Productivity is down

What a wasted weekend!!
I can't remember working so hard all weekend and getting so little accomplished. I've had two major concerns: first, the conference paper (which still isn't done); second, I may be teaching the lit class for the next week and a half.
Therefore, I've been writing my paper, reading "A Rose for Emily," writing some more, reading "Hills Like White Elephants," writing some more. I'm beginning to feel a little more pressure than I expected in this role as instructor. That doesn't include suffering through the modernism, pedagogy, and drama in my own grad courses. Men need their own version of Calgon, I think. Something that doesn't cause hangovers, though.

I seriously feel like I'm taking on a bit too much responsibility this semester. It's helping me in the long run (I hope), but right now it's kicking me square in the crotch. Between conferences, teaching, running the WC as asst. to the asst.'s assistant, et al; keeping up with my readings, completing journals, researching, etc. --I'm about to lose my fucking mind. I would probably scream at this moment, but then I'd wake up everyone in the house. Right now, I really would like to go to bed, but I need to write more on this paper. I need to get ahead, and it's not quite happening that way. Nope. Not so much. I think, over the next several weeks, I will try to back off a little, so that it doesn't start affecting my grades. I have a small fear that I may revert to my old self --- one who organized this event, headed this committee, arranged this particular thingamabob--- while the grades dramatically nose-dived. Soon after, I found myself stuck in a shit job. Well at least I've got my BA this time.

Read Graham Greene's "The Destructors" and was interested in what other people thought of it. Seemed pretty freakin' wheels-off to me. But it's exactly that type of mindless violence that is very appealing to teenage boys, especially when it involves the destruction of something (a mailbox, a bird's nest, a doll) that someone else may hold dear, but generally lacks an intent to hurt individuals physically. It's what people where I'm from would call "simple meanness." Although as an adult, I cringe at the damage because I know the difficulty and effort and pride this old man felt toward his home; as a child, I may not have agreed with it, but I would probably have been in there sawing like crazy.