly revise my fall Concepts of Comedy class to focus more attention on the role of comedy in times of trouble such as, for instance, the present.
Write a syllabus for my fall Special Topics in Film course focusing on Machine Mastery, and make it flexible enough to be offered in person or online or in some hybrid form.
Develop alternative methods of teaching my fall freshman classes in case they have to be delivered online--even though I have come to hate this use of the word delivered, as if course content could be simply wrapped up in a box and dropped on a student's doorstep.
Writing goals
Submit the full manuscript for the comedy pedagogy collection by Sept. 1, which will require a whole mess of editing, revising, writing, organizing, collating, assembling, and polishing, not to mention cajoling dilatory contributors into completing their revisions.
Write letters--real, honest-to-goodness letters in ink on paper or cute little cards--at least twice a week. Writing letters makes me happy and counteracts my tendency to spend too much time inside my own head.
Get back in the habit of writing book reviews, which would require reading books, which I have done very little lately outside of books required for classes. Reviews make me think about how others might respond, another method of getting me outside my own head.
Write poetry, or doggerel, or whatever I can manage under the circumstances at least once each week. Playing with words blows the cobwebs out of the brain and keeps the synapses nimble.
Personal goals
Walk walk walk--in the woods, in the cemetery, in the neighborhood, wherever I can exercise while maintaining social distance, at least three hours each week, with or without the camera.
Get the canoe out on the water at least twice a month. This will require some cooperation from the weather, which at the moment seems to be stuck in apocalyptic nightmare mode. Nobody wants to paddle when it's hailing outside.
Interact with people, at a distance, on the phone or via Zoom or whatever, at least twice each week. If I don't make a point of being a little bit sociable, I'll end up in Glumville, and nobody wants to live in Glumville.
Figure out what to do with my hair. I assume that this goal is pretty high on a lot of people's lists right now. I lack the boldness to trim my own bangs and I don't ever again aim to achieve the post-chemotherapy baldness look, so I need to either work up the courage to go to a salon (after they open) or find another option: pull my hair back (which makes me look like Granny Clampett), stuff it under a hat, let it fly. It's kind of sad how much mental energy goes into simple problems like what to do with my hair, but when the number-one goal is Stay sane, little things can add up.
And there it is: a modest collection of goals for my summer, subject to change at a moment's notice if hailstones fall or murder hornets attack or coronavirus conquers or my unruly hair drives me right over the edge into madness.
No comments:
Post a Comment