Battle-Planning After Defeat

I'm not feeling deep today. At most, I'd love to just fall into the hole and watch things on the way down, but there's no energy to step on the shovel.

There's rain, lots of it, falling on the really old building that I work in; rain falling around the big trees and the red bricks and into the water-heavy, green grass. There are little waterfalls rumbling off of the roof like a rude crowd.

There's a space of two hours during which I will be here alone, until a meeting -- a meeting that keeps me that much longer from hugs from my sons and wife.

There's a day behind me during which, if you watched it in fast-rewind, you'd see me, head-down, typing and mouse-clicking, non-stop, piecing together next year's academic schedule. You'd see me, still, for the most part, but flinging my head back now and again to relieve my neck pain -- stopping here and there to skip a song I wasn't in the mood for on my iPhone.

You wouldn't see a lunch-break.

There's something sort of sickening hovering over me that I really can't place -- a feeling of too much of my time being stolen today; the feeling that this theft has taken away the desire to do even those things I enjoy. The day has been spaced just perfectly so that there is no time for the meaningful things in-between the meaningless, insistent responsibilities. Today, there will be work and there will be sleep. Today's face will wind up on the back of a milk-carton.