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“I don't wanna, but I gotta” is the hit song of 2009

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What's my problem? I got up early, made a cup of coffee, and now I have about four hours to myself. Baiba is in Limbazi, my work is more or less up to date. Time to write something! But... what is this gnawing anxiety in my stomach? Awful. It has a habit of creeping up my middle and into my head, where it swims around as a low level headache. I can clean my glasses, but I know it won't make this dull throbbing go away. My body appears to be busily manufacturing an excuse for me not to write anything. It is also responding to the day ahead. In two hours I will barrel out the door toward the first of two private English lessons I have today. After that, I will have a brief break before heading to the university to teach my evening class. Class gets out at 7:45, then I wait around for an hour to take a two hour bus ride to Limbazi, which puts me in town at about 10:30. What we have here, then, is dread. I've got time “to be creative” now, but in my mind all I see is the ten or so hours of unpleasantness that lies before me. Is it a wonder I can't concentrate?

When it comes to writing or thinking, dread is my biggest problem and number one muse killer. Dread is much different than fear. There are lots of things I'm afraid of: Russian drunks in Riga, the Latvian police, cancer, British drunks in Riga, the future... but fear is an adverse reaction to one or more unpleasant possibilities. Fear is an emotion that helps us to avoid such unpleasant phenomena as over-friendly drunks. If I see one stumbling toward me on the sidewalk, I cross the street. Dread is much, much different. Dread is summoned in the face of certain and inevitable unpleasantness. The sight of the disorderly pile of financial documents on my desk tells me that my taxes must be filed, and dread surges from my stomach toward my head. I look at my email and see a message from G. Keil, my prosthetist in Berlin, who is expecting me to visit “so bald wie möglich” to pick up my knee cylinder. That will be an expensive business. More dread. The most dread inducing instrument I have is the clock, continually counting down the minutes to when I have to go perform a job I don't like doing. How does it move so fast? I had two hours before I needed to leave, now I have just one and a half. I've gotten nothing done! Dread is joined in my head by his close friend and associate guilt, and they play their song together to me as the minutes tick down to my departure. The words to the song are always the same: “I don't wanna, but I gotta.”

Once I fly out the door, the dread vanishes. It's time to get things done. My first lesson isn't really all that bad. An hour and a half with a thoroughly decent and sincere young man who needs to practice his English in preparation for studying abroad. Then it's back on the tram, head home, and prepare for the day's real challenge, the businessman who want's every mistake he makes in English corrected.. Hungry work. If I can just survive that, however, the day is more than half over. I can grab a bite to eat before heading into the university for my last class. That class is fairly advanced and I can teach it more or less on autopilot. Then there's just the bus. I must remember not to drink anything for the rest of the day, lest I need to ask the driver to stop in the middle of the countryside so I can go pee. Once the day starts, I'll barrel through it somehow, but now, when I have time, all I can do is steel myself against what is to come.

My work day usually ends at about 8:30 in the evening. I clamber up the stairs in our building, open the door, and collapse in my chair. I'm lucky. Baiba doesn't work evenings and she often makes dinner. A warm feeling washes over me. I've survived. I did everything I had to do and now I can enjoy the reward of doing absolutely nothing. I feel a trickle of drool running down my chin as I check email and look at the Drudge Report. For the moment, nothing can be better. I'm in my warm little home, food in my tummy, sweetie close by watching TV. Then, around 10:00, I feel a little twinge. Perhaps I remember I have to email a student, or I remember that I need to buy a plane ticket to go to Berlin and get my prosthesis fixed. Like clouds that announce a storm, the next day starts piling up in my mind: how early do I have to get up, what do I have to prepare, and when do I have to meet and instruct people I would rather have nothing to do with? What else is on the plate? Why hasn't my mail from the U.S. arrived? When do I have to see the lovely ex-Soviet ladies at the immigration office again? And before I know it, waves of dread are washing over me. The weekend only offers a more amplified version of the working evening. On Friday night I feel like Odyseus returning to Ithaca, but around Sunday afternoon the demons are back, louder than ever.

I'm beginning to thing that a happy life is the systematic elimination of as much “I don't wanna but I gotta” as possible. As long as the dread persists, there's no way to concentrate on what really matters. My detractors will point out that I simply want to free myself of the responsibilities of being an adult, and I don't deny the charge. Perhaps I've discovered why so many of the writers I admire died in abject poverty: they concentrated on their work and didn't allow themselves time to take care of things. I have a healthy fear of poverty, so I always waver when it comes to a choice between concentrating on what I love and taking care of what needs to be done. Perhaps I'm just using dread as an excuse, but tonight is Sunday night, and the prospect of paying the rent, flying to Berlin, and teaching are speeding toward me like a runaway truck. No more writing for me tonight. Instead I'll hide under the covers and dread tomorrow.