Of dimness and Dramamine

I stood in the hallway flicking the light-switch on and off, on and off, on and off without making any discernible difference in the dimness surrounding me, and somehow it felt like a metaphor for so many things happening in my world right now.

The fluorescent lights just outside my office are dead, which happens from time to time, but the lights inside my office are working just fine, so I'll have no problem getting my work done today--except for some pesky distractions, the most pressing being a knotty faculty governance situation that led me to greet a colleague this morning with "Thank you for not sending me angry emails!"

I can't talk about the angry emails or why they're being sent but they've become a fixture in the lives of current members of Faculty Council. Last Thursday, for instance, I was enjoying back-t0-back classes involving lively discussion and clear evidence of student learning, and after class I was floating to my office feeling like a rockstar until I opened my email and saw the emails that had arrived while I was teaching, which brought me right back down to earth with a splat.

There were more over the weekend that I had a good excuse to ignore because (a) I'm not in the habit of reading email, angry or not, during church; and (b) I was sick. Sick-ish. Worst attack of vertigo I've experienced in years--the kind that requires me to sit perfectly still and stare at the wall because any attempt at movement results in the immediate need to vomit. 

Dramamine made the room stop spinning, though I'm still a bit wobbly this morning. I stopped at the store this morning to stock up on non-drowsy Dramamine in case the vertigo comes back full force, but the local pharmacy doesn't stock anything to prevent the onset of angry emails. And so I'll sit in my brightly lit office focusing on the work that makes me happy and trying to ignore the outer darkness.