Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Nearing the year's end

Brownie's interview seems to have gone well. The only sucktastic thing about it was that it was being held in the ballroom. In order to walk into the ballroom, he had to register for the conference. $65 that we really don't have after Christmas (plus $27 for parking and $5.50 for tolls), he was able to sit down at a table for an hour and interview. Nearly $100 to interview. Thanks, MLA.

I'm momentarily feeling pretty good, which may or may not have something to do with the fact that I've actually remembered for the past few days to take my Vitamin D supplement. If I'm just feeling good, then fantastic. If it's the Vitamin D helping, also fantastic. I have to remember to take it out to KS with me just in case that's what it is and I'm not just spontaneously feeling alright with the world. All of the thoughts that were weighing me down in the last post are still there, but I feel at least right now like it's manageable and that something will work out eventually.

Brownie and I are heading out to visit my parents tomorrow for a couple of weeks of decompression time before all hell breaks loose for the final semester of grad school. Going home is always weird. I love it and I have a blast with my family and I adore the friends I have out there. It's just that I have many more friends out there than I do where I am now, and all of those friends want to hang out, and I want to hang out with them, so I end up with an insanely packed social schedule that leaves me drained and moody and not wanting to go out at all (see: I'm an introvert) even as I feel pressured to because x or y night is the only night that I'll be able to see persons Q and V until next summer etc etc. And I feel guilty if I can't fit someone in, which adds to the moody. So the goal for this trip is to avoid the guilty and tired feelings by not overcommitting myself, but as I didn't manage to avoid it last year when I was out there for three weeks, I'm not sure I have much hope of being able to avoid it now when I'm only out there for two.

New Year's Resolution is quite simply to be awesome. I'd love to say something about "I'm going to blog more" or "I'm going to write more" or "I'm going to finish the fucking dissertation if it kills me" but resolutions like that never seem to stick and just add to the perpetual pile of guilty "there's something I should be doing now that I'm not because I'm doing x instead" feeling that's become so entrenched during grad school that I literally no longer can imagine the inside of my mind without it. It is a feeling I'm working on ridding myself of.

My cat is next to me on the couch and snoring. I am ded of cute.

Monday, December 28, 2009

the (*&^%!#@ing academic job search and life in general

So after much durm and strang and gnashing of teeth and application after application after application sent out, Brownie finally has an interview for a nine-month renewable assistant professorship at Small College in nearby, state next door. In a town he'd never heard of, no less, despite having grown up roughly 20 minutes from the apartment I'm currently sitting in. The only thing we know about the town other than that Small College is located there is that Favorite Bartender apparently grew up one town over and was fully ready to recommend the town as a fantastic place to live because it meant we'd still be close enough to come visit during our drinking times. Beyond that, I'm refusing steadfastly to bother doing any research about the town unless he gets a campus visit because I'm tired of looking at towns and going "ooo, that'd be neat, and that'd be awesomesauce" only to see the rejection letter come floating in via carrier pigeon a few days later. I'm tired of feeling hopeful only to be crushed again.

The worst version of the hope/crush feeling happened today, when I woke up to an email from my MOTHER of all people with a job listing for the community college out by them. I would kill to move back there - not to live even all that close to my parents, per se, but to live around the Kansas City area again and to enjoy the insanity that the Midwest refers to as "weather." (Nothing says "Fantastic Drinking Entertainment" like watching helicopters swarm around tornado-producing thunderstorms!) Anyway, so I got way too excited about the job posting and sent it to Brownie, who promised to apply and who then went straight back to prepping for the job interview tomorrow (which, well, obviously that would be the priority). I come to find out later (as I'm dreaming of starting a KC-centric beer blog) that while he's still planning on applying, it's without much of a hope of actually landing the job since they're asking for someone with different specialties than he has. He's still applying, but it's probably going to end up being a waste of time. And so my first (and thus far only) chance of living in any of the cities I'd actually want to move to has 95% poofed away into thin air yet again. The only reason I like the idea of Brownie getting the job at Small College is because it provides a paycheck and a place from which to launch yet another grueling awful job search. I don't understand anymore why anyone wants to go into academics, because the way the field treats its workers is beyond appalling.

