Not All Who Wander Are Lost

Living The No-Win Existence

Still pretty depressed. Not much solution or even movement on the things that were going wrong in the last few days. I'll try to keep the kvetching short so the malady stays contained:

In the professional arena, though from the outside and in terms of what I hate to but am supposed to call "service" the new Information Commons program and its companion service MICA (Multimedia Info Commons Assistance) seem to be a great success, the rut is deep and I cannot rise above it. With no budget for this new program, I can't even get IT to spand a moment talking to me, let alone put the spaces I work in on the LAN; had to actually leave my post for an hour on Tuesday to help a student with work on her laptop. Supervisors seem to feel I am demanding and inappropriate when I ask them for assistance or try to run a precedence-setting moment by them on-the-spot in order to cover my back, when I know if I hadn't checked in, they'd call me on it later.

Also, I still have no office due to tension between myself and my now-mostly-invisible supervisors about why I need one. Seems to me the need for storage and a place to make and recieve phone calls which cannot be overheard is intuitively obvious, now that I've missed several important messages and their corresponding moments of possibility. Am I doomed to wander the earth, hold meeting not-for-public-overhearing in public spaces surrepititiously, work out of my car? It's not a status thing, I swear. I have six desks and no walls or drawers; after six years and finally an adminisrative position and mandate you'd think someone would recognize the need to give me a space in which I can do administrative work without having to stand cautiously, awkwardly between visitors and my computer screen.

I take to counting the office spaces of others covetously. The instructional librarians work at the reference desk, have a classroom for each pair of them to use, and have huge and walled offices. A woman who only works in my department half time shares my job title, has three computer labs with new computers, two large offices and a classroom for her language teaching, and every time I stop by a staff technician is tweaking her space. I asked him once if he might be stopping by to help me get network connectivity for the IC and MICA spaces; not only did he not directly answer the question, he also didn't realize that we had a program at all. The head of the IT technical services staff stopped by the library yesterday, told me I was third of four things on his list for that space and that day, helped with three library issues, and then diappeared and never returned.

I don't blame any of them. That doesn't make it hurt less.

On the personal front the baby chases the cat around the house trying to kiss it, looks for the dog to snuggle with first thing in the morning, calls for mame every three seconds when we try to play together, won't sit for stories or playtime, walks away without acknowledgement. I get to deal with poop in the tub and get neither physical affection or attention. She'd rather cry alone than with me. The global glut-source we call 'net says this is typical, but casual water-testing shows that, at least within the forest-walls of this multigenerational boarding school, I am alone in my experience, so Darcie's suggestion that I form a fatherhood support group becomes moot when no one else has issues to share. It makes it worse to find affection from other people's children in dining halls and in-house staff meetings. I love my daughter; it isn't fair to either of us for me to covet her in-community peers instead.

Tired, too, after hours upon hours of working too hard and sleeping too little, too many 8-4 days and late nights of duty and house staff meetings and radio shows, with time for blogging now only in the morning when I'm covering a media center which, dead silent when all students and teachers are in class, needs no coverage. Meanwhile, we close during lunch and turn people away.

I don't blame her, or Darcie. It doesn't make it hurt less.

Last night I walked the dog, half asleep in untucked shirt, and passed the house in the darkness before I realized I was going home. The skies were clear; the moon had set, and the Pleides; though the baby kicks me in the night between us in our too-small bed and I am dreamless, I sleep alone.

I'm starting to blame myself.

Maybe it's time for therapy after all.