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A Sense of Ease

A Sense of Ease

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The student discussion leaders of my Emotions and Senses class on Wednesday began by asking us to assess our emotional states. Were we happy, sad, surprised, angry, disgusted or fearful/anxious? Four of us volunteered, and every one said fearful/anxious.

Although two people blamed the weather (after a long dry summer we’ve had rain every day for a week) and others cited work or traffic as primary stressors, these answers made me think (not for the first time) that we live in an age of anxiety.

This is nothing new. W. H. Auden published a poem by that name in 1947. But we still have the hallmarks: a sense of unease, a low-level discomfort, a feeling that another shoe may drop at any time.

I’d like to say these anxious feelings will go away after the election, but I suppose they will only go away for half of us. So how do we keep the anxiety at bay? One idea is to devote ourselves to the people, places and activities we love, that we find meaningful. That’s how I try to restore a sense of ease.

Making it Fun

Making it Fun

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For the last week or so I’ve been becoming more familiar with PowerPoint than I ever wanted to be. After much angst and effort, I managed to pull together a handful of slides and share them with class last night, no small feat for this technophobe.

I will have to do it again several times this semester, but not for as long and I hope with a slightly higher confidence level. And then there’s something else I’d like to add: a sense of fun. 

The classes I’m taking this fall are not required. No one is forcing me back to school. I’m not working toward a career goal. This is to keep the old gray matter churning. Instead, it’s the stomach that’s been doing loop-the-loops. 

Maybe next time it will be easier. I’m counting on it.  

(Photo of an old bomb I used to illustrate one of my slides last night. … It’s a long story.)

Politics of Fear

Politics of Fear

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Yesterday was as picture-perfect a day as that September 11th, but 23 years later, nearly a generation ago. As it happens, I spent part of it on class readings about 9/11 and the politics of fear. 

One of the points I took home from these articles was terrorism’s legacy of anxiety and containment, of divisiveness — there are those who are terrorists (or look like them) and those who are not. 

In class last night, a colleague mentioned something I hadn’t thought of in a long time: threat levels. Remember those colors — red, orange, yellow? They were part of the Homeland Security Advisory System, I learned from Wikipedia today. In place from 2002 till 2011, they affected the level of security at airports and public buildings. 

Some class members were babies then; they had no memory of those. The threat index they’re most familiar with are air-quality levels. 

Reading the Emotions

Reading the Emotions

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The big yellow buses are rolling, and even for me, school has begun. In fact, I’ve just finished hours of homework for a graduate class, once again ignoring my daughters’ recommendation — “Mom, you don’t have to do all the reading.”

I’ll say what I always do: But I want to do all the reading. Or in this case, the reading and the listening/watching, since this first assignment included a lengthy podcast. I’ve taken pages of notes on how emotions are made, and though much of it is over my head, some of it has permeated the old gray matter. 

I’ve learned that we have more control over our emotions than we think we do, that we can take an unpleasant feeling and work with it. 

This is just the first set of readings, of course. I imagine it will get more complicated. But when I start to feel overwhelmed, I’ll think back to these first readings, and they will help. 

The Stacks

The Stacks

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I read on today’s Writers Almanac this quotation from Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird: “Instant information is not for me. I prefer to search the library stacks because when I work to learn something, I remember it.”

The library stacks … I remember them well. Mine were at the old University of Kentucky library, where I went to research “bureaucracy, the fourth branch of government,” my paper topic for a high school class, Advanced Government and International Relations, taught by Colonel Coleman. (I can’t remember his first name; and was the Colonel a military term or a Kentucky honorific?)

He was an inspiring teacher, and I plunged into the research for that paper as if it were cool water on a hot summer day. It was refreshing, liberating. Hours flew by as I took notes on index cards. 

I made many trips to the library, then wrote the paper longhand and typed it up the old-fashioned way — on a typewriter with Wite Out at my side. It was more than 40 pages, and my friends never stopped ribbing me for the comment, in red ink, at the end: “A scholarly study,” Colonel Coleman had scribbled. 

“Oh yeah, it was scholarly all right. It put him to sleep!” they laughed. 

Maybe it did. But it woke me up. 

Spreadsheets, Schmedsheets!

Spreadsheets, Schmedsheets!

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I’m sure it’s psychological, just one of those quirks, but whenever I work with a spreadsheet, I have to take a deep breath. I tell myself that I’m typing characters on a keyboard just as I am when I type words, but that doesn’t help. 

I think it all goes back to the ancient typing class I took in high school. It was a last-minute elective, and still one of the most valuable classes I’ve ever taken. But for some reason (senioritis?) I dropped it when we came to the numbers section. It was my last class of the day and I didn’t need it to graduate.

It was a bad decision. With a few weeks of numbers practice — and a few missed phone calls with friends (don’t know what else I was doing after those early dismissals) — I would have been able to touch-type numbers as quickly as I do letters. 

Who knows? Staying in that class might have changed my entire career trajectory. 

But I doubt it. 

The Renegade

The Renegade

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As the semester ends, the deconstruction begins. Random print-outs are tossed or tidied. Papers are filed. Library books are gathered and returned to Georgetown.

Since I live nowhere near Georgetown and haven’t had class on campus all year (all via Zoom), this is a big deal. I was so proud of myself that I had dropped them off a few days before they were due, combining their return with a trip into D.C. on Saturday.

But yesterday, my bubble was burst. A stray had hidden itself underneath another book on my desk. Luckily, it can be returned … by mail!

(This wasn’t the renegade volume. I remembered to return this one — but only after I removed every sticky from every page.)
Feeling the Pull

Feeling the Pull

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Writing and weather has kept me mostly inside for the better part of two weeks, and I’m feeling the loss of woods and sky and birdsong. 

Late yesterday’s walk was a reminder of just how much. The bamboo forest. The creekside trail. Everything green and glowing from the rain and chill. A new tree down to clamber over. 

It was a pleasure to tromp through it all. And this morning, as I watch bluejays dart and a fox scamper home, as sunlight pools in the shady yard, I feel the pull of the outdoors again. 

(No, this was not taken in the Virginia woods. It’s an Irish robin posing on the isle of Inishmore.)

  

Out of the Zone

Out of the Zone

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One of the most noteworthy things about this new phase of life is discovering how much I must force myself out of my comfort zone. I’ve always done this to an extent, but I could always count on paid employment to do the rest, especially my last gig.

Now I must make myself do the hard things. What are these “hard things”? Don’t laugh. Driving home on narrow country roads in the dark so that I can be with a bunch of people I work with but almost never see. (See yesterday’s post.) Practicing finger exercises and learning new piano pieces s-l-o-w-l-y because otherwise I won’t learn them at all. Taking tough classes. Making new friends. Forging new trails. 

The key word here is new. It’s not always easy but it’s almost always worth it. 

Question and Answer

Question and Answer

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There’s no doubt about it: I’m strange. What adult willingly chooses to go back to school — to read all the time and pay money to write papers, especially given that for most of my career, I was paid to write papers (aka articles). 

 I ask myself this question often, especially at this point of every semester. At least I’ve completed my take-home final and am closing in on completing the research paper. This class wasn’t even as writing-heavy as some of the others. 

But still, I ask myself the question. Yes, there is the keeping-myself-busy explanation. But there are many ways I could do that. I guess it’s because I want to keep learning, and I learn best when I write things down. In the end, it’s as simple as that.