wordfalls and scatters

I stayed up well past my bedtime last night to finish the last of my marking for this batch*. It made it difficult to wake up early, but it was entirely worth it. I find it much easier to Get Stuff Done late at night. I find the silence of late nights quite different from daytime silences. (Perhaps it's the absence of the hum of cars outside, or perhaps it's just the quality of night.)

I felt so light, and it felt so very wonderful to have time to work on projects that have no particular deadlines and no supervisors except me. I made some little presents for J's birthday, and worked a bit on my Smallest Art project. I talked to people about activism and how to fit into the world and projects and enthusiasm. I wrote some veryverysmall storypoems, and enjoyed it tremendously.

I want all of my life to be like this.

To achieve that, I have to stop thinking of marking as a painful and out-of-the-ordinary event. With the amount of teaching I'm doing at the moment, I will have at least some marking happening most of the time. And I don't want to feel weighed down and fretful most of the time.

So, I need to remember that:
* Marking is part of teaching. An important part, as things are structured now.
* It's nice to give students feedback, especially since there are always a few students who take the advice offered, and even appreciate it.
* Marking can happen in pleasant spaces. I can drink tea on my verandah and mark, or visit a friend, or find a cafe with wifi. Marking can be surrounded by explorations of new places.
* Marking will be much more enjoyable and efficient if I do it in focused batches, without too many distractions. I should remember that if I procrastinate by doing things that I don't love, it is taking away time from the projects that I do love.


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* Well, okay. The last of my marking until more students emailed me late assignments today.

I am feeling rather the opposite of 'on top of things'.

* I did a section of last year's Greek exam last night in class. It was a comprehension exercise in which one had to fill in blanks in a letter with words from a list. I got 8 out of 13, which is good, but I couldn't really work out what the letter was about, which is bad. I am pretty sure, at this stage, that if I pass it will be a) only just, and b) a very baffling experience for me. My vocabulary is just too small. Still, I have two weeks until the test, so I guess I can still do a little more catching up.

* My thesis is going, but always more slowly than I would like. I am trying to write the last section of my first chapter at the moment, because I deleted the previous version of it (for good reasons). But then the rewrite I attempted over the last couple of days also had to be deleted. And... *sigh*

* Teaching is somewhat painful at the moment. The area I'm teaching is not my specialty, and I'm trying to restrict the time spent preparing to a sensible amount, which means I spend much of the class saying 'that's a good question, I don't know. Why don't you guys look it up?' I have no fundamental problem with this approach, but it gets a little discouraging for me at times.

* There are many people who I am not seeing nearly as often as I'd like. Right now, my weekday evenings are full from Monday to Thursday, I do greek homework every morning, and I have teaching prep and greek homework to do on the weekends. Trying to see everyone that I want to see is hard!

* Other bits and pieces: bluestocking has been somewhat neglected as I don't have internet at home right now. Kate put up a good entry on creating community cohesion on the blog, and Shae's also been doing a bit here and there, so I don't feel too bad. A couple of my articles have come up on ActNow, one on facebook stuff and one on online communities.

Overall, despite feeling a bit overwhelmed, I am not feeling too stressed. I am reminding myself that things sometimes take longer than you would like, and that not everything can be done brilliantly, and that's okay.