Sad Professor: A Memoir

I have come to the conclusion over the past few weeks (Jan-Feb 2010) that my current job teaching music technology at Iowa Western Community College is not for me. I have decided that I am going to leave after May 14th, 2010 no matter what. This is honestly not much of a surprise as last summer I was already considering this option. I decided to give it another year to make sure that I was not overreacting. I am going to use this post to attempt to collect my thoughts as to why this relationship isn't working.

This post is divided into areas of responsibility, some expected, some unexpected when I took the job. The core of the job, in my opinion, is teaching. Little did I know that there would be many other responsibilities surrounding that core that would quickly subvert and eventually take over my attention from it. I have divided all of my responsibilities by category and have taken time to reflect on each one including the teaching aspect.

THE COMPUTER LAB

This one straddles both the expected and the unexpected responsibilities category. Most of my classes involve working with computers to some capacity so I expected a necessity to know how to use the lab and oversee the maintenance of it in terms of making requests to IT for various installs or upkeep jobs. However, there were many things that were unexpected that caused unnecessary headaches, sometimes on a daily basis.

First, my lab is full of Macs, but IWCC's IT department hadn't hired anyone with the knowledge or experience to act as an administrator for Macintosh computers. I found this out during the first two months of the job. The first week I was there, some upgrade discs for Pro Tools 7.4 arrived that had been ordered by my predecessor. I was told that someone from IT would handle all the installs. It was two months into the semester before anyone came down to do the upgrades and then it was only completed because I called to question why it hadn't been done. When the admin finally came down to the lab to do the upgrades, she needed my help because she didn't know how to do it. I asked the person how long she'd been working with Macs. She said she'd never worked with Macs before this job. She also used the occasion to tell me that she was leaving. When I asked her where she was going, she said she was leaving to work at Menards. Not a good sign.

So that left me to be the administrator for my computer lab. For two months, I was teaching in Pro Tools 7.3 from a book that was based on 7.4. That may not seem like a huge difference, and for people familiar with the software it's not. But when your students have never even seen software like this let alone worked with it, it becomes a huge challenge to discover and explain all the inconsistencies that they encounter between what the book says and what they're seeing on the screen. Even tiny little things. For instance, if an option in the software used to be a list of radio buttons and is now a drop down menu, the students get lost. They don't know what to do. All the options are there. They're plainly visible to anybody even remotely familiar with what they're looking at. But my students' progress would grind to a halt because what they saw in the book did not match what they saw on the screen.

Anyway, the lack of support from IT was actually not my biggest concern during my first year. I was often flying by the seat of my pants trying to create lessons and projects that introduced new skills as they were introduced from the book. Because I had nobody helping me with the lab, if I needed to create a template session for a student project, I had to make sure it got copied to all 18 stations. What did that mean? Basically, it meant using a flash drive and going to each station manually to copy the files as I had no methods available to me to automate the process. Every time I had to do this, it cost me about an hour and during my first year, I seldom had an hour to spare. After all, I was trying to design and run five courses.

You may be asking yourself, "Why couldn't you just post the session to a server and let the students copy the session?" That would have been the best solution. But the IT department wouldn't let my lab connect to a server on the network because they had used the wireless network to connect my lab. Wireless network connections, I was told, would compromise network security on campus. So I was always stuck saving and copying all files and sessions to every local machine. And it wasn't just a problem for me. If a student saved a session on machine number one on Monday and then had to sit at machine number five on Wednesday because machine number one was occupied by someone else, guess how we had to get the session for that student? You guessed it. Interrupt the student sitting at machine number one and use my flash drive to copy the session to machine number five. Multiply this by a few students over a few different projects and suddenly you have student projects and folders strewn across multiple machines so if a student wants to save or backup any of their projects, they have to remember where there were sitting for each project. It was a nightmare of file management fiascoes. The server option would have been the best option, but as I said, I was told no to that due to network security.

In my second year, I discovered that IT had a group license for Apple Remote Desktop which I immediately requested to be installed in my lab. ARD allows an administrator to supervise and control what happens on all client machines including batch processes for file management across multiple stations. When the new Mac IT person came to install it, he also told me that he just been plopped into the position not long after being hired (and of course graduating from IWCCs program). ARD worked like a charm for about two months. But then I lost the ability to connect to one of my machines. Then another. At the time of this writing, the whole system is broken. I can't see anyone's machines and I'm back to doing everything manually again. I've been sending help requests to IT since October and nobody has responded or even communicated with me as of the time of this writing.

