A few days remain until I begin my new year of teaching, the last step of the bridge between the COVID years and now. Many missteps lay behind me but I have not fallen. I should feel ready.
I awake today betrayed by my belly. The tender nature of the body means my current privilege is ill-felt. A bad crumb can manifest itself as angst because that physical irk becomes a mental itch, something always there, demanding attention. A sore stomach becomes an aching mind, a power cast to bed, convalescing. A fat belly becomes a distended spirit, blocking my desires to thrive.
A week ago I finally greeted the unpalatable truth of being scattered. The finite resources of my spirit and mind run low when I doomscroll, leaving me weakened, a mind atrophied.
A past solution to the scattered nature of my mind was to focus on others, on work, on the administration useful to others at that time. I satisfied the agendas of many, made them happy, and received verbal plaudits. Such a return leaves me threadbare, the plaudits becoming platitudes. I think now with dumb emotion on too much time sown into the lifeless paper of spreadsheets.
Yet in the past I have been impassioned with expectations. I rose with the heady eddies of work-wind into the higher ladders of being: I focused at work, and I almost won. But I did not have enough like-minded colleagues - I never have.
Different colleagues make my focus difficult. There are a few types:
1) Those focused on logistics: anything of the inner-life challenges these people, making their blinkered systems strain to absorb the full light of reality. Different perspectives, heavy with meaning, make their flimsy models creak; they call for us to build on more fruitful grounds. These people might become mindless bullies, high in cunning, prizing brutalising structures and seeking to find 'the bitch' each year to manifest their 'management style'.
2) Those too-focused on the professional elements: anything that might request personal investment falls into a ditch for these people. This archetype is clearly more of 'refuse vocation' rather than 'demand professionalism'. Their private life will leak into their work, and collaboration is poisoned by the limited reading and finite thought they grant to what should be a thinking job. They suck energy, and rarely give, for their focus lays outside others.
3) Those too-focused on efficiency: 'We do it already'. There will be no idea or ambition that has not been tried already in some form, no matter how thin or formless that idea might be. Limitation is the prime quality of this type, limited in reading, disorganised in time, and likely running low in physical energy after imbibing last night, again to excess.
4) Those too-focused on side-gigs: Perhaps once effective or diligent, this type spends their time perpetually exhausted from running side-gigs, usually marking or house managing. Their lack of energy fosters a fatigue that runs to the path of least resistance at work. They support the limitations of all.
What do I do in the face of these types? I used to stay awake, strong emotions singing in response to the cultural dissonance I felt.
Now, from last week, I have created a schism between expectations and enhancement. I see enhancement as something self-chosen, of my choosing, and involving more than professional ambitions. My emotions are aroused by enhancements.
I see expectations as that I must complete. I seek to conduct these expectations with minimum emotional investment.
With more mindful pausing, I might conduct my day with the quiet intensity I once desired as a gothic teenager. That which once stirred my emotions - such as exchanging computers - should now be greeted with gated feelings.
Ready?
