It is almost 6 in the AM and I’ve been up most of the night. The transition through time zones is harder on me this time. I cannot say for sure what makes it such–age, the amount of time, mental state–but I can say without question that I am struggling to find footing here in the States. I worked a solid three hours yesterday prepping a few classes and that was all I had the mental energy to achieve. I am worried about today, because tomorrow I start a whirlwind of classes and I don’t want to start off balance. I don’t want to start a semester not knowing what the gameplan is for the semester and needing to later change it up. That is what leads to running out of gas in a semester and realizing you are completely burned out on teaching. Burn out actually starts in the lead up. For me there is so much transition that happens off semester that I rarely get back into place ready to go. That isn’t changing. I’m about to have a wedding days before the fall semester gets started. The Lady Talis is already thinking about where we are jetting off to next Christmas which argues that I won’t be on solid ground for the foreseeable future.
The answer, I believe, is in either learning to live like this by settling into the reality of what these shifts mean and discovering a pattern of organization that preempts situations like I am in now, or changing that reality in a major way that avoids these situations. I don’t know that change without constant travel/exploration is going to be a life the Lady wants. It would be a life I want if we were in another place–though I don’t know where that place would be.
This is how and why I end up back into the conversation of needing more wealth. It often feels like money would solve most of my problems in life. It definitely would ease my tensions and create the conditions for a space we could be happy with. Still, this it not to same I am ungrateful for what I have and what we have worked for. In my heart there is nothing wrong with wanting more. It doesn’t mean you are not happy with what you have. It means that there are tensions and in my life there certainly are.