At this point, I'm done caring what goes on with the lab. I've had problems with the network, lack of connectivity, broken software and software that needs upgrades. The problems are beyond my ability to remedy. It is someone's job from IT to fix them. I've sent multiple requests that seem to disappear into the ether.

***NOTE: Not only has this post taken me a long time to write, I've decided to let it sit in Drafts so that it isn't completely public. No good could possibly come from posting it to the blog. As such, certain events have occurred since I began to record my thoughts. It is with a dutiful sense of fairness that I post the following updates on the lab problems.

UPDATE 1: I have finally heard from the new admin and they now agree that my lab on the wireless network is not working out.

UPDATE 2: As of this week (March 1st-5th) a series of switches was installed and the lab is now back up and running like a charm. Everything was fixed and the admin even took the time to explain that the lab began having problems this year because the number of wireless clients on campus exploded. I am very grateful that this is finished but it still frustrates me that it took over five months to let me know what was going on.

SCHOLARSHIPS STUDENTS/PART-TIME HELP

About a week into my first semester, I found out that I needed to select students from my program to receive scholarships. In turn, those students would help me with odd jobs that needed to be done. However, nobody ever really helped me pick who might be good recipients of scholarship monies. I was left to discover that on my own. It wasn't an easy task since all of my students were brand new to me. To top it off, they were just as new to me as I was to them. Because of this, it was difficult for me to meet them and have them be honest with me about their abilities and willingness to help out with day to day operations of the department. I tried pulling a few students aside after classes, but they were largely just shy and said they didn't know what they wanted to do. I thought that was a little weird because I was offering them money to do things, but I was told I needed to offer scholarships so I kept trying different approaches.

Because it was difficult for me to tell who really was and who was not a good candidate because I didn't know any of them and the ones I'd spoken with previously didn't seem to want to talk, I made open announcements to all the majors in my classes and then interviewed interested candidates. I did find a handful of excited students that were mostly first semester freshmen. Choosing most of them turned out to be a mistake. Almost everybody I selected ended up losing their scholarship due to bad grades and/or just plain not showing up during their scheduled times to help me.

There were some really good students though, and by my second semester I realized that I could use my good scholarship students to help keep the lab open and to help me maintain it. So that's what I did. We had some open lab hours and they got some money to do it. It worked out alright except that I found myself in a new position of managing a team of lab assistants. They were far from the kind of people who would just take the initiative to ask me what they should be doing. I found myself having to micromanage them, reminding every lab assistant sometimes on a weekly basis to do things that I'd told them do from the beginning like signing users in and out of the lab and taking their student IDs. It was a simple set of rules that I had: 1) Make sure everyone who uses the lab signs in and out and is an IWCC student. 2) Keep track of any equipment they use while in the lab and 3) clean up and put things away when the lab closes. This simple list was often ignored, leaving me to continually browbeat them to do these things coupled with just doing it myself when I arrived in the morning. Keep in mind, these were my GOOD students.

Also in my second semester, I realized that I couldn't continue being the person that managed all of the software and file maintenance in the lab. I was still designing one of my courses that I hadn't taught before (in addition to learning new software in the process) as well as making revisions to the ones I'd taught before. One makes a lot of mistakes as a new teacher and I was learning quickly to spot mine so revisions were not only necessary but required. To help me, a part time employee position of computer lab assistant was approved and a person was recommended to me. He had great qualifications. He was highly experienced with music technology, a gigging musician who had done a fair bit of recording of local musicians including his own band.

His tenure began wonderfully. He was helping out and doing things that needed to be done sometimes without needing to be asked. But we made one mistake when we hired him that ended up shooting us in the foot: we assured him that by taking this position that the potential for it to grow into an instructor position was imminent. That growth, however, depended on my ability to develop a new branch of curriculum that would appeal more to the modern musician rather than the classically trained ones that were more interested in traditional musical training.

