a non-blogger returns briefly to the blog

I spent most of Friday night watching Youtube video of Husker Du and Billy Bragg. Or was it Saturday afternoon? I don't remember. Weekends are like that these days--distinctly non-distinct. It was pretty odd for me to go from a .5 appointment at my job to about a 1.2 practically overnight. I work 8 to 5 Tuesday - Friday, and 9 am to 9 pm on Mondays. Sometimes, I come in on Sunday. Between the regular job(s) and the freelance stuff, I feel like I never have time to breathe, and Friday evening through Sunday bedtime seems like the same day. Not that it's a bad day--there's usually some cooking, some drinking, some reading, some video-viewing, some time with my lady, but...well, all of this is to say I'm really looking forward to summer.

*

I have a 9-month contract, but there is likely going to be funds enough for me to come in 1 or 2 days a week for the first 8 weeks of summer. This is good. If I'm lucky, they'll let me teach the UO Football Composition Bootcamp course again this September, which was taxing but enjoyable last year.

*

I note that 2 bloggers today (or I've noted today, I don't remember when the posts were written) have blogged about longing, or as one says, Sehnsucht. It occurs to me that I haven't had this feeling in a very long time. And I haven't been writing. And I'm sure the two must be connected. And it's not a matter of being in or out of or between love--I've experienced this emotion in all phases of relationshipness. It's not specific to a physical desire or desires. It's more of an emotional void that one knows is unfillable and simultaneously strives to fill. That part of me is gone. I don't know where it went. And so I should be content, right? But oddly, I'm not. Maybe that longing somehow defined me in a way that it no longer can. I still get depressed, still have huge waves of sadness, but no Sehnsucht.

*

There is dog sleeping under my desk. He looks simultaneously comfortable and put-out.