June 4 2025, Indianapolis
I wake at 5:40, which is an improvement. I was in Japan last week for vacation and am still dealing with jet lag, which manifests in early waking and, at least once and sometimes twice a day, hitting a hard wall: like, falling fast asleep while reading, or suddenly feeling a wave of tiredness severe enough to shut down whatever I’m doing.
I lie in bed, count to 100 breaths, trying to go back to sleep and keep the re-adjustment of the internal clock proceeding. But I don’t get back to sleep. I had been dreaming about Japan, about transit from one place to another, the dreams vague and foggy like they all have been recently.
I remember that I planned to stretch first thing this morning—I need to get back to stretching regularly. I’m feeling a little reluctant; I want breakfast. But instead I brush my teeth and take meds; set up the coffee so I can get it quickly after stretching, and go into the office and stretch. The yoga mat is out—I left it there as an incentive. As I stretch I work on being mindful and am perhaps 80 % successful: I do start thinking ahead to the day’s writing plans.
I’ve been in a good mood this week. Vacation really cleared my mind. Riding my bike yesterday morning, in the early cool just after sunrise, I was thinking about how I want to have a good summer, calm and quiet and productive, with fun and exercise and healthfulness. This will be our last full summer in Indiana. Thinking, too, about how maybe I could avoid getting back on the psychological treadmill—how perhaps I could not always be thinking about how much time I have and how much time I need for this and that, always juggling writing and research and home tasks with an eye on the clock and a hectoring inner voice—all of this as if I weren’t, in fact, retired from my university job and more wealthy with time than most people I know. It’s felt possible the last few days—not to go back to that.
I gather breakfast: Coffee, cereal, fruit, yogurt, and go into the living room. C. is reading on her computer—she was up an hour or more before me. (Our jet lags have each taken their own form). We say a few words but mostly I eat quietly, watching baseball highlights.
I goof off till about 8. I have a Zoom at 9. In the meantime, in the office, I read Lauren Berlant, scribbling notes, reading my highlights from yesterday (when I was reading jet-lagged). The writing is very complex and interesting, sometimes difficult. I highlight and take notes. The topic is the “commons”—the idea of a common open meeting place, also the idea of property that’s held neither by the state nor private ownership, and the place that idea has taken in left political thought in recent years. I make highlights and take notes. I’m thinking about and will be writing about community, so this is a slant approach to that topic.
At 9, I get on the computer and go to email to get into the webinar. It’s at this moment that I realize that it’s diary day. Also, my ticket for the webinar isn’t working. I text a colleague, who has the same problem and has written an email. In a few minutes he texts me a link, so I’m able to get on without missing much. The topic is the pandemic, 5 years later. Researchers who have gathered pandemic diaries are speaking. I give about 75-80% of my attention to the talks, and start writing this diary with the other 20-25%. I get most of the gist of the talks, and focus in when I sense key points being made. The insights include: we’re not talking about the pandemic much anymore; maybe in the future we will need this info in ways that aren’t foreseeable now. I ask a question during Q&A. The session is interesting, and it feels good to interact with people in this way.
The webinar ends at 10:50 or so, and I can hear C. returning from the grocery store. I go to the kitchen and help put things away. Out the windows a stiff breeze is ruffling the trees. I go back to reading Berlant until lunch; I’ll write this afternoon. Also, at this point, I remember that I planned to go to the gym this afternoon, and that I’m waiting to hear from my friend JB about going out for a beer.
At lunch time, I sit on the couch in my office and read about baseball and basketball while I eat salad, a slice of rye bread, and tuna and white beans. To disincentivize changing my mind about the gym, I’ve changed into exercise togs.
After lunch I empty the dishwasher and clean up in the kitchen a bit—wash a few things, make coffee, wipe the counters. It’s 1:06 when I’m done, 1:10 when I sit down to write. (There’s the psychological treadmill—I was standing at the sink, washing a coffee cup, looking at the clock, thinking, “I gotta get moving here.” Aargh.)
Now I sit at the dining room table, my laptop on a dictionary to prevent me from stooping, which, the physical therapists’ theory has it, is contributing to my arthritic hand pain. I work on revising a proposal for a book my research partner and I are writing. I make progress, moving chunks around and re-casting the overall description for a specific publisher. I allow myself to be briefly interrupted by text messages, but if it keeps up, I’ll put my phone in the other room, I think. K writes, “Friend are you back from Japan?” JB writes to confirm a beer at 5:15, “But where, is the question?” I get up and refill my coffee cup.
I work until about 3, then do a social media and headlines check. I’ve made good progress on the proposal. It’s time for the gym; need sneakers.
I drive to the gym. It’s hot outside; it’s quiet in the car. On the jet-lag front, I’m hitting the wall just a little bit. I do the treadmill for a half hour, Bob Marley, David Crosby, Jerry Garcia, others in my earbuds. I look at the array of bodies moving about nearby. After 30 minutes I do weights, moving from machine to machine, fast forwarding through a song here and there, taking sips of water.
I drive home, tired. I need some calories and a shower. At the house I eat a handful of nuts and a half-banana, drink water, shower, change.
On the couch, next to C., I do a news check. It’s 5:20, I see—I’m going to be late for my beer hang with JB. I gather up wallet phone etc. and walk briskly to the bar, about seven blocks from my house. It’s sticky and warm outside. I’m 5 minutes late; JB gets there 5 minutes later, and in the middle of a meeting on his phone. I get him a beer and do the NYT crossword puzzle on my phone while he finishes his meeting in his earbuds, sitting at an outside table along 46th street.
I tell him about Japan—about teeming Tokyo; the hot springs; how the cities are tightly packed in the valleys between the mountains—or between the mountains and the sea—so that you can be in a super-crowded city and then get in a cab and, in 15 minutes, be in the mountains in peaceful greenery, in a temple gracefully landscaped in the Japanese style; about the baseball game and the fans with their crazy songs and cheers, the cheering sections with brass instruments and drums; and about the generally intense, even overwhelming, novelty of the whole experience. J tells me about recent zaniness in city politics, about a heavy metal show he went to with his friend R, about a recent visit from his son, about his plans for his grinding corporate career over the next few years. He’s still very much on the corporate climb. I understand his vocational desires not at all.
He drives me home; in characteristic J. fashion, he starts opening up and sharing confidences in the last couple minutes. (Ah, American Boys of a Certain Age, with their emotional guardedness, their incompletely suppressed desire to be heard and supported). He finishes his rushed disclosures sitting in his car in the driveway.
Inside, C. is watching sitcoms on the couch when I come in. I throw together dinner (leftover jerk chicken and potato salad that I made on Sunday) and sit down on the couch. We watch the DVR’ed Jeopardy Masters tournament, cheering on Juveria, the lovely Canadian psychiatrist. After eating, and with two semi-strong beers in me, I finally hit the jet-lag wall for the first time today, nodding off multiple times during semi-final match no. 2. C. heads to bed around 9:15 to read; I vow to stay up as long as I can to try to finally, definitively, re-set my inner clock. (Note: it takes four more days for this to happen).
I listen to the end of the Phillies game on earbuds then watch some baseball chatter on TV, mulling staying up to watch the beginning of the Mets-Dodgers. I open my kindle and read the first two paragraphs of a short story but start nodding off almost immediately. I decide to tape the game—I’ll watch the first inning over breakfast tomorrow—and head to bed right around 10. C. drops her book and goes to sleep as I’m brushing my teeth. Once in bed I’m asleep almost instantly.