As my second semester progressed, I began to realize that creating that new branch of curriculum was going to be a bigger undertaking than I had realized. I had found a couple of good models to guide me, but actually finding the time to sit down and write course descriptions and outline general content was non-existent and as I'll write about later, it just never got done.

About half way through that semester, my new assistant began asking about time frames for this promotion. As the time frames that I could give him got increasingly vague, the more reticent he became with actually working. By the end of the semester, my part-time lab assistant was no better an employee than my scholarship students. I had to ask him to do everything. I would walk in on him playing computer games on his laptop. I considered firing him, but the things he was doing really needed to be done and I simply didn't have time to do it even I did have to micromanage him along with all the others.

As it turns out, that problem took care of itself, but not as I'd hoped. Over the summer of 2009, I'd been expecting him to come back. So as the start of my second year approached, I began initiating contact with him to talk about returning and his availability. I had decided to turn over a new leaf and really put some effort behind the new curriculum I wanted to develop so that I could give the assistant a better time frame on the possibility of starting to teach. As it turns out, after emailing back and forth for over a week, two days before the beginning of the semester, he decided that he was not returning. This meant that if I wanted someone to help me run the lab as I had before, I'd have to find someone new and I didn't have any idea where to start.

Fortunately, a recent graduate of the program came to visit me soon after the semester started. He was a real self-starter and he was very invested in the success of the program. He had future plans for the direction of the program and he had some contacts that I desperately needed in the community to get things like an internship program started. As soon as I knew his availability, I hired him. Again at first, he worked out very well. And he did help me with getting in touch with some people that I needed to talk to. But the day he unveiled his grand plans for the program to me, it was overwhelming. The idea was immense and would require a large amount of activity on the part of many very involved students (of which I have few). His ideas were great but they lacked specific plans for how to accomplish the goals as well as an all-important timeline, something to give us an idea to get this structure up and running one leg at time. Again, I am only one person and can only do so much in a day.

So while I appreciated his enthusiasm, I had to tell him that getting his ideas implemented as he had presented them would likely take years of work with the current staff (me). If he could bring it into focus a little and divide it into more manageable working chunks, it would have a better chance of success. And of course you see where this is going, that affected his enthusiasm and I ended up micromanaging him along with all of the others.

ADVERTISEMENT/RECRUITMENT

One of the issues facing me from the moment I started the job was the task of increasing enrollment in the program. One of my ideas for accomplishing this goal was to increase the number of classes offered and eventually add another branch of the curriculum, which is not a small task. Right now, the program is very music centered and not so much production centered. That in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing at all, but as an Associates of Arts degree, it's focused on students who want to transfer to a traditional four year university and get a traditional music degree with some production skills tacked on as a functional tangent. Most of my students are of the bedroom producer variety, sitting at home noodling on their guitars and dreaming of becoming a rock star. They want to dive in and engineer their own sessions and start recording bands.

As an aside to make this perfectly clear, I actually don't look down on the rock star dream. After all, I had it once too. But, a problem I saw with the curriculum as it stood was that once those students hit music theory more advanced than reading notes, scales, and chords, their brains would explode and they'd drop out of the program. Under my proposed curriculum, they would take a class or classes called "Contemporary Music Theory" or something of the sort, that contains concepts that composers, arrangers, and performers of pop/rock music need to know. Looking back and speaking for myself, I enjoyed learning all the powdered wig stuff in college but honestly, the number of times that I use things like figured bass or the Italian six chord have been nil. Those are certainly valuable concepts to know for anyone entering a career based on traditional music, interesting bits of trivia for others to be sure, but in a two year program my view is that if the rock star hopefuls want to pick up that stuff later then go do it later because we need to cram the essentials skills in now.

