Apparently This Week Exists After All

Well.

Apparently the week exists.

For anyone who missed Monday's post, I somehow managed to mentally delete this entire week from October.

For months, my brain had connected last weekend directly to next weekend.

These five days?

Nothing.

A blank spot on the calendar.

Yet here we are.

Wednesday.

So far, the week seems determined to prove it was here all along.

Monday was Canadian Thanksgiving.

My wife is a dual citizen, and we've tried to make sure that part of our family's history doesn't disappear just because we're raising our kids in North Carolina.

So Monday night, we celebrated.

Turkey.

Stuffing.

Mashed potatoes.

Green bean casserole.

Pumpkin pie.

And, because apparently we were determined to make Thanksgiving even more Thanksgiving, turkey, stuffing, and mashed potato hoagies.

They were delicious.

We sat around the table, ate entirely too much food, talked about what we were thankful for, and enjoyed being together.

Nothing elaborate.

Nothing profound.

Just family.

After the weekend we'd had, that was enough.

Tuesday was considerably less delicious.

Tuesday was schoolwork.

Lots and lots of schoolwork.

I'm in the final stretch of both of my ethics courses, which means the semester has reached that magical point where all the smaller assignments I've been working on suddenly become very large final projects.

For anthropology, I've been working through the ethics surrounding a fictional archaeological site in Mason Neck, Virginia.

Burial mounds.

An old homestead.

Native American history.

The history of slavery.

A proposed highway extension.

Multiple groups with legitimate, and sometimes competing, claims about what should happen next.

The final portion forced me to wrestle with something I've really enjoyed thinking about throughout the project:

Owning something isn't necessarily the same thing as having cultural authority over it.

And neither is necessarily the same thing as being the right person to care for it.

Those distinctions matter.

On the public administration side, I've been writing about municipal fiscal distress.

Littleton.

Prichard.

Trimble.

Three communities. Three different circumstances. And a larger question about what happens when a local government doesn't have the administrative or financial capacity it needs to keep functioning.

That paper has been particularly interesting because Littleton isn't some abstract place I found in a textbook.

It's home.

There is something different about studying government when you can close the laptop, drive down the road, and see the place you're writing about.

Both projects are essentially there.

Today, I'll submit them.

Which brings us to another important lesson from higher education:

Apparently I am capable of learning from my mistakes.

Last Wednesday, I did schoolwork first and ended up trying to write the blog around seven o'clock at night after the rest of the day had already beaten me into submission.

Today?

Blog first.

Final papers second.

Look at me.

Growing.

That same idea is going to occupy a lot of my workday.

October is when I start thinking seriously about next year.

I actually enjoy it.

What I don't particularly enjoy is that some of the formal goals we work under may not arrive until March or April.

By then, a quarter of the year is already gone.

So I don't wait.

There are things outside my control.

There are also plenty of things inside it.

Those are the ones I'm interested in.

Today includes several one-on-ones with members of my team.

We'll talk about recent survey results.

We'll talk about what we're hearing.

What needs attention.

What we want next year to look like.

And, most importantly, what we can start doing now.

If we know something matters in October, I don't see much value in pretending we don't know it until January.

Or March.

Or April.

We can move dates.

Change priorities.

Put weight behind things that need weight.

Give people some idea of where we're headed before the calendar flips over.

And maybe get some useful work done while we're waiting for the rest of the machinery to catch up.

Of course, while Dad is contemplating organizational planning, ethics, municipal fiscal distress, cultural stewardship, and the future...

Jacob has a more immediate crisis.

The scorpion necklace is missing.

For his birthday, we gave him this necklace.

And from approximately the moment he put it on, it became part of him.

Jacob.

Glasses.

Scorpion necklace.

Done.

That's the kid.

Except now the necklace is gone.

And he's worried about it.

I know that because Jacob has started writing to me again.

He and I have a green notebook.

It's ours.

He writes something.

Leaves it for me.

I write back.

Then it returns to him.

Back and forth.

No particular schedule.

No assignment.

Just a little conversation between the two of us that happens to live on paper.

He hadn't used it for a while.

Now he is again.

And one of the things he chose to tell me was that he's worried about his necklace.

So now we're looking.

Personally, I have a theory.

The necklace has joined forces with the missing cell phone.

They are currently somewhere in the woods enjoying an extended camping trip and refusing to answer our calls.

This theory has yet to produce either missing object.

But I'm sticking with it.

Maybe that's Wednesday.

Monday, we stopped and gave thanks for what we have.

Tuesday, I spent the day thinking about what happens next in school.

Today, I'll spend a lot of time at work thinking about next year.

And somewhere between all of that, a ten-year-old wrote in a green notebook that he misses his scorpion necklace.

There is always something ahead of us.

Another assignment.

Another deadline.

Another goal.

Another year.

Another thing we're trying to build.

But there's also whatever is sitting directly in front of us.

Sometimes that's a final paper.

Sometimes it's a conversation with someone you lead.

Sometimes it's dinner around a table.

And sometimes it's helping your kid search the house for the necklace that has apparently become an essential component of his identity.

You plan for what's coming.

You take care of what's here.

Maybe that's all any of us are really doing.

Anyway.

It's Wednesday.

I'm tired.

There is not enough coffee.

There will probably never be enough coffee.

But the papers are almost submitted.

The workday is waiting.

The green notebook is moving again.

The search for the scorpion continues.

And somehow we'll make it through.

Not bad for a week that apparently didn't exist.

There is value in looking ahead. I believe that. It's why I plan early, why I want my teams thinking about next year before next year arrives, and why I spent Tuesday trying to finish schoolwork before the deadline was staring me in the face. But looking ahead only works if we don't miss what is already here. Monday night there was a family around a table. Today there are people who need conversations about where we're going. And somewhere in the middle of it all is a green notebook carrying a ten-year-old's worries back and forth with his dad. The future matters. So does the thing sitting right in front of you.

Much love.

Stay safe.

Wash your damn hands.

And I will see you, next time.