I have to do my grading online. I have to read the essays, correct and give feedback, all online, on this lovely little laptop that I am happily typing on right now. I often do this task at home, and I am learning so much about myself and addiction through the difficulty that I often have in this task.
The inbuilt tools with grading online, with its shortcuts and wonderful ready loaded lessons, would appear to earlier versions of myself as miraculous. However, (and I know you know where I am going next) I find the self-discipline needed to complete the task (of say, grading forty essays) can be hard to find and my work is prolonged by many factors, all of which relate to addiction.
The task is challenging, grading. Even with full attention on the task, I don’t seem to get much faster at it. After years of it, I have hardly ever found it top of my list for activities I wish to do. What is so instructive now is watching myself (some part of myself) cry out for distraction, below the level of surface awareness. This dreaded task is gifting me the view of the characters in me who cry out to the dealer – HIT ME. HIT ME. HIT ME again. There are fractured selves that come up for observation. One of them uses food for entertainment. One of them could nap her life away. One looks for hits in communication. One looks for beauty and art and inspiration in the endless pools of sights and sounds this world offers, now more than ever, through the searching on the web. One likes to be surprised by strangeness. One likes to uncover lies. One plans. One ponders her image, and tries to fix perceived smudges in the mirror of the world. One likes to clean when it isn’t time to clean. One could walk for miles when there are some pressing deadlines. One dives into moments past and rearranges years. Endless. I’ve just named those milling about my living room this very moment.
I’m writing this blogpost while my last 19 essays remain to be graded. How perfect the task, how perfect the distraction, how perfect the one who watches it all without any judgement. The flow of this life somehow always works out, the tasks get done, the life gets lived, well or not well– irrelevant through some views. Improvement does not come from disgust. I am simply learning who is asking for the reigns, so I can choose who drives. Sometimes the car goes in the ditch in the process, but that is all part of the fun.
Reporting from the side of the road, waving to you, reader, as you fly by. Who chooses to do what you do when you do it? Who is crying for a hit? Who chooses to allow the hit or to get to work? Who is calling the mental health hotline and giving them my address right now? The United States of M. 🙂
Life as Improv 