Once again I am EXHAUSTED. I had to wake up early today and teach three lessons in Keda. Then I packed up all my bags and went to Batumi. I won’t be returning to Keda until after my trip to Ukraine. So I pack up my big bazaar bag and head to the marshutka. It’s still pretty warm out during the day and my light fleece jacket was causing me to burn up. Once I got to Batumi I stopped by the apartment to drop off my heavy bazaar bag, edited my host sister’s essay then went to the university. I have two lessons with my university counterpart and one class alone (my essay writing). After six classes, and traveling to Batumi on a crowded marshutka, and carrying my big bag everywhere I can safely say my legs and brain are in pain.
I really needed this day. And yesterday as well. I feel like I’ve been falling quickly into a pattern of relative laziness. I’ve really been saving my lesson plans and classroom decision to the last minute. I’m not meaning to, and I’m not doing anything else of substance, but I just cannot keep focused on anything for long. It’s quite literally: “Okay, it’s $3000 for a treadmill and…. Oh look, a butterfly!” I know I talk a lot of these issues, and I wouldn’t feel so bad and guilty if I actually got my work done well—but I often don’t. It reminds me of high school and college. I’d have no motivation to do something or get distracted so many times that I turn in some half-assed essay or do poorly on a test. At first you make some mild changes and try to address the issue. But, it never lasts long and then I’m spinning once again down the rabbit hole. You know, after a while you stop caring, too. After a while you resign yourself to whatever it is. Although I say to myself “if I could just read this book for at least one hour I’ll be set” I know it won’t be because I know already I won’t be able to sit down for a straight hour and read. Nope, after two minutes I’ll need to do something else. It could be make dinner, check e-mail, read something else, or play X-Box, but there was always something. Heck, even if I took away all those things the distractions would still be there. I could people watch, I could stare out my window, and I could daydream. Anything to keep the boring stuff at bay.
I mean, anybody who knows me knows I have a pretty active imagination. Just ask my sister Mary about seeing my coming out of my bedroom dressed like a soldier—at fourteen. She looked at me and just laughed. I’ve always been able to cook up some elaborate and detailed scenario and story and play it over and over in my head. When I read The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe series as a kid I would imagine placing myself in the story itself. Me as one of the characters—saving Peter and the gang. After watching certain movies I’d place myself within the movie and imagine changing the whole plot. In some ways it’s good. My girlfriend always makes comments about how creative I am, and that comes because of the amount of time I spend in my own head. Then when she tells me I should write I say “Hey, that’s a great idea!” But, I also know that the work it takes writing it down and making a story would get tiresome, and movies are much more entertaining, plus the majority of the detail is already there. I don’t have to make it up from scratch.
Today, I may have been tied, my feet may hurt, and my hands are all cut up from picking corn yesterday; but I did work and it feels good. I feel good when I’m productive, and I like being organized, but I have never had the real ability to stay focused on anything for more than a few minutes at a time. I mean this blog is really often an excuse to avoid doing some of the things I feel like I should be doing. I need to write a lesson plan? Welllll, the blog must be written today, too. Don’t ask me what it is, but it’s annoying.
But, now I’m even bored writing the blog entry. So I’m off to find something more exciting to do.
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