Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Moving Ahead in the World

Oh, hi there.  Didn't see you come in!

Well, we all know what's coming, so I'll get it out of the way: another apology for not posting The Wolf of Albright.   By all rights, I should be bowing my head in contrition.  Unfortunately, I feel pretty awesome right now, and feeling awesome does not precisely correspond with feeling contrite.  So there will be no contrition tonight, my friends.  Maybe next week!

Actually, my current emotional state is less close to "awesome" than it is to "utter panic."  As often happens when I'm not looking where I'm going, I have run headlong into a week that is overcrowded with deadlines and time sinks, circumstances for which I have no one to blame except myself.  And BP, I guess.  I can always blame BP.

To put it simply, I have to be out of this apartment by June 30th, and it has to be completely clean if I ever want to see even a fraction of my security deposit again.  A cursory glance at this place suggests I'll be needing a vacuum cleaner, a mop, and a lot of cleaning fluid.  Since my vacuum was stolen last summer (along with my television and my sense of personal security, two things I'll never see again) and I haven't so much as looked at a mop in years, I'll need to acquire them both at some point this week.  Once I do, it's down to the dirty business of making this place look halfway presentable.

But in the meantime, I have to compose a multi-disciplinary curriculum plan for a class that's due next Tuesday.   I have class until noon on Monday and Tuesday, which are also the days when I need to remove all of my possessions from this apartment and place them into the new one (as well as help my roommate do the same).  This necessarily means that the curriculum plan must be completed by Sunday, and therefore will consume the entirety of my weekend (the part of which isn't consumed by obsessive cleaning, that is).

And finally, my classmates have conspired to drag me into the forest from this Wednesday to Friday, where we will probably sleep in crude structures, build unwisely large campfires, become imprudently intoxicated, and end up being eaten by bears.  Although this outcome would relieve me of all my subsequent duties, with my luck I'll probably survive with only one or two limbs eaten by bears, thus relieving me of nothing and adding prosthetic maintenance to my list of responsibilities.

So while outwardly I display my typical attitude of detached cool and general awesomeness, inwardly my mind is all abuzzin' with a million schemes to escape my situation via every manner of vehicle, from freight train to zeppelin.  Somehow, I must combine these two aspects of my personality to produce an action plan which satisfies all the demands upon my time and leaves me happy, energized, and productively engaged in bettering myself.  Otherwise I will fail my class, be forcibly evicted and fined, and be ingested by a grizzly bear.

When choices are put like that, they aren't really choices at all.

So where does this leave The Wolf of Albright?  In the lurch, until at least next Wednesday, at which point I will be done with school for the summer and settling comfortably in my new digs.  I may even have a brand new writing desk, which will make the entire writing process more professional and ergonomic.  If I can justify it as a student/teacher-related expense, I may even be (partially) compensated for it.  That, my friends, is how you move ahead in the world.

No comments:

Post a Comment