November 12: Terribly Tired, Four Jobs, Live Today

Ford couldn't sleep.  He was to excited about being back on the road again.  Fifteen years of virtual imprisonment were over, just as he was beginning to give up hope.  Knocking about with Zaphod for a bit promised to be a lot of fun, though there seemed to be something faintly odd about his semicousin that he couldn't put his finger on.  The fact that he had become President of the Galaxy was frankly astonishing, as was the manner of his leaving the post.  Was there a reason behind it?  There would be no point in asking Zaphod, he never appeared to have a reason for anything he did at all:  he had turned unfathomability into an art form.  He attacked everything in life with a mixture of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence and it was often difficult to tell which was which.

Arthur slept:  he was terribly tired.

Yes, I chose a passage about sleep--the lack of it and the need for it.  In my life, I seem to pendulum between these two extremes.  At the moment, I am operating on about three straight days of around four hours of sleep per night.  I am reaching the exhaustion stage.  By tomorrow night, after I am done teaching, I will be ready to collapse.

However, I know that most of my disciples don't want to hear me whining about how tired I am.  I do that quite frequently.  My topic this evening is somewhat related.  You all know that I hold down about four jobs.  Hence the reason for my frequent exhaustion.  Out of those jobs, only one really excites me--teaching at the university.  The other positions are just necessities.  They pay the bills and provide the health insurance.  I am not passionate about them.

Teaching, however, is something that I love.  When I teach, I get to do really cool things, like watch and discuss It's a Wonderful Life; share and write about Sharon Olds poems;  and raise awareness of mental illness.  In short, teaching sort of synthesizes all the things that make me excited.  I honestly believe that I was born to teach.

Unfortunately, the majority of my waking hours is not focused on teaching.  It's spent on calling and registering patients, cleaning my church in the evenings, playing the pipe organ for church services, and trying to hold my family together.  Oh, and I'm Poet Laureate of the Upper Peninsula, too.  All of these things are full-time gigs in themselves.  I live a very fragmented existence, as you can imagine.

I am not complaining.  For the most part, I'm able to balance all of these parts of my life pretty well.  Sometimes, however, I fall behind in one or two things.  That's when I start to become overwhelmed.  At the moment, I'm in an overwhelmed stage.  Too many balls in the air.

Tomorrow night, I'll feel a little better.  I'll be done with teaching for the week, and I won't feel quite so . . . frantic.  I wish that I could teach full time, but that doesn't seem to be a possibility ever.  So, I will have to continue my little juggling act for as long as I can.

A friend sent me a text this morning that sort of provided me some sanity.  The end of the text went like this:

Accepting the here and now is what ensures our sanity and our serenity.  Reality is never more than we can manage, with the help of our Higher Power.  It is our anticipation of the future which is unreal and dangerous.  May I live today, and leave the future to You.

I am trying to live by those words this evening.  Taking things one minute at a time, and not gazing into the crystal ball too much.  Instead, I'll just keep my eyes on what's right in front of me.

So, ladies and gentlemen, in the center ring this evening, the ah-maaaazing Saint Marty.  Watch him juggle it all--teacher, poet, father, husband, musician, blogger, custodian, medical office worker--without dropping a single ball.  In face, let's light all those balls on fire, just for fun . . .