As I mentioned before, I was struggling to find time to create a new branch of curriculum to increase enrollment in the program. I began to get frustrated that I couldn't find the time to do what I wanted with my idea. As I talked it out with some other teachers that I had met, they were surprised that my supervisors had let me proceed with it and that I was the one even doing it in the first place. According to those I spoke with and unbeknownst to me, designing branches of curriculum was a Program Chair's job. For clarification, above the ground level faculty such as myself, program chairs oversee the operation of particular departments such as music (instrumental/vocal/technology), math, or radio broadcasting. I was now armed with this knowledge and I knew that I wasn't ready for a Program Chair position, but I thought some extra compensation for summer hours put in outside the contract would be something negotiable. What I found was non-negotiable and abysmal. I would get paid $300 for each new course I designed. After I taught it once. I was looking into trying to map out curriculum for a new program and design at least three or four new classes to start, a nontrivial task and one that would be a huge time and energy sink with many non-contract hours devoted. I was very disappointed to hear that number. It was epic fail pay that would have only been delivered when the task was complete, hardly worth it for all the time that I would need to invest to make it happen. As you might guess, the mere promise of $300 per class did not make a very good carrot on a stick. So during my second semester I continued to try to find time to work on this idea during my regular contract time. I never did find find the time during the first year and the second year came and went with no difference. It was a great idea that I just couldn't get off the ground because I was busy with other parts of the job.

The second aspect of recruitment that I had no idea was to be my responsibility was acting as a marketing front for my program. There were a couple of different angles to this part of the job, too. First, I discovered that I was to be contacting local high school music directors and counselors to tell them about the program and offer materials to provide to interested students. When I learned that I was responsible for this, I was a little confused because I didn't know any local band directors or counselors. I didn't even know the names of local schools to be able to find contact information for those people in the first place. If my coworkers who had said that they had done some things like this had a list of contacts, then for whatever reason, they never shared it with me. This is one of those things that, due to a toxic mixture of many things I have mentioned and will mention in this writing, was never accomplished.

The second angle to my marketing responsibilities included going to local high school career and college fairs. Remember those? You know, the ones where people had set up booths draped with cloths and set up cardboard backdrops that would gladly tell you how great the school that they worked for was? Yes, that was me a couple of times, standing around in a high school cafeteria with the remote recording rig set up on the table, business cards to one side, hawking the music technology program. This was one of the aspects of the job that I felt was completely outside of what should have been my responsibility. I had enough to be doing as the sole person running my portion of the program without having to stand around and hand out fliers. Come to think of it, maybe I should have dressed up as a hot dog.

The reason I continue to feel that this should never have been part of my job was that the college has fully staffed admissions and recruitment departments! When I started, I wrongfully assumed that they would be taking care of the burden of communicating with interested students. In fact, I would meet with the members of these departments once a semester to describe what the current program offered in terms of information, courses, skills, and career possibilities. So there was no excuse that the people doing those jobs wouldn't have been able to clearly communicate what my program was about! I went through both undergraduate and graduate level music programs and never once do I remember any of my professors having to do this particular task. Sure, we went on tour with ensembles over spring break, but I don't think anybody was standing at a booth in a high school cafeteria.

DESIGNING A NEW SPACE

When I first started working at this position, I had heard rumors of a potential expansion and renovation of the relatively new Arts Center on campus. That building houses all programs considered creative art by the college including visual art, theater, and music. The building was bursting at the seams with students, so much so that my program was never located in the building.

Between my first and second year, the rumor became a reality. The task of designing a new space wasn't really all that difficult in and of itself. Basically it consisted of determining how much current space I occupied (not enough) and then estimating the amount of space I would want in the new building. After that, I would need to decide on things like furniture for the lab space and the new recording studio. And then the fun part would actually be the purchase of equipment to fill the recording studio.

Honestly, of all the extra things I have had to do during my tenure, this was the least stressful. Yes, it took some time away from other responsibilities, but the footprint of effort was very small. For as much of this project that I completed, it was a relatively enjoyable experience. Sometimes, people forgot to tell me about things that needed to be done especially at the beginning of the project (something I will address later), which led to some stressful mornings of measuring and research, trying to get information gathered for an afternoon meeting, but for the most part, it was the most enjoyable task I tried to complete.

THE CORE, TEACHING CLASSES

Teaching my classes was something that I thought I might grow to like. In some ways, I did and in some ways I didn't. The best times I had were with my students in Recording Ensemble in which two or three small groups (bands) would write and record any kind of music they could dream up. It was rewarding to help them progress with their songs and especially rewarding when, a couple of times, a group would take a creative risk and it would pay off. I had a couple of students take the ensemble every single semester that I was here and it has been a great experience watching them go from neophytes who couldn't find their way around recording software to where they are now, running sessions, setting up equipment, and giving creative direction to the talent.

