Priorities

Have you ever been in a rut? I mean, a big, deep, garantuan rut that you simply cannot escape no matter how hard you try? That has been my predicament for months. I was working on my MBA (FINALLY finished it last week!) and I've taken on more and more responsiblity at work. I've been given these 'other dutires as assigned' not because I am the most qualified to do them but because I am the only one stupid enough to volunteer. I genuinely want to help my studets, so some of the tasks I took on were for that purpose. Our pre-dissertation and dissertation templates were a disaster, so one of my colleagues and I were itching to get our hands on them. Once we got permission to redo them, we worked really hard. I even worked on Christmas to try to get it done so I could start distributing them to students in the new year. I also got corraled into 'temporarily' taking over the facilitation of the virtual residency that is held every nine weeks. Now, it's not looking quite so temporary. My boss also laid in my and my colleague's (we call ourselved Laverne and Shirley) lap an onsite residency that is supposed to be held the last weekend of April, although it may not happen because there is not a lot of interest from students. There were three students signed up last week and we were told we'd go forward with it if there are five, which I think is really stupid because nobody wants to attend a residency that only has five students. We've already put quite a bit of work into planning it, though. In December, I started teaching a class. Up until that point, I was solely working as a doctoral mentor, helping students plan their research and write their dissertations. As of right now, I have 19 mentees and 14 students in my class, so grading takes a long time. And now, to top that off, starting in April, Laverne and Shirley will be mentoring every student who enters the pre-dissertation phase to help them get their research project hammered out so they can be handed off to another chair to conduct their research and write their dissertation.

Most of this my own fault. I was so eager to prove how valuable I am to the DBA program that I jumped at every opportunity. But now, I just feel like I'm being taken advantage of. Laverne and Shirley get the work because it gets done, but, essentially, all we've done is bail out the other chairs who cannot get their students through their dissertations because they never had a good study to start with, and we've make it easy for them to say no to requests to take on additional responsibilites. But I'm tired. We had the virtual residency yesterday from 9:00 to 3:00 and I felt like I could sleep for 15 hours after it was over. One of the chairs who presented was supposed to talk about chapter 3 in the dissertation but instead, she talked about our proposal review board. I was so stressed out and angry that I couldn't see straight. And on top of everything that is going on in my department (lack of oversight, lack of accountability, and lack of caring), major changes are being made at the university level that are stressing me out. It wouldn't be so bad if the changes made sense, but they don't. I've been preparing myself to step back for a while now. I'm tired of working 60 or more hours a week while the rest of the chairs work 20. I moved to the Gulf Coast so I could enjoy the warm weather and sand between my toes, but all I do is sit in front of a computer screen and read poorly written papers that make no sense and stress out about things that are out of my control, wondering what is going to be put on my plate next, and only finding out because Laverne tells me about it (my boss rarely meets with me to ask me how I feel about taking on these projects).

Two week ago tomorrow, my daughter texted me and told me that one of my son's old girlfriends died at the age of 29. She was a wife and a mother of two little girls ages 5 and 3. She fought cancer for 2 1/2 years and on Sunday, February 19^th, she went home to be with the Lord. I did not know Lexy. I probably met her once or twice 15 years ago, but if I'd have met her on the street, I wouldn't have known it was her. Yet, I was shaken to the core. I cried a lot--not so much for Lexy, because I know she is dancing on streets of gold--but for her mother. She and her mother were very close, very like April and I are, and my mother's heart aches for her even now, two weeks later. Of course I am sad for her children, because they will not remember much about their mother, and for her husband, who is a widower much too young, but the momma bear in me hurts so much. Her death also woke up my slumbering (or maybe smouldering) passion for the Lord. For years I just haven't invested much time or energy into my spiritual life. I stopped going to church when I went to Disney with April last March and focused all my time and attention on things with no eternal value, like work and playing video games when I needed to unwind. I'm not saying my work isn't rewarding, because it is. I make a difference in my students' lives; they tell me so. But I needed a wakeup call. One of the pastors who spoke at Lexy's memorial service was the pastor of a church I attended when I lived in Kansas City. At that time, I did not have the same appreciation I have today about the kind of church he pastors. I decided to listen in on a series of sermons he's currently preaching and I also joined an online Bible study. Spiritually, I am starving. I've forgotten how to pray. I'm scared to even try because I feel like I have ADHD whenever I start to pray.

I need to slow down. I know that now more than ever. Life is vapor, here for a moment and then gone, and I am already more than halfway through my life. I do not know how many more years the Lord will bless me with, but I want to live them the way I lived my younger years when I belonged to the online group Faithfully Standing and couldn't get enough of God. Every thought every minute of the day was consumed by Him. I decided to listen to some of the Christian music I listened to in the 1990s and 2000s. Songs by Twila Paris, Steven Curtis Chapman, Todd Agnew, Rich Mullins take me back to that time and remind me of what I felt like then. I kept saying that once this project was over or after I finish this, I'll stop working so hard, but that day never comes because something comes along to fill the empty space, much like trying to create a hole in the sand on the shore of the ocean; the tide comes up and fills it back in. I need to intentionally leave some empty space in my life for what is important, and I'm finally ready to do that!

Unfortunately, I have to do some work today since I was unable to finish grading yesterday, but tomorrow I plan to take most of the day off. I need to go grocery shopping and my house needs some TLC. So I am off to read the last of my dissertations. I leave you with a picture of my kitty Georgie. Georgie is the kitten I wanted to adopt nearly two years ago, but my daughter fell in love with her so I took the other two sisters. Well, back in November, she asked me if I'd take her because she was bullying her oldest cat, so now I have all three sisters (and yes, she bullies my oldest cat, too, but Charleigh can hold her own).