Meanwhile, his landing of an interview has made me sit back and try and figure out what the hell I want to do with my life since I'll be telling academics to suck it once the dissertation is done (which I should, uh, probably do something about but whatever). I've come to a few realizations:
- I haven't the foggiest fucking clue what I want to be when I grow up
- I do know that I don't want to be an overacheiver anymore, since that hasn't exactly panned out so well for me
- I'm not sure I've done anything of note this entire year except continue on in my existence and be the good, calming, caring wife for my stressed-out, job-seeking husband
- I don't particularly want to be a productive member of society, but I also don't see that as optional
- I hate that general upsetness/disillusionment/disappointment with my career choices thus far radically outweigh everything in my life that's good when I go about taking inventory of my life, but I've yet to figure out how to stop that line of thinking
- I wonder if I'll ever come up with something to do with myself that doesn't make me feel like the last five years of grad school were a complete and total waste (I don't feel that the MA was just for sheer critical thinking/research skills, but I do feel like the Ph.D. has been)

And so all this shit just circles around in my head and I get stuck and spend a lot of time on the forum or crocheting or playing MarioKart or cooking or whatever because I'm lost on trying to find answers. In accordance with the wide world of astrology, I'm mid-Saturn Return right now, which I bring up only because that does feel roughly like my life right now - everything I've held onto as a way to define myself up until now (read: overachiever, student) has disintegrated around me and I'm left standing here thinking "so that's nice and all, but the fuck do I do now?" I typically tell myself that this is in some way good because this opens up new ways for me to define myself or time to focus on areas of my life that I'd generally left unexamined before and all that rot and all of that is good but I still spend far too much time thinking "well, shit" and then finding a beer. Some sense of rebuilding would be nice - even just a glimmer of an idea of a way to begin figuring out how to rebuild would be nice at this point.

Mostly I really hate that every time someone asks me about my life, I'm prone to telling them about Brownie's life rather than my own because there's so much more going on in his. I won't tell more than a handful of people IRL (and the entire fucking internet, apparently) how I'm actually feeling - the last time I told Brownie how I was actually feeling he said "damn, that was a lot to dump on me" before realizing that he sounded like an ass, apologizing, and then admitting he didn't have a clue what to say and giving me a hug. I'm sure the reaction from anyone else would be at least as charming. DNW.

I sort of suspect I'm probably drinking a bit too much lately, but that's neither here nor there and anyway it's the holidaze. Seriously, though, Sunday's been the only alcohol-free night in a week. The holidays have been really lovely. (Er, one huge screaming fit at my father-in-law aside wherein he had no clue the rage he'd produce in me by saying that it was Rihanna's fault that Chris Brown beat her, but everything else really has been great.) I think I've put on five pounds from all the eating - it's way too cold to go outside and run so I'm at the mercy of my brother's WiiFit once we get to KC on Thursday. Here's to going home for a couple of weeks to attempt to decompress...

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Some random thoughts

I went with Brownie and his parents to see 'Invictus' this afternoon. It was okay. I wasn't hugely impressed. It wasn't awful, but it wasn't great. I'm mostly glad I wasn't the one funding the tickets. I think my next film will be 'the Lovely Bones.' I hope it's better.

I read what's written so far of the last third of the novel last night. It wasn't as bad as I feared. It's not quite to the standard of being willing to show other people, but I didn't think it reeked of pointless sentimentality either, so that's a bonus. Part of my goal with the novel is to deal with some extremely emotional situations - i.e., situations that have to be dealt with emotionally because the logical counterpoint isn't/can't be there - without making them seem mawkish or insulin-inducing. However, at the moment my MC is in the middle of making out with her romantic interest, and it's still going to be a while before I allow them into a real relationship, so I'm going to have to break that up and I feel sorta bad about it.

Two passionfruit martinis do not make for easy typing. I've corrected roughly every fourth word I've typed. I might be better off getting off the internet and hitting the yarn/crochet hook for the evening.

Job things for Brownie aren't going well. I had a daydream that I sold my novel for way more money than anyone could possibly expect and managed to keep us afloat (and my bpal habit going strong) for a year until he got a job, but that, like I said, is pretty clearly a daydream. I think one of the things that seems hardest about the possibility of being a writer is not knowing exactly when the next paycheck will come. Like you could sell a book, get a huge paycheck, know you could live off of it for a while and all that and yet still be insecure because really, where does the next one come from? Will it be soon? How much will it be? How can one budget?

