Michegos

So, the last two weeks I have been mostly on the East Coast, first for Thanksgiving (not pictured) and then for the big conference for my field, this year taking place in Spookytown, believe it or not (also not pictured). Too much eating, socializing, and in the case of the conference, thinking. And watching men posture and peacock around, and hang enormous theoretical constructs on thin and somewhat absurd data, sometimes apparently ill-comprehended as well. These things wipe me out, both family events (those mostly in a good way, although the weight of parental expectations, especially vis-a-vis grandchildren and permanent jobs, can be, well, weighty) and the professional ones. Plus there's all the explaining of self, life circumstances, expectations, etc. etc. for both sets of people, where I want to put a good spin on things, and at present mostly can because really things here are quite lovely except for the part where my future is, for a change of pace, completely uncertain. All that self-reflection and self-presentation leads to too much existential musing, which is just plain bad for you. The family stuff is generally not so stressful, but I always leave these conferences feeling hugely ambivalent about myself and my place in the world, and in the field, and whether I should be in it at all. So many people I like and so much thinking and writing and teaching about stuff that I think is cool and interesting and worthwhile! So much posturing and absurdity and little expressions of unkindness and hierarchization, and in the business meeting, so many freaking people who have had the option to hire me and have not done it! It can be a bit much. To put it mildly.

But as I remembered yesterday, also exhausting can just be the physical demands of schedules themselves. For the family stuff, it's long travel to NY and then excessive driving to various family places on high-traffic days in a high-density kind of place. For the conference, it was not just travel back east, but then trying to balance socializing with Spookytown friends I left behind (for those of you not there you may recall that the social life was just really shaping up right about the time that I left) with conference socializing and attendance. I didn't get in until like 1 every night, in part because I was still on California time, but had to get up by 7 every morning because I had to be there every day at 8 or earlier for various obligations. Yesterday was particularly exhausting -- I got up at 4 am PST and didn't get back home (as in LaLa Land home) until 12:30 am PST, with a conference panel, conference shmoozing, socializing with Set A of friends, socializing with Set B of friends, flight to airport A, flight to airport B, and then drive home.

I think I'm only upright because I kind of moved to East Coast time. I had all these ideas about today involving a talk on campus at noon, lecture prep for Wednesday, and more, but now I am thinking that really a great part of it should be spent horizontal and incommunicado. Starting now maybe...