Procrastination

Yesterday, I got my car's brakes fixed, read more of Cloud Atlas, and slept too much. Today, I cleaned my kitchen, paid bills, bought groceries, cooked lunch and dinner, read the paper, , watched baseball (Yea! Astros!) and football (the Texans SUCK!), went to the library and 3 bookstores.

Instead of all of the above, I needed to grade papers, but grading is the one thing I didn't do.

I have spent the entire weekend avoiding grading a huge load of papers. I just cannot bring myself to work on them here at home. Tonight, I have even thought that it would be better to just die than have to ever grade another paper or go back to work tomorrow or any day after tomorrow. Of course, I'm being melodramatic, but I really could have stayed in bed all day and could probably do the same tomorrow. Yesterday afternoon, after spending $500 on my car's brake system (a depressing but necessary expenditure), I came home planning to work all evening so that I wouldn't have to work today. Instead of working, I slept all afternoon and into the night. I realized when I woke up at 8:00 last night that I must be really depressed. I love to nap, but I don't usually sleep that long unless I'm hiding from some bad feelings. I have been trying to be positive and put on a happy face for work. I have been doing this successfully until this week. I'm not sure what triggered the failure of my facade, but I have to find a way to patch it back together if I'm going to get through the rest of this school year and Open House tomorrow night.

I would love to just walk away, but I can't afford to do that. I have a plan to get out of teaching next year, but somehow I have to finish this year without ruining my reputation as a teacher. You never know when I might need a recommendation.

We are supposed to wear our school shirts tomorrow, but I don't think I will. My newest one shrank in the wash, it's a man's shirt (they are always men's shirts), and I hate it. I have no idea what I will wear instead. I wish I could just call in sick and not go at all ever, but I will be out next week for two days, visiting a school in Amarillo. I'm on a committee that is going, but I wish I weren't going and that I was no longer on that committee. I feel that the committee's work is so futile. No one really listens to us teachers anymore. I don't feel that the administrators respect or appreciate us at all. They don't listen to our ideas and rarely, if ever, respond to our emails, at least not for a month.

Enough. I have to stop writing this now. I'm just depressing myself even more. For now, I will play Scarlett, "I can't think about that right now. If I do, I'll go crazy. I'll think about that tomorrow." Later.