I'm not particularly tired today. Considering that today is the first day of school for my boys and the first worthwhile day for me, that's a bit of a surprise. Also, I made my wife a steak-and-potatoes dinner (with a nice spinach-and-strawberry side salad...I'm into hyphenated dishes, apparently) which we enjoyed whilst the boys played video games, so that added to the stresses of a complicated schedule, a lot of "getting used to working" vibe, and other typical minutiae, it's definitely a surprise that I'm not tucked into bed by 9:00.
But I didn't title this post "Fumes" because I'm tired, it's because I'm mentally drained. There was a little more effort in the thought department than I am used to, if only because I tried a lesson plan I've never done before (I think it went pretty well), and my new Shakespeare class is going to keep me on my toes.
These intellectual strains are taxing. I'm used to that, but only once I remember how to be used to that. I expend a lot of mental energy into thinking, processing, and deconstructing what I see going on around me. That often produces the fodder for these essays. But the ten weeks of comparative mental atrophy has made it harder for me to focus on what I could/should write about.
I try, for the most part, to avoid overly meta posts--navel gazing and waxing philosophical about navel gazing--and I try not to put down goals or irrelevant trivia that doesn't necessarily expand on whatever I chose to write about. Today, however, I sat in my office, staring at the different books that are on my shelf, wishing I had the energy and time to read (or reread) them, and tried to think of something deep to say.
Earlier today, I had all sorts of thoughts, all sorts of possibilities. I could have written about my lesson plan (involving a Julian Smith video and an analysis of what we are looking for in our study of history), some lyrics that I sang (off key) to myself whilst playing the guitar ("Pal Treaux", among others), and thoughts about hypocrisy of partisanship (specifically, the Hatch Act). Since I lived through the first one, I'm not keen on writing about it. The second option is good but it doesn't have an attendant music video, preventing me from doing one of my music video analyses, and besides, those take hours to watch, listen to, and write. And the last one is political, and I'm trying to save my frustration and vitriol for a safer venue...like my steering wheel when I'm driving by myself and I can shout at the radio, which listens to my verbal abuse with surprising aplomb.
So though I had topics, nothing really sparked. And that's what I mean: I'm running on intellectual fumes. I'm hopeful this will be the start-of-year phase that often hits, but since I've now written an essay about how I don't really know what to write in an essay, I think I'll wrap this up with a random image from the internet.
But I didn't title this post "Fumes" because I'm tired, it's because I'm mentally drained. There was a little more effort in the thought department than I am used to, if only because I tried a lesson plan I've never done before (I think it went pretty well), and my new Shakespeare class is going to keep me on my toes.
These intellectual strains are taxing. I'm used to that, but only once I remember how to be used to that. I expend a lot of mental energy into thinking, processing, and deconstructing what I see going on around me. That often produces the fodder for these essays. But the ten weeks of comparative mental atrophy has made it harder for me to focus on what I could/should write about.
I try, for the most part, to avoid overly meta posts--navel gazing and waxing philosophical about navel gazing--and I try not to put down goals or irrelevant trivia that doesn't necessarily expand on whatever I chose to write about. Today, however, I sat in my office, staring at the different books that are on my shelf, wishing I had the energy and time to read (or reread) them, and tried to think of something deep to say.
Earlier today, I had all sorts of thoughts, all sorts of possibilities. I could have written about my lesson plan (involving a Julian Smith video and an analysis of what we are looking for in our study of history), some lyrics that I sang (off key) to myself whilst playing the guitar ("Pal Treaux", among others), and thoughts about hypocrisy of partisanship (specifically, the Hatch Act). Since I lived through the first one, I'm not keen on writing about it. The second option is good but it doesn't have an attendant music video, preventing me from doing one of my music video analyses, and besides, those take hours to watch, listen to, and write. And the last one is political, and I'm trying to save my frustration and vitriol for a safer venue...like my steering wheel when I'm driving by myself and I can shout at the radio, which listens to my verbal abuse with surprising aplomb.
So though I had topics, nothing really sparked. And that's what I mean: I'm running on intellectual fumes. I'm hopeful this will be the start-of-year phase that often hits, but since I've now written an essay about how I don't really know what to write in an essay, I think I'll wrap this up with a random image from the internet.