I Said There'd Be Days Like This

I try to be a reasonably productive person. At a few points, I've even been described as "high capacity." Those moments went something like this:

Me: teaching four college courses, raising three children, and painting a bedroom over a random weekend.

Random Person: "You're high capacity."

However, in more recent years — this post-pandemic era, if you will — I've noticed varying degrees and instances of capacity loss. How much decline am I talking about, you ask? Well, on certain days, I still fire on all cylinders. Other days, I imagine a narrator speaking as if I were starring in a prescription drug commercial, "Are you suffering from moderate to severe capacity loss?" Cue camera panning as I shuffle despondently down my hallway while wearing a blanket draped over my shoulders.

That was the case yesterday, a rare obligation-less Tuesday. I had no classes to teach. No office hours to host. No work meetings to attend. No children were at home. I had one brief morning appointment, then a refreshingly light amount of grading earmarked for the afternoon.

You would think I'd enjoy the day immensely. That I'd knock out my work early, then fill the remaining hours with other fulfilling tasks or happy moments of leisure. That's why I was so surprised to reach the end of the day and have nothing to show for it. Nada.

Brain: "We had a day off. We must have been used it productively."
Me: "No."
Brain: "Well, then we must have rested."
Me: "Somehow, also no." 

What did I do? How did I fill the day? It still eludes me.

I putzed, but without pleasure. I dabbled on the computer, yet didn't manage cross off a single item from my to-do list. If I had ended the day feeling more refreshed than when I started, I'd count it as a success. But, sadly, that's not the case, either. I received no checks in any win column, neither rest nor achievement.

Did I read a book? No. Grade assignments? No. Exercise? No. Watch a movie? No. Clean a closet? No. Enjoy the fall day with a pleasant walk? No. Prepare a nice dinner? No. Connect with a friend? No.  

There are days like this. Blurry days, squandered days. Days when you exist to recover from earlier days. Days when you wither like you're suffering from a Victorian wasting disease. Weird days when you ironically have all the time in the world, yet no gumption or verve or plan.

Today, however, the sun rose again, as it reliably does. Things were different. I exercised. I taught three solid classes. I met with students, caught up on email, finished yesterday's grading, and planned an upcoming lesson. I made strombolis and assembled a salad. My kitchen already is cleaned for the evening. Apparently, my capacity has returned.

In light of these adjacent experiences, I need to remind myself of a few core truths:

One, there will be days like this. Both versions. High capacity and low capacity days are two sides of the same coin. Nobody — I mean nobody — always can function at full throttle.

Two, worth doesn't change depending on the version. Yesterday's version of me, while not ideal, was just as loved, just as valuable, as today's more productive version. God's love doesn't waver based on how much I achieve. His love is contingent on His faithfulness, not my own. It's a constant force, hearty and steadfast and underserved and inherent, regardless of my performance and productivity, or lack thereof. This is hard to fathom, yet good to remember.

And I said I'd love you though all those days.
-- God

Happy Little Rituals

Every evening in fall and winter, I brew a cup of tea. I'm a simple creature — and one of habit, I suppose, so even the flavor remains consistent. It's mint. Always mint. If I'm tired, mint refreshes. If stress lingers after a long day, mint soothes and settles. 

I've never felt worse after drinking a cup of tea.

I'm not sure when I started this ritual. The practice drops off each spring and isn't even a blip on my radar during summer, but once the sun begins to set earlier, once leaves are tinged orange, and once the edges of each day carry briskness in the air, it's time.

Dishes from dinner are put away and the kitchen is cleaned. I change from my work clothes into comfortable sweats. The shades are drawn, lamps turned on, and perhaps a good book is in hand. Beside me, simple and stable, is a cup of mint tea.

Tonight, in fact, as I contemplated whether I'd grade a few more assignments or call it a night (I called it a night), I wrapped my hands around the mug, warm from the seaming liquid inside, and felt at ease. It might merely be a cup of tea, but it feels like something more. It's a happy little ritual, one that closes a day with a small familiar gift.

Sometimes, the Difference Between Hope and Despair is a Good Night's Sleep

I'm talking with my students this week about life lessons learned, and I share with them something I once heard and stand by:

Sometimes, the difference between hope and despair is simply a good night's sleep.

Today, as I worked from home, dragging in several ways both physical and mental, I remember this wisdom. I haven't been sleeping well at night, and I've felt off. I'm cranky. Decisions are harder to make. Small issues — like Google telling me that my Gmail storage is 100% full, or my repeatedly inability to figure out the school district's new app that's supposed to "streamline" communication, whatever that means — feel like impossible problems to hurdle, rather than simple tasks to complete.

How am I even an adult? I moan, while wandering my house looking for chocolate.

That's when I remember the adage about a good night's sleep. And, a minute later, that's when I decide to take an afternoon nap. I rarely nap, unless I'm miserably sick, but on a day when I was on the verge of feeling miserably blah, it seemed like the right thing.

As I slipped under the covers, I melted — melted, I tell you — into the bed. Everything that was wrong felt much less wrong, and for a blissful hour, I slept. I woke feeling refreshed, like I had been rebooted.

It reminds me of the story of Elijah in the Bible when Elijah was so downcast that he wanted to die, and — I paraphrase here — God is like, "Take a nap, eat a snack." 

Sometimes, the difference between hope and despair really is that simple.

Let August Be August

August: a month that starts with humidity and ends with college football. In between, it's filled with everything and nothing, a month that languishes and races, a month that looms large in import and recedes in any semblance of daily structure until the very end, which is when you're practically smacked upside the head with daily structure.

If August were a specific time and day, it would be Sunday evening. Technically, it's still summer, but in your bones you know you're staring down the end of things. You know the other shoe will drop, that hazy days won't linger forever, that school busses and football games and parent-teacher conferences and increasingly early sunsets are near.

But now that I'm at the end of it, I'm not entirely certain where August went. Oh, I did stuff, alright. I finally cleaned my garage of remnants from a garage sale that took place in July. I touched up the dings on the exterior doors with fresh paint. I made a dozen zucchini bread one afternoon from one giant zucchini — mammoth, really – that resembled one of those fat, oversized plastic wiffle ball bats that, if you connect just right, it would carry the ball deep into your neighbor's yard, if not your neighbor's neighbor's yard.

I drove kids back and forth to various places, and back and forth again. I read books, and went to garage sales on Friday mornings, and watched reruns of Brooklyn 99, and cut the grass, and talked with neighbors, and gathered with friends, and moved our oldest daughter into her first college apartment, where I sat on the floor with a screwdriver assembling the legs back onto the old wooden kitchen table we bequeathed to her. I received — and largely ignored — no fewer than 172 emails from my younger two children's school. I took regular evening walks and listened to crickets get louder as the month plodded along.

Like a responsible adult, I also squeezed in a few doctor's appointments. As the semester encroached in earnest, I met with colleagues, visited my classrooms, attended all my department's orientation meetings, formatted my syllabi, and published my Canvas classes. The semester officially started yesterday, so I've tenuously memorized all my students' names through a repetitive, yet highly effective, ice breaker that I've been doing on the first day of semesters for eons. Hopefully I'll remember most of those names tomorrow.

August isn't as quite as tricky as it once was when our kids were little. They've now experienced many starts of many school years themselves. Even though it's a draining process regardless of age, their ages allow them to take it in stride. Everyone, it would seem, is growing up.

Even so, August, somehow, remains a month fit for childhood nostalgia, if you let yourself lean into such things. It feels like a month where you'd sit on a porch swing, sipping sweet tea and watching the lightning bugs blink their Morse code into the dark, and you'd soak it all in because soon enough, you know, summer will be over.