All Tomorrow's Parties

This last week was my Fall Break. Thanks to working at a private school, I get a full week off in both the Fall and Spring (as opposed to the almost insulting one day that Nancy’s state school got last week). Of course, I had big plans for the break. I promised myself that I would not only get all of my grading done, but I would finish an article I was working on, mail out my book proposal, get ahead in my class preps, and get all the household stuff done that had been queuing up for a few months. So where am I at? Well, for starters, the blog is a day late and my grading remains untouched, as do my article, book proposal, and many of the household chores. And yet I’ve been working my butt off. I’ve even got a list of things that I accomplished.

So, how to make sense of the yawning disparity between my goals and my achievements?

First, it’s official: I’m getting old and don’t have the stamina (or patience) I used to have for a pile of tasks. Nor do I have the physical abilities I once had; my body resists much of what it’s asked to do. The other day, Trinity started mimicking the groan I let out whenever I get up from a place on the floor or whenever I have to bend down to pick up some toy or blanket that she has dropped from her perch on my left arm. Here’s Trin’s impression of me:



I’m also a hopeless procrastinator. My motto seems to be: “Why do today what you can put off until tomorrow?” For instance, I started to write this blog entry last night, but found myself without any ideas or energy, and distracted by the prospect of doing just about anything except what I was supposed to be doing. The only thing I could really get excited about was the bottle of beer in front of me. It was a long day taking Trin to the dermatologist in Indianapolis and my energy level was down to beer drinking level (as opposed to sitting down and writing a coherent, enlightening blog entry). Here’s how it goes most of the time:



Though I’ve always been a procrastinator, I’ve been getting the feeling that my increasing age and awareness of my declining physical prowess is adding to the problem – giving me more fuel for the fire (or lack thereof). For instance, the other day I was trying to take care of some bills but got sidetracked by a “real age” questionnaire on the internet. I don’t even remember what thread led to it, but it was impossible to pass up. There were pictures of three people with their biological age, and their “real age” listed along with the “causes” of the difference (two were younger than their biological years, one much older). I wonder, I thought, how bad it’s getting. And so, I took the test. Here are my results:





So, the good news is that I’m still younger than my actual age. But I can’t help but feel that the test is asking the wrong questions, or at least not asking enough questions. Sure, it wanted to know a lot about my red meat intake, my exercise routines, and my consumption of alcohol, and my general stress level over bills, family, etc. But if it really wanted to know about me it would have asked questions like:

-Are you up for tenure this year?
-Is your dog’s bladder alarm set for 3:30 a.m.?
-Does your house smell of diapers?
-Can you leave your keys on the usual surfaces (i.e. tables) without them disappearing?
-Does you daughter throw her food on the floor every night?
-Have you watched anything other than Thomas the Tank Engine in the last three months?
-Which person most accurately describes you: George Bailey before or after the intervention by Clarence the angel?

I wonder how the answers to these questions would have affected the outcome. Of course, this paints a rather one-sided picture of my mental state these days. I could also include:

Is your job fun and interesting? Does it afford you flexibility?
Does your wife make cookies on a regular basis?
Do your kids crack you up daily?
Etc.

Of course, I’m doing all of this thinking about age and happiness instead of doing what I should be doing: grading papers. I’ll get down to that just as soon as I figure out the perfect time of day for exercise, and what clothes I’ll have to wear for that exercise, and what part of the basement to clean out for the exercise equipment. That shouldn’t take more than a few hours, and then I’ll be ready to go for real. Or maybe I’ll just put it off until tomorrow; after all, it’s been a long day and I’m feeling tired.