Dishes

“Honey…?”

“I know. I know, I swear I will do them tonight, I will get to them. Before bed. I’m sorry. I swear.”

“No, not the dishes.”

Not the dishes, not the dishes, it’s the bottle of Mongolian Garlic stir-fry sauce that’s been left open on the counter, I got an email about the next round of orientation for the tutoring job and I went into the bedroom to read it, I have to be in the bedroom or the living-room to read emails, not the kitchen or the bathroom or the hallway– hasn’t it been four rounds of orientation already? This one is a ninety-minute video with a quiz attached to make sure I really watched it– all about Microsoft Teams and why Microsoft Teams was a really great choice for the organization and here’s all the great things you can use it for, and here are all the things you have to use it for every day, once every two hours, and before and after every class you teach, and here’s how to use it to bid on classes in the first place if you want to teach them, and you should expect a response from this email address unless there are too many people applying, and then you’ll just get silence if they don’t choose you. Here’s the email you use for general questions about tutoring and teaching, and here’s the email you direct students to if they have questions you can’t answer, and here are some very common student questions and here are the answers to some of them, and here is where you can find the answers to the other ones in Microsoft Teams, in this folder and this folder and that folder, the “Common Student Questions” folder inside of the “New Teacher Training” folder, and the “Answers to Common Student Questions” folder inside of the “New Teacher Orientation” folder, and the “Frequently Asked Questions” folder inside the “Teacher Onboarding” folder. Here is the phone-number you call for help during regular business hours, and here is the phone-number you call for help outside of regular business hours or on the weekends. Here is the phone number you call for extreme emergencies. Here are the policies on requesting a substitute. Here’s the email you write to for tech-related questions. Here’s the email you write to for payroll-related questions. Here is the folder with instructions for filling out student-evaluations six months from now. Here’s the folder with instructions for asking students to fill out teacher-evaluations six months from now. The evaluations you’re going to fill out and send them are found here, not in Microsoft Teams, but on the company Slack, which you haven’t gotten your username or password for yet, but you should be getting that in the next two days or so, so keep an eye on your email– after you get sent your login info, just so you know, you only have six hours to log in and change your password before it expires, and here’s the email you write to if you don’t change your password in time and you need another chance. Here’s a list of commonly asked new-instructor questions that we don’t want you to be asking because you should already know the answers– “What is an ‘Elizabeth Item’?”– if you’re watching this video and you don’t know this by now you need to pause and go back through the folders to find that answer before you go any further. 

“You can’t leave the sauce-bottle open, we don’t want flies.”

“You’re right, we don’t, I’m sorry.”

“And we don’t want the sauce to go bad, either.”

“Oh, no, no, there isn’t any left, it’s empty.”

“But you hadn’t even started cooking anything, didn’t you get pulled away by–”

“No, no, it was already empty, I used up all of the last of it last time we made stir-fry.”

“Why did you put it back on the shelf if it was empty? Why didn’t you just throw it in the recycling?”

“I was going to put it into the recycling but in order to put it in the recycling you have to open the door to the cabinet under the sink first, so I opened the door to the cabinet under the sink, but then when I was standing at the sink I realized the dishes weren’t done, and I know how important it is to have the dishes done right after you finish cooking, so I knew I needed to do the dishes and before I could do the dishes I needed to put away all the clean dishes which were already in the drying-rack so there’s room for new ones, so I started taking the clean dishes from the drying-rack to the shelf in the dining-room, and that was where my phone was plugged in, on the table, that’s where it was sitting, and I could see that the screen was lit up which meant that I’d gotten a notification so I put down the dishes and opened the notification and it was another tutoring email about this orientation that I have to go to on Tuesday night.”

“Today is Tuesday, you have orientation tonight?”

“Right, yes, exactly, but this was Sunday when I was putting the dishes away, and I had to stop to put the orientation tonight in my calendar because I knew that otherwise I was going to forget it.”

“You didn’t tell me that you had an orientation tonight. I thought we were going to the gym.”

