Productivity Fail

Sitting at my desk today, looking through an open window at green leaves and the East Side of Manhattan, my productivity hit rock bottom. When you have a 9-5 (when you are apparently a real grown-up, son), the onset of warm weather feels like a tease. Like the boy at the party who flirts and gets your number, but will definitely never call.

In Southern California, weather was eerily constant. I never knew the thump of a city turning from winter to spring or the personal elation brought on by the shift. In SoCal, weather just is; nothing cycles. A season change was easy to miss, its effects on mood minimal. Nobody compared brands of SAD lamp. After four years, I knew I needed to move on because the weather wasn't.

I remember the spring productivity equation well from last year--my first year in a city that truly seasons (a new use of the verb). And you better believe Boston seasons with the best of them. Come April, my frozen thoughts melted inside my brain, my bare legs tingled in the sun, people looked sexy again, and I suddenly craved white wine and ice cream. At the same time.

The city came alive with strangers no longer bemoaning the cold. All I wanted to do was spend money, sit in parks, listen to summer playlists of years gone by and play with my friends who'd been inside for the past five months. Instead, I had to work about 70 hours a week schooling kids who wanted to be schooled even less than I wanted to school them. I was not pleased.

This year appears to be no better. I almost wish I was jaded.

The glory that is spring comes with its set of problems, namely the productivity fail. When all I want to do is sit outside in a sun dress, my job still demands I do exactly what I was doing in December when sitting outside in that sundress would have yielded frostbite. Sitting at my desk today, I felt like a recovering junkie craving sun drugs. I think my hands were literally shaking.

So, instead of working, I did some other things:

1. Went to the main office five times in 30 minutes for animal crackers. Do adults get to eat animal crackers?
2. Googled my name. Googled my parents' names. Googled my ex boyfriends' names. Then repeated on Google Image.
3. Watched the first half of the 1969 Romeo and Juliet movie before screening it for my class. (Good thing I did, though: certain parts are definitely R rated, and despite the productivity fail, I would like to keep my job).
4. Crossed out all the days in April in my calendar.
5. Applied deodorant. Surreptitiously.
6. Looked at my favorite blog: http://hotguysreadingbooks.tumblr.com/
7. Researched summer kickball leagues and contemplated whether or not straight girls play.
8. Deleted things from my desktop. Kinda with purpose, but really more randomly.
9. Wondered if my coworkers were being productive. And, if so, how. Looked around the room suspiciously.
10. Bought a ticket to see Cut Copy at the Bandshell in Prospect Park.

Crap.

Now I have double the lesson planning to do tomorrow, which is fine, except tomorrow is also supposed to be over 70 degrees. If history repeats itself, I have no reason to think my productivity will skyrocket, but it needs to. Like, really.

I wonder if I'm unique in my complete inability to work when the weather turns. Maybe it's because my years in the east LA desert confused my sense of normalcy. Are there people out there who go about their business as if nothing's changed when really the greatest change in the world has just occurred in our pretty city?

Need help.