Sleep In Saturday was followed by Suck It Sunday, which started with a lot of joy and positive energy that within an hour of waking up collapsed into misery. My poor wonderful partner came down with food poisoning right before she was going to head to an event she looked forward to all week. It really crushed me too; September is a tough month for me to hold it together. 

I think I’m pretty over extended most of the time, and a lot of the projects I engage in involve students, who, for all of their wonderful positive qualities just don’t have the same level of investment that I do in these things. That, plus the natural feelings of immortality and hubris that come when you are near 20 years old just make me very careful and cautious about everything. This really stresses me out. September is pretty bad, but October somehow calms down – I suppose I get used to the demand. You’d think after so many years of doing this I’d be used to it. Well, I never took into account that I would get older and my feelings of security and worry would change. When I was 23 or 24, driving through the night with a van full of students was normal. Now I would never do such a thing, even the idea gives me a terrifying feeling. 

So anyway, I am at maximum stress with some sort of proto-sinus infection going on from re-entering the university, and then this happened, which really drove my day into the dirt. Destiny 2 helped a bit, as did working on some videos for my class (I’m missing a bit this week due to travel) but it was constant interruptions. Even the food delivery guy wanted to talk for 20 minutes about hurricane Irma. That’s a good representative anecdote for the level of quality of my day. 

Add to it learning that on Tuesday I am not going to get to hang out with an old friend and great interlocutor. I am headed up to Cornell University tomorrow to lecture, and I plan to video it and all that. I’ve done this lecture many times before, and I am considering linking them all into one post here so you can chart the differences – it’s really evolved over the years. But every time I go, my friend and I express sorrow that the visit is so short and we’d like to chat more. Well this time we scheduled it so that we could spend most of Tuesday together – until I learned today he’s booked solid starting at 11AM. So that means I get to sit alone for 5 hours until my bus leaves. Of course I have work to do and all that, but it’s just better to do that work at home – especially when my soundboard, mic, and nice computer are all here to do that kind of work. I hope I can get an earlier time!

I’m thinking about going to a book group at Book Culture on Wednesday night after I get back. They are an essay-focused reading group, and I should have more to say about that either on Wednesday or Thursday. Then Thursday – Monday I will be in Helena, MT doing some debate stuff out there. One of the newest debate tournaments that I’ve helped with sticks around to be one of the last that I’ll work with. Pretty funny how this is all phasing out. As I expressed to my wonderful partner earlier tonight after this really terrible day, the time has come for me to just teach my classes, read, and play some video games. I do feel that I have expired in the debate world, that the time for me to be there is done, and it’s high-time to work on some other initiatives regarding teaching, speaking, rhetoric, and debating. Not sure what those are yet, but I’m sure they will come stumbling down the road soon enough.