“I know, I forgot to tell you, or really I just didn’t have the energy to tell you, or really I just didn’t have the energy to pull myself away from my writing long enough to tell you because I’m really drowning this week– there’s so much going on this week more and more and more,  I just keep getting more and more behind.”

It’s a work-day today. I took my pill this morning, my system is flooded with methylphenidate, my heart is beating two-hundred times a minute, and I can’t stop sweating, I hate the way my body sweats, it just won’t stop sweating, I hate my body so much. I can’t stop thinking about it, I can’t stop picking at my cuticles, picking and picking and picking, they hurt so much, they’re bleeding, I can’t stop, and I deserve it because fuck me I can’t write for shit, I can’t get anything done, or not anything good, I can write so many words and they’re all shit, none of it is good enough to publish, I’m never going to get published, I’m never going to be able to put food on the table, it’s fucking pointless but I can’t stop writing, I can’t stop writing because if I stop writing I’m going to die, I’m going to have a fucking heart-attack and shatter like a Christmas-ornament if I stop writing, I have to keep going, but first I have to do my daily crossword-puzzle to keep sharp and get in the right mindset, so I do my puzzle, and then I did it so quickly, so I should probably do another one, give myself a good amount of warmup time, and okay, I took longer with that second one, that’s better, but the news-video I was listening to is still going in my headphones, I might as well play a little solitaire until that’s done, I want to hear the rest of it before I start working and get lost in my work, it’ll be so nice getting lost in my work, I’ll get so much done, I’ll blink my eyes and it’ll be 7 PM and I’ll have gotten a million things done and I’ll have done such a good job on all of them. I’m a good writer, I’m a real writer, a serious writer, I have a routine, I work very hard every day and it’s going to pay off, I know it is. I’m so hungry, but I can’t stop for lunch, I can’t stop, I can’t stop, if I stop, I’m not going to be able to get started again, that’s how it always is. 

“I only have an hour for lunch, I didn’t have time for breakfast, I’ve been hungry all day, please come have lunch with me,” my partner says. 

“Okay.”– it’s not her fault, it’s the methylphenidate, or it’s not the methylphenidate when I haven’t taken it, which I haven’t today, yesterday was a work-day and today is a work-day too but I want to quit it, I need to quit it, I can’t keep going like this, I can’t keep feeling like this, I need to stop taking it but I can’t stop taking it, I can’t stop, I can’t even get started on my projects today, I just keep doing crossword puzzles and reading wiki-articles about my favorite games and catching up on the news and worrying worrying worrying, I can’t stop worrying, I take my pill, my blood is full of electricity, my eyes are lasers, I shove you off of me when you try to hug, I don’t want to kiss, I want to work, I don’t want sex, I want to work, I want to work, I want to work, I don’t want to talk, I don’t want to talk about it, I want to work, I want to work, I’m sorry, “I’m sorry. I want to work, I need to take my pill, I can’t work without it.”

I don’t want to work. 

“I’m sorry, I forgot to do the dishes, I got distracted.”

I don’t want to be awake. I just want to sleep for a week.

“I’m sorry, I forgot to do the dishes, I was too focused.”

I don’t want to forget.

“I’m sorry, I forgot to do the dishes.”– “I’m sorry.”– “I’m sorry, I’ll remember next time.”– “I’m sorry, I was too tired after the day, I’ll do them in the morning.”– “I’m sorry.”– “I’m sorry.”– “I’m sorry, I promise I’ll do them every day before bed from now on, I’ll put a reminder on the whiteboard, reminders always help me.”– “I’m sorry, I couldn’t do the dishes last night, I had my orientation, and then I had to get back to work, I’m so behind.”– “I’m sorry.”– “I know it’s not okay.”– “I’m sorry.”– “You’re right, we’ve had this conversation a hundred times, I know, I’m sorry.”– “I’m sorry, I forgot– you’re right, it’s not okay, it’s not an excuse. I need to take accountability. I’m trying to take accountability. I’ll get better, I promise. I’ll do better I promise– you’ll see.”– “I’m sorry.”

There are flies in the kitchen.