Bad Time Management

I've been amazingly slothful in keeping up with this blog. The holiday season always forces me into hibernation, anti-social behavior and inertia. It's certainly not for lack of subject matter. I've been actively ruminating on a number of topics ranging from local/regional development issues, music and art, movie reviews and political observations.

Meanwhile, I start back to teaching this week. This semester I'll be there four days a week. I'm always conflicted about teaching. On one hand, I enjoy meeting a new batch of students, setting up the semester's ideals and getting into a more structural schedule. On the other hand, I hate getting up early in the morning(class starts at 8am on Tuesday and Thursday), sitting in my steel egg for 45 minutes(each way), road wrastling with a bunch of other cranky highway slaves, and basically not being able to do as much other work (i.e. making music, getting more involved in helping my town become a better place, fixing my house and having political polemics with my friends:)

Anyway, I'm not really complaining. I have more time than most folks, and I spend most of it doing things I enjoy. But driving all over N.E. Ohio for the most mundane of activities like work, shopping, errands etc... seems like such a waste of time. I'd rather sit on a train or streetcar where I could be productive. I think it's too much to ask of most folks to have to operate heavy machinery for a large part of their day. People work hard. They get tired. Inevitably, concentration drifts, tempers flare, and critters unpredictably(at least it seems that way to us)dart out in front of our vehicles to scare the hell out of us. Trying to juggle putting on makeup, shaving, talking on our damn cell phones, tweaking knobs on our audio devices, pounding coffee(this activity should be savored) and slobbering down some cheap, inferior, irresponsibly prepared ration just seems unfair and frankly, to be a flawed way of life. I mean, people get paid a lot of money to operate machinery. Why should we have to do it? Driving should be reserved for those moments of leisure, like traveling, or for those situations when transporting heavy/bulky goods prohibit carrying them long distances. Much more on this later...