Thursday, December 10, 2009

After a morning of facebook stalking

The facebook privacy changes have been fun. I've gotten to see much of the profiles of various mythical figures which has been all kinds of good fun. Probably a little creepy, but definitely good fun. I'm a bad person. However, I've also found some fantastic bad poetry, figured out that one guy is creepier and weirder than my wildest imaginings, that a friend has a crush on a damn hot guy and so on, so it's been fun.

I'm also up to three students friend requesting me on facebook, which is some kind of record for me. All three were awesome, so I've actually accepted them.

Beyond that, the semester got me into some really bad food habits - I got up at 10:30, had coffee, and after playing around have realized that it's almost 2 and that I haven't actually eaten anything. It's been like this most of the semester. I've been getting up, having coffee, and then mentally pretending that the coffee (which I take black) is food until some point after normal people have eaten lunch, when I realize that I'm starving. And then I have a huge dinner and don't eat again until the next day. So I'm eating what amounts to probably three meals worth of food, just lumped together twice and mostly at dinner. And I wonder why (stress aside) my stomach has been so ripped apart painful ouch lately. I've got to cut this shit out and start eating on a more normal schedule again. It'll help me feel better when I exercise too.

Bad news on the academicjobsearchfront - the one school that had so far requested more info from Brownie apparently called everyone yesterday to set up MLA interviews and he didn't get a call. So that's out. That was also the only one in an honest-to-god city, so we're off to podunks now. I'm hating this, but more I'm hating what it's doing to Brownie - he's having a hard time not taking all the rejection personally (which is understandable even if it is a bad thing to do) and I just want to give him a really big hug, but really big hugs don't help anything (I'm doing it anyway). I'm scared to fucking death neither one of us will have a job come June first and won't know where our next paychecks are coming from. The current paychecks are already too small to be able to save anything as it is.

The noveling is going relatively well. I've got one conversation that I've already re-written twice to try and get it closer to right - I know I'll have to revise it again later, but it has to end in the right place and have gone in the right directions or it'll screw a bunch of things up. But I'm still plugging away (often til 3am or so), and really am enjoying it. I'm hoping I can have near a draft ready by Christmas so I can take some time away to do the dissertation and then return to it and see if I can make it shiny.

Now to eat before I hose my blood sugar levels or something.

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

RRRRRRRRRRRR

So the AP is reporting that the 10 Senators tasked by Harry Reid to put together some sort of compromise have killed the public option. Then Reid semi-contradicted it, and as of now it's completely unclear as to what the hell is going on. The best I could tell from admittedly incomplete information is that it seems like they're cutting the public option in favor of extending Medicare down to the age of 55, which is fantastic and all that for anyone who's reached that age but does fuck all for anyone who isn't that old yet.

And so, again, just as with the Stupak amendment, I'm left feeling like voting for Democrats by and large means being thrown under a bus by the people who claim to be representing my interests. And I'm again reminded why I'm registered Independent, and why one of my two favorite Senators is Bernie Sanders (I-VT) (the other one is Al Franken). And why the only two Democrats I don't regret having voted for are the governor of the state I live in (because that governor is fairly genuinely progressive) and Obama (who I'm not thrilled with, but who at least hasn't made me regret the vote).

So I'm trying to temper my general feeling that the ten Senators involved in the compromise (along with the Blue Dog Democrats, most Republicans, all Tea Partiers, the insurance companies and Wall Street in general) can FOADIAF and am hoping that, once the dust settles at some point and we know what the hell actually is in the health care bill, it won't be as bad as it sounds right now. But I have very little hope for that, and I hate it.

I want to move to Canada. Or Norway. Or any other country that genuinely respects human life.

Back to your regularly scheduled thoughts later.

Friday, December 4, 2009

In which I post for the sake of posting

I just realized it's already December 4th and I haven't posted in this thing once so far this month. So I am posting now, with no idea what to write about.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY H0RS!! :)

We're forecast to get snow tomorrow. I am crossing my fingers. I'm usually well into my "SNOW DAMMIT NOW NOW NOW" phase by now, but I sort of missed November - as in, I still keep trying to write October on things and have yet to come to terms with the fact that it's already (as mentioned) December 4th. In missing November - mostly from NaNo but also from the warm temperatures (my region just had the warmed November on record) - I didn't get going on the snow crazies quite as early. This is good. It would be awesome to get some snow before I really started looking for it. It honestly looks like it could snow right now - the sky has that flat light gray that tends to happen right before the flakes start falling, but it's still about 10 degrees too warm.

