Wednesdays are hard...

Today was another ordinary day at work.

I got in just after 7:30. Which meant that I left the house a bit past seven. Which meant that I woke at 6, fed the horses and the dogs, opened the coop for the day. Then I made oatmeal, fed the dogs, ate my oatmeal, and realized I was running late. A quick brush of teeth and hair and I was our the door.

Leaving so much behind. Undone.

On the way to work, I found myself crying to these lyrics from Train:

'did you sail across the Sun?
Did you make it to the Milky Way
To find the lights all faded
And that Heaven is over-rated?'

And so I had to pull over for a minute until I could take a deep breath.

And then I went on.

I got to work, and got ready for class, planning out which problems I would do, that fit the humorous 'super-hero' theme I'm working on. In the past couple of days, we've been Superman, Spiderman, Bruce Willis in Armageddon, and the X-men. Also search-and-rescue. I checked email, and started to answer one.

Off to class, and for 50 minutes, answered, hinted and directed, with all the intensity that only I am capable of. They laughed, they cried, they made jokes and solved problems.

After class, I was swamped with students, one after the other asking the same three questions, demonstrating that they didn't pay ANY attention to last week's problems worked in class. For an hour and ten minutes, I asked the same questions over and over: 'have written down your variables? Where is your free-body-diagram? What is this letter on your paper? Where is the rest of your work?' and it's hard to remember that they were only 5 out of 86.

Then finding that I had no time to go over my notes, I headed off to class with the speaker for the afternoon seminar. I've known him since I was a post-doc, and he's new faculty at another University. He's come to see me teach, and get some pointers. So I start my lecture, and get to the second page. Where I realize pages are missing. Because I used them in another course last year, and never put them back. And didn't have time to check before class. So now I have to 'wing it', on the explanation of core-collapse supernovae, with photo disintegration, charge destruction and neutron degenerate matter. I'm thrilled when the class side-tracks me on magnetic fields of neutron stars, and this disguises the fact that I was completely unprepared.

Back to my office after class, a line of students waiting to hear me ask them 'Where's your free-body-diagram?'... But it's not office hours, so they just have to wait for me to be done with the visitor. He asks me about teaching for an hour or so, and I give him all my astro 101 materials, so he'll have some kind of help in his new job, and agree to mentor him when he needs it. Then it's time to take the guest to lunch. A student stops me in the hall, just to ask me a 'quick question', that turns into three. Which are all basically about the definition of the words in the problems.

So off we go to the Union Building, where the food ranges in quality from bleh to inedible. But it's what we've got.

Back again after an awkward hour of conversation between this newly minted faculty member and one of our professors (who should be emeritus by now) about the 'lost generation' of scientists, who obediently filled the pipeline, only to find that no one is retiring, and there are no jobs. Some things are bad, and others are worse. The average time a PhD astrophysicist spends in post-docs is now 8 years. EIGHT. On average. So some spend much, much longer than that.

Back to the building, explaining again that LAST year was the last ditch year for Science Olympiad. That it didn't matter anymore if it was good or if we wanted it, but that it couldn't be done. And yes, it was me that made that decision (and, goddamnit, if everyone cared that much about it, where in the hell were all of you when I was lying on the bathroom floor because I couldn't stand up because the stress had shut down my entire digestive system?!). Or maybe i've just been having this discussion so many times that every conversation about Science Olympiad feels like it goes like that...

Off to a poorly attended seminar. An embarrassment, when bringing people in from other places. Especially friends.

And the person who is supposed to shepherd the speaker for the rest of the afternoon is off to lab. So I take him up to show him the planetarium, completely forgetting my regularly scheduled meeting with my staff. And he's duly impressed that our 'little' planetarium has sold shows in 26 states, 17 countries, and they've been translated into 8 languages...

So away he goes, and I check in with my staff, and keep them going on their projects. The Physics Open House is Friday, and there are lots of preparations in train for that. Back to my office to send electronic copies of physics at home experiments, that need to go to the copy center, hopefully to come back before the Open House. It should have happened first thing this morning. And maybe they won't get done in time. But there was nothing I could do about it.

I check the rest of my emails, and my phone messages, which include a long list of people getting in touch with me about the parts of my job that I'm terrible at---accounting, paperwork, interim reports. And co-authors demanding instant responses. And who even knows why OSP left me two messages on my phone and an email asking for a meeting ASAP. I don't know what they want, but it probably means I'm in trouble. Again.

And I look at the clock and it's after 4:30. I've been here for nine solid hours, and the To-Do list just got longer and longer. That just seemed counter-productive. So I left.

And on the way home, I thought about what our visitor had to say about all the things I'm doing (teaching multiple classes, writing books, running an internationally recognized planetarium, running a Museum and multiple outreach programs reaching tens of thousands of people a year, and so on and so on...) and I thought about winding up in the emergency room last year. And i thought about having to pull off to the side of the road this morning. And I thought 'Ok. So it's a problem. Every problem has a solution somewhere.' And I made a plan. I'll make a list of what I do, over the next two weeks. And then I'll study it. And then I'll figure out how to cut it in half.

Because it turns out that I'm really good at saying 'No' to me, and to John, and to my family and friends, and the people and creatures who matter to me. But I'm terrible at saying it to people who have nothing to offer me but money. So that has to change. And it has to start with me.