I also had many fun days with my students who were engaged in some way. One of my classes attracted a lot of students from all majors across campus. A few of those students, even if they struggled with the information, made the class sessions fun no matter what we did. They laughed, they joked, they asked silly and serious questions. I will miss working with people who, to whatever degree, took what we were doing at least a little seriously and also tried to have fun with it as well.

What I will absolutely not miss is all the students I would see day after day who would stare blankly at me for an hour, fail the tests, not turn in assignments, and then complain that they didn't get a better grade or that I was simply being a jerk. Something I was very much naive about when considering teaching at a community college was that many of the students who attend such institutions are, frankly, unprepared for post-secondary education. My first semester was basically spent flailing and struggling against that idea, because what I had expected was a room full of mostly excited and engaged students. What I found a majority of, however, was the type that I mentioned previously, disengaged, uninterested, and even occasionally confrontational. In other words, I expected college and what I found was the 13th grade. Students would skip on test days and then expect to make up the test without penalty. They would not turn in any assignments and then expect to have extra credit available. They wouldn't show up for group assignments that required attendance, leaving their groups struggling without them, and then complain that they received a zero on the assignment. I even had a small number of students, usually one or two every semester, who would miss the first month of the semester and then show up unexpectedly at my office wanting to make up all the work that they missed.

All of these things are, for all intents and purposes, the students' responsibility. I am not there to make them come to class or study or do their assignments. But when so many of the students in my classes came in unprepared day after day after day even when I would tell them exactly what they needed to do, it wore me down. One huge reason I never wanted to teach music at any of the lower levels of education was that I didn't want to have to teach kids who simply didn't want to be there. But that is exactly what I found in a lot of students in my classes. They thought audio would be fun, which it is, but like anything else, you have work to actually learn anything about it, and this is exactly what those students were unwilling to do.

I chalk this one up to my lack of foresight and research about the demographic that I would teach. Before I started working, I simply imagined myself with a classroom full of little "me"-s in graduate school, immensely interested in the subject and driven to work with it as a career. This, I now know, was a ridiculous fantasy, and one that I will never again entertain when pondering what it is really like to teach any sort of class whatsoever.

In closing this section, I should reiterate the point that I had a great time working with a handful of my students that, even if they were to never work in audio beyond just being a hobby, they put all of their effort into it. When I didn't make any sense, they asked me questions. When they struggled, they asked me for help. They did the things that one is supposed to do as a student. They admitted that they didn't know everything already and they approached (almost) every task with an open attitude that accepted the unknown.

MISCELLANY

There are a couple of things about the job that, in one case, weren't even really about the job at all, but had an effect on me nonetheless. One of those was the location of my office and lab. It really has nothing to do with the job itself. But as I know that the concept of health not only embodies physical, mental, and emotional states, so too was my job affected by such things as office location and communication channels.

All of my cohorts in the music department were actually in the Arts Center, a very attractive building set apart at one end of the campus, nestled in their offices that had windows, right next to each other. They were able to ask a question to someone across the hall and get an answer. They interacted with adult humans on a daily basis. I on the other hand, was positioned next to a gymnasium, set apart from any faculty that I had any dealings with. As such, I didn't talk to anybody except my students on most normal days. Occasionally, I would take a walk over to the building to have a chat, but schedules being what they were, I rarely encountered anyone. After a few tries at that practice, I gave up and, when not teaching class, just stayed in my office nearly 100% of the time.

Due to this minor yet palpable physical separation, there arose in my perception a lack of team cohesion. I often felt alone, isolated, and unsupported. Whether this was true or not is hard to say. Some behaviors indicated the contrary very strongly. A couple of times, one of my workers called me and we talked about some issues I was having over the phone in the evening. Others would only reinforce it. For instance, I would often find out about time critical tasks from either my program chair or dean's office at the very last minute because they simply forgot I was there. I am not exaggerating about this because, especially in the case of my program chair, they had admitted that they simply forgot about me multiple times. Things like book orders, meetings with the president about the new facility, special events for students such as master classes, piano performance hours, tours, and concerts which needed to have my classes canceled or schedules adjusted. I wouldn't be told about these things sometimes until the day of the event. Sometimes, albeit rarely, I learned about the events from the students. I learned very quickly to roll with the punches. I was never very good at adjusting my schedules on the fly because I am a person who likes to plan out my schedule well in advance. Communication was unfortunately very poor. For the most part, other than the phone conversations I just mentioned, the only times I would ever hear from others in my department was when they wanted something of me.

