Careful Work and Stormy Skies

I didn't get much more work done on classes today. My best friend contacted me about a Lego half-day to finish up our prior projects before the semester started. I took him up on that.

I got a bit done--mostly errands and some minor administrative tasks. There's almost always tasks that need to be done but don't really matter much, at least not as much as finishing a syllabus. But when you're stuck on syllabus-writing, as I am, you welcome distracting tasks. They keep you busy and give you some vague feeling of productivity even though they are at heart distractions.

I also recognize I'm in a bit of a depression season. I have really, really low-grade depression most of the time. "Dysthymia," my therapist tells me, "if you need a label." Most of the time it's just a low mood and a ramping up of my usual Eeyore outlook on things. Occasionally it blossoms into something a bit more nihilistic, marked by some really awful internal monologues.

I've adopted a metaphor (simile, I suppose) I heard from Stephen Fry. Depression, he says (I paraphrase--see here for the original), is like the weather, a rain shower or thunderstorm. On the one hand, you don't want to deny that it's storming when there's a storm. You wouldn't stroll outside and defiantly talk about how sunny things are as the downpour soaks you. You have to accept that, yes, it's raining. You take steps to adapt: staying indoors, bringing an umbrella, driving carefully with wipers and lights on, and even monitoring reports for anything worse.

But on the other hand, he continues, depression is like a storm in that it passes eventually. (He's talking about his depression;mileage varies, of course.) You don't assume that even a bad storm is just here forever. "Well, I guess it's raining from now on." (Imagine Eeyore voice.) It won't. It'll pass. It's out of your control when it'll pass, just like it's out of control that it rains or storms at all. But pass it will.

Usually, when I'm in a depression shower, I try to let myself off the hook of having to make any big decisions. My perspective when depressed isn't great. It's hard to see in a torrential rain. I'm prone to catastrophize, to make decisions not in my best interests, to gum up my own works in ways I rue later. So usually I try to wait out the storm before deciding things.

But time is short. I gotta make some big decisions about my script analysis class--a big cloud in my depressive stormy skies right now. Having two packed sections with no TA means I need to cut back on grading. How will I record attendance? Can I even teach writing (with planning and revision phases) as I'd planned to do? How do I keep the class rigorous and rewarding for students? Can I keep my ungrading practice? How do I make it through the semester without burning out?

I don't know. I have to determine how to do this, but my stormy weather is giving me some unhelpful suggestions. 

Perhaps my storm will pass in the next few days, giving me enough time to adapt. B

But I suspect I'll just need to do some careful work in the rain.