The Joy of Tulips

Tulips…whereas my abandoned tulips planted too late have not shown signs of life (yet!), I have been getting a lot more joy than usual from my tulips.

I always love to watch the tight green buds become so incredibly bright. I love the colors and the wild combinations, the way the light shines through the petals. I love watching the colors of each tulip change, the yellow petals with an almost undetectable red edge becomes a red streaked.

At a time when many joys are inaccessible, this accessible joy has expanded more than I would have expected to be possible.

Take Time to Do Nothing

I’m taking my own advice. The pressure to use our newfound free time is absurd. Also, as someone now without childcare who is working remotely full time (and my job is significantly impacted because a majority of it is face-to-face teaching that is now online), I don’t have more free time. In some ways I have even less.

But it’s true that time itself is different. Our entire way of life is upended, and of course ways we structure time are changing. Try to relax into that. To truly be our “best selves,” we need to process and adjust and develop our long-term perspectives. Overwhelming productivity is actually going to slow down that process.

For a related take on this, check out Rachel Charlene Lewis’s “All the ways the internet is pushing hustle culture during the quarantine.”

Tornado Warning

My first attempt to write this post got erased as I went to the basement due to a tornado warning siren. Now I have something different and more succinct to say.

Apparently there is something called the Four Stage strategy from the comedy Yes, Prime Minister, which I have not watched. I just read a blog post about and am now fairly expert. It is a simple four stage non-strategic strategy beginning with denial of the problem and ending with regret that any action is too late.

When a tornado warning comes, the wise course of action is to go to the basement or nearest shelter. It is not to look out the window to see if there is a tornado. It is not to try to film the tornado with your cell phone while you wait to see if it is really coming for you. Just do the cautious thing. And don’t assume that because the other ten tornadoes didn’t actually pull off the roof over your head you’re immune.

It costs relatively little to assume that a tornado warning means a tornado is, as my kids say, “out to get you.” By the time you know for sure it is out to get you, it’s too late. The right process is to heed the warning and, if you can, to hope for the best.

What You See out Your Window Is a Sculpture

We have a sculpture out each window--not just a privacy fence, a wall, a cityscape, a landscape. The topography of a major city is, like mountains and trees and rocks, not just what it is made up of, but is a massive sculpture, forming the space. 

One of my favorite sculptors, Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975) said: "All my sculpture comes out of landscape,” and, "I'm sick of sculptures in galleries & photos with flat backgrounds... no sculpture really lives until it goes back to the landscape, the trees, air & clouds." She shaped space, carved out, created mass and stillness and significant spaces within the mass of a piece. 

If you’re looking out your window, again (and again and again), look again. If you’re looking at a neighborhood, a building, a roof, a wall, your neighbor’s trashcans, a tremendous cityscape, a suburb, empty fields, wooded forests, water...Look again. Look at the empty spaces, the spaces that appear empty because of distance, the spaces between and the spaces carved out. 

Enjoy the view.

Planning Does not Equal Panic

I’m a cautious person by inclination, especially when the consequences of the risk are dire. Heard of Covid-19 lately? Even if the risk is low, if people are going to die, I’m not a fan. I have been called pessimistic, and I’m enough of a pessimist that I think acknowledging the possibility of bad outcomes is valuable. If nothing terrible happens, great, and don’t think your smug condescending attitude towards caution is going to sway me. The light you see at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of a fast-approaching train.

And I’m enough of a rhetoric-adjacent expert to be frustrated by the implication that any show of caution is essentially an unjustified panic.

Sometimes the annoyance of disruption is worth it, and a global pandemic is one of those times.

Meanwhile, stock up on books.

Switching from F2F to Online Teaching due to Coronavirus

Due to “an abundance of caution”—about Covid 19 aka coronavirus—my university has switched face to classes over to online for the coming weeks. I have been thinking about this shift for a few weeks, and actively working on this shift since I saw the email four hours ago. Maybe some professors get paid enough for this, but junior faculty at public teaching institutions don’t, to say nothing of contingent faculty. 

Making the switch elegantly would take far more time than I have, but even switching inelegantly makes the importance of medium so clear. This is abundantly obvious to anyone who has converted a F2F course to online, or, say concerted a recipe designed for roasting in an oven so that it would work as a freezer meal for an Instant Pot. Since I believe that we should “cancel everything,” I think this tremendous workload is worth it. 

But I can’t help but be sad about what will inevitably be lost in the shift: student presentations that typically lead to students actually asking classmates if they have feedback on tricky points or if they have questions (without my intervention ! It’s beautiful!) will be cancelled. Moments of discovery that emerge because of a particular classroom dynamic and semi-off-topic comment will never happen. In meeting the reality of the situation, sometimes shifts like this are necessary.

In meeting the reality of the fact that people have to eat dinner every day (why!?!), it can be worth it to turn your crispy roasted potatoes and whatever into a risky stew, and maybe an apricot jam broth is a pretty awesome idea after all. In meeting the reality of a unknown pandemic, I’m hopeful that some great and unexpected moments of discovery will happen for me and my students. 

This isn’t a referendum on online learning, or the thoughtful people who teach online well, but we should probably also remind ourselves and those around us that living online is not a solution to everything, even as it opens doors and provides options we need right now.

Time of Day

Time of day matters. And 2:30 pm is not the time. Afternoon is just a lull, a dip, and 2:30 is peak afternoon lull.

It is not the right time for anything, except maybe the last caffeine drink—or decaf that you’re half pretending has caffeine—of the day. In fact, that is exactly what it is the time for: a coffee! A cappuccino! You can do hot or iced. You can add a flavor or a sprinkle, or not. Your choice.

2:30 is not the time to take on a creative or complex project. It is not even the time to try to have a thoughtful conversation. A plan, an idea, a question with the power to inspire as late as 1 pm will have had its potential and significance mysteriously drained away by 2:30. There is no away around it, so you might as well lean in. If you can’t schedule a nap at 2:30, try to schedule your most pointless meeting for 2:30. Or use that time to do a simple, repetitive task like laundry or responding to surveys.

Set yourself up for success by matching up low energy times of day with tasks that require minimal output. 2:30 is where time management and energy management meet.

Efficiency vs Savoring Transitions

Efficiency experts tend to ignore transitions. The reality is that one doesn’t toggle instantly from being asleep to being at work, even if work is the kitchen table mere steps away. An efficient good morning looks like this:

1. 5:30 am wake up (efficient people get up really early)

2. 5:31 brush teeth and throw on workout gear (efficient people work out early on the morning)

3. 5:30 (running or yoga)

4. 6:30 (great workout! Showering now)

5. 6:40 (get dressed and have breakfast)

6. 6:50 (hard at work, or at least on your commute and doing something productive)

An actual good morning is literally over an hour of transitions. Getting out of bed. Checking the weather: there are a few raindrops clinging to the window, but it’s not raining now. Making coffee. Staring at the wall wondering about painting it a different color. Reading parts of several newspaper articles. 

This is all significant transition work. One doesn’t simply become awake. One spends some time trying to come to terms with the fact of the day ahead. Getting a grip on reality. 

Even if you’re a morning exerciser who thrives on rushing through this significant transition, there are other transitions throughout a day, and they deserve to be taken seriously, savored, rather than being eliminated in the name of getting things done. 

The transition is the liminal space, the time in between. It is after and before; it is a time of possibility. Things become visible, or nearly so, that would at other times be obscured in the darkness or overwhelmed by the light. Transitions are times to be valued, not eliminated.

Green Objects

When things are green, I tend to like them just a bit better.

The green one is clearly the best.