sleepless in kabul

11:36pm—I can’t sleep because I am thinking too much, my nose is, how do you say it, is itching and running and things inside it won’t move, as if they are scar tissued from uncared for colds, my thumbs are throbbing because I pulled off all the skin, indigestion irritates and it’s too warm so I just turned on the a/c which is right above the bed and is blowing on me as I sit here at the desk and will soon move…unplugged, on to the bed away from the manufactured air and I hope two panadol cold and flu tablets and a zantac will help me sleep so I can get up in six or so hours and I have to stop thinking.  Ok, I’ll bite what are you thinking about too much of that it robs you of sleep and believe me you were tired enough to give up looking at movies to use in tomorrow’s next to last business class.  Well that is one of the reasons I was thinking too much, a movie clip, thirty minutes or so to lead into the lesson on corporate culture, up in the air has ten minutes of something here, fifteen minutes of something there before subplots like sex interfere with my intentions to show a connection, then there was the first five minutes of castaway and that doesn’t sell an idea then it was pursuit of happiness and that might work but it takes forever to get to will smith in training to be a stockbroker and there are no scenes really of corporate life and then I started the big short and within five minutes we’re in a strip club, I can’t win so I’m going back to the three stooges episode where they are plumbers and it’s thirty minutes and perhaps by the time I arrive in the room tomorrow, today almost, at nine am I’ll have a tie in.  Corporate culture and the three stooges, I don’t know.  This hasn’t been a good class in part because they never stopped working their regular job in the classroom, constantly they were receiving calls, answering calls, getting up and walking out, it was a joke, and it was exacerbated with curriculum that didn’t interest them but hey that wasn’t exactly my fault, I was asked to put together a curriculum in two days and in the subsequent 36 hours I added work but ya know, it’s almost over.

I also traded my two weeks of accrued holiday for a new class that I started today in exchange for leaving this place in the first week of July.  I don’t know how it is going to work but it better because I will be really upset.  I have to trust the man who is my manager and who sits next to me in the office and who told me in my interview with the university last year that Kandahar had no electricity problems when it most certainly did, that I will be able to leave in the first week of July.  

And trying to decide on where to go for that two week accrued holiday was miserable.  I was close today, i had an itinerary for Greece but I wasn't comfortable thinking what if the ferry captains strike, and then I was online with a booking to Amman and i was thinking what if they don't let me cross into jerusalem and all of it left me ripping skin off my body and i wish i could return to the mountain without being asked for money, I know that is terrible, i remember when i gave when no one asked and now i am always asked and i am not comfortable anymore when i can't give freely and that leaves me hesitate

Besides, i accept now that some coincidences, I've said this before here, are not all from God.  

In any case, I will leave the first week of July.  With all the money that is in the bank here and head for the states, buy a car, do the KU paper trail if by this time KU is still viable, then find a job of sorts so i don't blow all the money before i arrive in Leuven, good luck with that mate.  If the university owes me more what will I do, wait?  Well, I won’t teach after the second of July, that’s the last day of this new class, the manager will in no way be able to keep me here with other classes that go beyond that date, the university could keep me here with paperwork and whatever is necessary to close the book on this one year of work which in truth hasn’t been bad, too bad, at all.  I actually catch myself thinking about sticking around but I need something that no one can give me here and I’m not about to ask anyone for it though I’d ask for it in Kandahar if I were there now.  In any case, I feel calmer, my poor thumbs,  I can’t be happy but I can long for being content, right? 

It’s Tuesday, twelve minutes after midnight.  i've emptied all my irritating sleepless thoughts here, lord, let me sleep.