Let me be very clear on this point: nobody was out to get me or slight me in any way. I understand this! I honestly believe that the lack of contact was simply a byproduct of never actually seeing each other. Out of sight, out of mind. Another aspect to this issue is that I absolutely hate using the phone. I would much rather email you (which sometimes takes too much time depending on what one needs to communicate) or see you in person. This is my hang-up and my hang-up alone but it did affect the way I interacted with coworkers, i.e. almost never.

My unintentional isolation also had a ripple effect on other interactions. There was never a faculty work day when I didn't feel entirely alone. All faculty in the music department except for me were adjunct or had a contract that was not included under the term "faculty" which meant that they were not required to go to faculty gatherings. As a result, I usually went to these by myself. I'll admit to feeling rather depressed as I sat in an auditorium filled with my cohorts as they talked and laughed with each other, realizing that almost nobody in the room had any idea who I was. I tried introducing myself in the beginning, but the conversations were short and awkward and anyone I was trying to engage would slowly gravitate back to interfacing with those that they knew better. After a few modest efforts, I simply resorted to sitting quietly by myself.

EPILOGUE (UPDATE 5/14/10)

It seems that my physical isolation was both a blessing and a curse during my final semester because I had no idea that the events I am about to describe were happening. As it turns out, at the same time I put in my resignation, the director of instrumental music had also made her resignation public. I will call her Elaine here. She called me last night and told me a little about why she was leaving. It made me thankful for the reasons I was leaving.

First, she said that the adjunct piano teacher, Lisa, (not her real name), the new theory teacher hired this year, Pat, (also not her real name), and one of the long time IWCC adjunct music faculty, Bob, (guess) had drafted some sort of proposal for the restructuring of the music department hierarchy. Of course, in their proposal they included promotions for themselves. Apparently, they also took time to write their own job descriptions for the rest of our positions. I have no idea what mine looked like but Elaine's was non-existent. According to them, she did nothing of value.

When Elaine, went to the program chair about it, the program chair dismissed her concerns. So Elaine went next to the Dean who also dismissed her concerns. Eventually, however, Elaine learned that Lisa et al had met with the President to discuss their proposal without everyone present at the meeting. When Elaine discovered this, she again confronted the program chair who again dismissed her concerns, this time telling Elaine a few things that she knew were lies to calm her down.

At this point, Elaine grew angry and went to the Vice President of Academic Affairs. As a result of their discussions, Lisa has been fired and the program chair has lost that title, essentially being demoted. I don't know what sorts of disciplinary action, if any, have been taken on the others.

What I have recounted here is a second-hand account of those events from one source. I don't know everything and the story is one-sided. However the results of these events, the firing of one and the demotion of another, have absolutely occurred, so something must have been true. And I missed the whole thing. I literally had no idea that all of this was going on and in most ways I am truly glad for it. It certainly changes what I wrote earlier about "interacting with adult humans" and it wouldn't have changed my feelings at all. The only reason I wish I would have known was so that Elaine would have had a place to go to release some frustration. My office was outside of her building and would have been a perfect and safe place to vent her frustrations. In the end, I guess it doesn't really matter. Elaine and I have both left, one person was fired, and another demoted. Half of the significant music faculty members are now either gone or removed from their positions. I wouldn't be surprised if pig's blood was involved somehow.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I realize that this post has been largely negative. On one hand, that is exactly why I am leaving. On the other hand, if you've made it all the way to the end of this, you may be wondering if it really was as bad as what I have portrayed here. In that spirit, I am obligated to mention that were it not for one particular person who I will refer to here as Jane. If I had not met Jane, I would never made it as long as I did. I met Jane briefly during my orientation week. We didn't really meet each other beyond pleasantries at that point, but half way through my first semester, we happened to be hanging out near the shared microwaves in her office bay and she asked me how it was going. When I replied honestly, we ended up having a very helpful conversation that gave me fresh perspectives and new energy. Jane helped me through many situations and I am very grateful to have met her. Not only that, Amy and I became friends with her and John, her husband. They were our first real friends in the area and I am truly grateful for being able to get to know them. When the day of our departure arrives, I will be very sad to leave them behind.

