Approaching Equilibria.

Things are starting to calm down, sort of. Or are at least gearing up to calm down. I think. Maybe.

Coping Mechanism: Cycle Commute Pondering Time.

Alright, so cycling to work has been awesome. It’s let me work on my legs, which I’m pretty sure I’ve been neglecting for what seems like years [which has probably been actually about eighteen months, max]. For the first couple of weeks of cycle-commuting, my legs would start burning after just a couple of miles, as if battery acid were coursing just underneath my skin. Now, my legs tire less easily [if even slightly so]. I have started to feel less-worn after my commutes, to bounce back more quickly and completely. I find myself wanting the ride; this weekend, I wanted the ride by mid-Sunday, and was sad I didn’t have work to ride to [or free time to take a ride] on Monday, and was almost-mad that I had to drive in today [to make it to other engagements after work on time].

But cycle-commuting has more than just positive physical externalities [ha] for me. Cycling to work gives me between twenty and thirty minutes of time for whatever thinking I’d like to engage in. No music, no phone, no others to talk to [except for quick "heys" said to other passing cyclists and walkers/joggers]. I used to have regular commutes that ranged between forty-five and seventy-five minutes that I took in my car. I can confidently say that I could not reliably think as much as I do now during those lengthier commutes, probably due to distractions [music, mobile phone, passengers].

The commute time is my own personal time, where I haven’t anyone else to focus on. I can think about whatever I’d like to during the rides, even if that whatever is actually nothing. I’ve thought about lots of innanities. I’ve thought about plenty of hefty things. [The $64,000 Questions don't stop coming, don't stop jockeying with each other to occupy my mind for stretches of time, stretches of road; from 49th to Nasco, all along Shoal Creek, between stopsigns, during those laps I take when the thoughts won't loose their visegrip hold.]

More about this later, as Cycle Commute Pondering Time makes more headway on my innanities and my $64,000 Questions.

Back-to-School Anxiety.

I’m getting stressed out about my job. I’ve spent the past couple of weeks going to trainings and meetings and listening to specialist after specialist talk about what working with the students is like, and the challenges of one of my students in particular. I’m tired of that. I just want to get the students, to see what they’re like, to learn about them from them.

Life is Filling with Win.

Life has been good to me, as of late.

Transitions.

There’s a reminder that I heard a lot at the school while I worked there [I suspect that I'll be back there once the new school year kicks off]; transition periods are hard. For some students, that meant Mondays after returning to campus from a weekend at home. For others, it was time spent in transit or switching from one activity to another. Regardless, some students require what is politely deemed “more support” during transition periods. This extra support can range from leading a student through processing hirs feelings [without explicitly naming the processing as such, since many students are reticent to use coping mechanisms that are openly labeled as such], to lowering expectations, giving more time to transition, and being generally more understanding of any irritability or anxiety on the student’s part. Sometimes we all need “more support”.

Trying to Keep the Chuck Yeager Drawl.

I graduated. It actually happened. I held my diploma in my hands. I quickly handed it off to my family to take home, to save the diploma from myself.

Spelunking.

Caving was amazing. Fantastic. I left without taking any anti-anxiety medication, unlike last time. I also didn’t bring any along with me. I was going to do this on my own. And I did. I pushed myself at several key points during the trip, and turned back at a really reasonable place. I contorted my body into unnatural shapes and slithered around like the most awkward snake ever. I spent between five and six hours underground.

Complex on Top of Complex.

I think they’ve actually passed around a memo. It probably looks like the following;

That stupid little twerp Liz is all hoity-toity and thinks that she knows everything. She’s coming in with this whole “business major” attitude. She also refuses to compromise her beliefs to do simple data-entry and phone-banking tasks, which makes her particularly onerous to The Party. Please treat her with the utmost disdain, as she obviously knows nothing and likes to showcase it with her thinly-veiled positivism. If she had any political sense at all, she’d be a Democrat, and if she had any computer sense at all, she’d have already built us that flux capacitor we’re hankering for.

Encouraging News.

I figured I need to counteract the emo-ness of the last post. Sorry about that, folks.