So I’ve been underground for a while. It’s been a fairly overwhelming month—finishing up teaching, going straight into ER visits, painkillers, surgery. My wonderful parents being in town, and then all of us going out of town the moment I was well enough, and then the day after getting back, straight back into the university life, with the welcome party for the next academic year, and meeting with Carolyn (Forché) who will be my thesis advisor over the next year, as well as attending her undergraduate class on the poetry of witness.

I guess I got a little down when I was sick—I felt drained at the end of teaching (full of self-doubt as to whether my students felt that they had learned, and whether I am, in fact, a capable teacher) and had wanted the couple of weeks before semester to relax, do some reading, prepare myself emotionally for the final year of this particular degree… (I feel like I’m going to be endlessly juggling degrees, though I hope sometime my place will become more obvious.)

What’s actually been nice in the past few days to take my mind off that slight depression has been helping out a friend. Having someone to check up on regularly. Also, knitting helps. Television does not.

So I’ve been starting to think out my Anne Carson project. An initial discussion with Carolyn yesterday has had me thinking through some ways to focus, which has made me happy. I will get there in the end. I have some Wordsworth and Coleridge to read too… No shortage of things to do!

I feel like I’m going to get some writing done sometime—sometime. I’m going to try to have at least a day off each week, and to try to get some writing bits and pieces done as well. Try. Who knows if that will ever happen…

Tomorrow I’ll sign up for my writing center hours—and hopefully it won’t take too much longer to find out which Liberal Studies class I’m working with so I’ll have a real idea of what my schedule is going to be. And then I guess I’ll have to block out my study properly. I was so good about that in Melbourne last year. I feel like I haven’t been quite as good here, but I’m going to start working on it.

So I’ve been reading mostly poetry, and trying to get Independence Day Project bits and pieces written.

It’s sad that my parents are gone! It’s only three days since they left, but it has been feeling like an age.