Skip to main content

Backlog/Distraction

At various points in my career I have struggled with distractions because of ongoing family issues. I love the members of my family and so when they are in pain it occupies a significant chunk of my mental real estate.

The first time I couldn't avoid the issue was the premature birth of our first child, who arrived 6.5 weeks early. I was department chair at the time and I did what I could to teach my classes and enable my department members to do their job for the 23 days he spent in the neonatal intensive care unit when I was only sleeping a few hours each night. It was obvious to all around me what I was going through and my loved ones and friends all worked to lighten my load.

Since then I have had other such issues, sometimes obvious (the death of my father) and often less obvious. I am introverted and do not easily go out of my way to share what I am going through or ask for help.

I have a close relative right now whose dementia has taken a turn for the worse. I am physically at my job but only the teaching has received my best efforts. I've fallen behind of where I wanted to be in terms of committee work and it weighs upon me; should I step down? should I ask others to take the lead?

But I know how this works as I have been doing it for a while, in good times and bad. I will explain my lateness, honestly but tersely, and pick up the work and do it. It is why people keep coming back to me to do things for them. I fall short of my own standards but the excellent will not be the enemy of the good in my life. Good work is good work. Sometimes, every now and then, I do great work. Not today though.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Betrayal

I caught a student cheating on a final exam this morning. I had a line of sight on them and watched for ten minutes as they took their cellphone out of their pocket, kept it below their table, typed into it, read it, put it away, then wrote on the exam, repeating this cycle over and over again.  I was a bit surprised as the exam was open notes but this student had not attended many of our classes, just stopping by for exams, and I conjecture that they had no notes to open. I confronted the student who admitted that they had done wrong in an inarticulate non-confessional way. By the afternoon they had signed off on the honor code violation report to avoid further investigation and possible sanctions beyond failing the exam.  Is anger the right emotion to feel now? I had a working relationship with the student, although they had not contributed much to it. They had deceived me in order to gain unwarranted advantage over their peers in the class and that is not right. I don't wan...
1 comment
Read more

Standing Your Corner

I'm a long-term David Simon fan ever since I read his book "Homicide", detailing a year-long embedding with Baltimore homicide detectives. It was clear-eyed about all of the strengths and weaknesses, good reflexes and prejudices of everyone that he met.  I enjoyed the television show that followed that he wrote for, and then of course "The Wire" on HBO and a number of his other shows---only limited by my access to streaming services.  There was a histrionic moment in a later season of "Homicide" where he just let a character vent; a homicide detective who was part-owner of a bar frequented by cops watched a particularly violent drug criminal, responsible for many unsolved homicides, come into his bar with his associates, violating the detective's territory. The detective came around the bar holding a billy club in his hand and loudly discussed his first year as a patrol officer walking a beat. His supervising officer told him that he had a corner a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Car Accident

I was in a car accident a few days ago. There was a stopped car in the interstate and I didn't see it in advance; the car in front of me swerved into another lane and then there it was in front of me. I also swerved but damaged my commuter car, which is old and had many miles on it. The insurance company declared it a total loss.  The damage was where I scraped along the passenger side of my car (and the driver side of the stopped car). I had no deployment of airbags and no damage from my seat belt; no glass on either car broke, so it was a glancing blow if that makes sense. The front passenger wheel was damaged and I could not drive the car very far.  I pulled over to the shoulder and dialed 911. A state trooper made sure I was alright and proceeded to take care of the situation. I was moving slowly, aware that I had had a shock to my system and trying not to do anything to worsen the situation (stepping into traffic when I exited my vehicle, etc.) The trooper took my informa...
2 comments
Read more