In closing, I would like to state to my future self that this post should stand as a record of your first-hand experience in case you begin to get rose-colored glasses.

Dear future self, yes you learned a great deal from holding this position but it was not for you no matter how you may currently feel. I hope you have found something to hold on to there in the future and that the troubles you had when you wrote this will seem insignificant, not because larger ones have replaced them but because the passage of time has diminished their sting.

My Scale Broke

Literally, it really did. I stepped on it and heard a very unpleasant crack. Stepping off, I examined the bottom. Nothing looked abnormal. But when I stepped back on it read 218.something. Flattering but clearly incorrect. I stepped off and turned it over once more, checking the footpads. Each one seemed fine until I got to the last one. Mushy. Oh well. Whatever happened I don't think I can fix it.

I planned to buy a new scale this weekend. I really did. But I ended up working on some music and getting it out on the web and then I worked on my website and I connected my ReverbNation and Facebook and Myspace profiles and blah, blah, blah. I just never got around to buying a scale even though my weight check in was supposed to be yesterday. I felt a little bad because I really wanted to know if I'd lost any weight or simply just broke even since my eating wasn't perfect this week, especially yesterday.

But after my run this morning, again I feel good. Well, let me rephrase that. I feel OK. Not OK as in "blah", but like things will be OK. I'm running. It's more than I was doing a month ago. Anything could be. No matter what I'm eating, I'm still focusing on eating better than I was a month ago (damn you, Halloween). And no matter what I do, things will be OK. I'm doing the best I can do for the moment in time that I currently occupy.

I'm sure all of this sounds like I've found that calm little center in myself amidst all the chaos. Trust me, I don't think that's happened. But if I don't tell myself these things repeatedly, I'll forget to believe them. And I simply can't afford to do that right now. So I'm happy my scale broke. I don't need it. The distance between what I am and where I want to be is only a function of the effort I'm willing to put forward to get there and the time it takes to get there can be irrelevant if I choose to let it be. Some races, I still want to run. Others not so much. I just have to choose my battles and go with what I know. It's the one thing I do best.

Epiphany #2 (Wait, Not Really)

I suffered a little blow to my ego again recently. Basically, my career is in the toilet and I don't know how to get it back out. As a result, according to my counselor, I've been experiencing many symptoms of loss, depression being one. I started Prozac two months ago, but it still didn't control my rapid mood swings, sometimes daily, up and down, up and down. It can be dizzying and frustrating living like that. I went over two weeks only getting 3-5 hours of sleep a day. I played a lot of video games to keep my mind off my troubles. It was during that time that I had the dream I wrote about previously.

Suddenly, things seemed so clear to me and I started to write it all down. There was so much going through my head that I knew I wouldn't get to it all before my son woke up for the day. But you know what happened? I got back to it when he was napping and reread what I had written. It was all true. But it was no epiphany. Just a lot of words that I had already been through many times before. It was then that I began wondering about mood swings.

The next time I saw my psychiatrist, we did another bipolar screening. I answered yes to more questions this time after clarification of some of the possible examples of symptoms. The medicine I got was expensive. I don't want to be on it for long. I'm not really sure how long I'll be on it.

But here's the thing. Since I have nothing else going for me right now, I've started a running program called Couch to 5k. Well, I started like a typical beginner at first, running as far and as fast as I could muster, but ending up hurting by the end of it. But since I'd been told about this program by a friend, I thought I'd try it. I'm currently on my second day and I was able to complete my longest distance yet, about two and half miles with a pace of about 12:30. It was raining. It was windy. It was cold. When I got back to the house I was tired and soaked. But I felt great. Better than I have in a long time.

If what I had was no epiphany and merely the overactive misfirings of my synapses, so be it. Since I've started running, I've given myself the only real goal I have left. To get healthier. And job or no job, it feels damn good.