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This is the time of year, mid-December, the calm between finals and the holidays, when I recharge my body and my brain. Sunday it was a backyard exercise consisting of jumping jacks, jump rope, squats, calf raises, and three abdominal workouts. Today I walked a total of three miles from Lomita to the Torrance Southeast Library to check out “The Best American Essays 2001” and Neil Gaiman’s “The View from the Cheap Seats”—two books I didn’t know existed an hour before they were in my hands.
For the fall semester, I taught two courses at two community colleges, had a six-hour-a-week job at one of those schools and was enrolled in three graduate courses at California State University, Dominguez Hills. Phone conversations with friends were relegated to my nightly walks around the neighborhood. Responses to student emails often took less than an hour. Responses to personal emails took days. I found time to watch the Lakers win a championship for the eleventh time since I’ve been alive and for reasons unrelated to COVID-19, I haven’t had a drink since my cousin got married February 29 in San Diego—the day before was the last time I’ve cut my hair.
The three weeks between the fall semester and the two five-week courses I am teaching during winter are supposed to be productive. At least that’s what I’ve been telling myself for 16 weeks. Now, here they are, me and nothing but time, and I’m unsure of myself. I don’t need to finish my memoir, but I need to be close. Says who? I don’t have an agent. No one’s asking for this manuscript. I also need to edit essays for a collection I have been talking about since the first Obama administration. Yesterday I started Netflix’s “Manhunt: Deadly Games.” Today I finished all 10 episodes.
The best part of staying busy with work is never having to look inward, never staring at a blank screen and asking myself “now what?” Grading papers is easy because I create rubrics. Connecting Aristotle’s logos, ethos and pathos with President Donald Trump’s speeches and tweets for a History & Theory of Rhetoric class might not be easy, per se, but there’s a prompt. Everything I am supposed to do during these three weeks is not easy. Everything I am supposed to do during these three weeks gives me anxiety and makes me feel like a loser. I am 41 years old. I should have books on the shelves.
I enjoy exercising and reading, but enjoyment is not the only reason I do them. They’re distractions. I’m not afraid of success. I’m afraid of failure.
If my English and journalism students learn anything from me, I hope it’s that they are capable of so much more than they realize. Many of my students—English, in particular—begin semesters by expressing their distaste for and lack of interest in the subject. I don’t try to convert my students into English majors, but I want them to fight the fear and the doubt. I want them to experience a sense of accomplishment, of having pushed through when giving up would have been so much easier.
Now, during my time off, I want to feel that way, to have some of what I give.
A vacation would help recalibrate my thoughts, but there’s nowhere to go. For the final two weeks of the semester, I told myself I would spend a few days in the desert, alone, staring at the stars. Now, I can’t. Governor Gavin Newsom’s December 3 order has closed lodgings to anyone who isn’t an “essential worker.” I am a teacher. I’d like to think of myself as essential.
I agree with the order. I should stay home. Still, I need a vacation.
I’d settle for a staycation, the portmanteau that combines the words “stay” and “vacation” as a way to encourage people to visit areas near our homes with the same vigor and lust we exhibit in foreign lands, but options are limited and a county-wide curfew means I have to be home before 10 p.m. Whether my mental health likes it or not, the next three weeks will be spent writing at home.
That idea frightens me because it has the potential to confirm what I have suspected since I began keeping a journal in eleventh grade: Maybe I’m not that good. Or maybe this is what people mean when they say stay-at-home orders have made them unmotivated and depressed. I’ve kept myself so busy with work and school that I haven’t been plugged into a global consciousness and perhaps I’m feeling now what others have felt for most of 2020. It’s not me—it’s COVID-19.
Or maybe I’m not that good.
My grades have been submitted and preparation for my winter classes is complete. Besides exercise and the occasional nap, there is nothing preventing me from becoming the writer I’ve always wanted to be. I have until January 4 to write the words on the page and rewrite the narrative in my mind.
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