And lo, it will be beer o'clock shortly, I've yet to even begin my final pile of grading for the semester, I need to clean the litter box and I've yet to have the beginnings of a clue as to what would make an interesting blog post for right now. So I'll give this up for the moment and hope to be interesting later. Or tomorrow. Or maybe I'll shove my nose back in my NaNo project - I figured out that the reason one of the scenes felt stilted is because at least one of the characters is not at all acting like herself and I need to fix that.

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Buh?

The NaNo verification thing came up with something like 300 more words than I thought I had. Strange. Not complaining, just mildly confused. I still can't believe I have 50k - all I can think about is all the stuff that still needs to happen (like introducing the MC's cat, which does need to happen, or, um, any sort of denouement which is still realistically 15K away at least). Also, I almost don't even want to think about revisions except that I want to keep writing to get the draft done so that I can take some time away from it (er, um - write my dissertation) so that I ca get back to it with better, fresher eyes and revise and revise and revise. And then if my ego has gone insane, see what I can do with it.

Realistically, the story isn't done yet. Not really even all that close. If I keep the word count for the fourth part of the book in the same area as the other three, it should be about 15K or so, but I've already got 5K and it feels like there's more than 10K left to do. We'll see.

Thank goodness for low-key Thanksgiving breaks - that's the only way this thing is as far as it is right now. If I could only have another 3 months of this, I'd be golden. Unfortunately, the emails from students are starting to pile up as they stress out about the last week of classes, and at some point I really do need to remember that I'm *supposed* to be a graduate student.

Real life blows. November has been a fun fake life month.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

a propos of some great romantic tale

I've hit the point with the NaNo that it's been going along blisteringly quickly (well, sort of - I haven't had to be on campus since Monday afternoon and so I've been glued to my computer transcribing the conversations in my head) until late last night. Thursday night was particularly awesome. Something about turkey nomming and staying up until 3am writing was awesome - there's actually some sort of a chance that I'll hit 50K by the end of the month. Weirdness. I really didn't think I'd get anywhere near that.

Anyway, so I finally hit the point where I could reintroduce the romantic interest to the MC and I've realized that what I'm attempting to do is more or less a combination of Jane Austen's Persuasion and the film Before Sunset (the Before Sunrise part, as long as I'm thinking of it in those terms, is mixed in via flashbacks to the first part of the book. I think. It's all written out separately and waiting for me to figure out how to order it in). Part of me is amused by this since I'm roughly the age of the protagonists of Before Sunset and only a year older that Miss Anne Eliot - I find myself wondering if there's something about hitting almost-30 that makes one prone to reexamining those first loves (recognizing at the same time that Austen herself was well beyond 30 when she actually wrote Persuasion, but, you know, details or whatever). Maybe there really aren't any new ideas at all anymore (not that I ever thought I was covering anything new).

The other thing that I think is sort of strange about all of this is that I didn't have one of those grandly all-encompassing loves when I was in my very early 20s that I could then reflect back on now. I've certainly spent time rethinking the old romances, but part of that has happened in realizing that I never had one of the really big crazy "I'm devoting my whole soul to you" type romances at a young age. I was prone to the occasional life-threatening crush, especially on one particular guy in college with these ridiculously blue eyes who was kind enough to be friends with me but never take me to bed. He treated the women he dated really badly (he was hot, knew he was hot, and responded to this by cheating on his girlfriends all the time), and so I think I was really lucky that I never got mixed up in any of that. The way things were, he just got to be a crush. We used to walk to class together when we both lived in the dorms, just talking about whatever, and I remember really specifically one hangover where I ran into him in the cafeteria right before it closed as I was attempting, in my pajamas, to convince myself that if I were to eat some scrambled eggs that they'd stay down. He took pity on me, sat with me while I ate (erm, attempted to eat) and regaled me with a few of his choicer hangover stories. He knew I thought he was gorgeous (I told him so at the bus stop one day after an English class) - he probably just enjoyed having an ardent (if nauseous) audience for his stories. We managed to overlap at parties all the way through college, and through some weird accident he ended up seated directly behind me at graduation (a good feat, given there were something like 6,000 people graduating that day and we weren't the same major). For all that, I don't think we ever even hugged. I have no clue what happened to him, and no desire to find out. It's interesting to me though that when I think through this, he's the one that comes to mind - not any of the guys I actually dated or loved or anything else - what I think of is the almost- but ultimately un-attainable crush.

Brownie forever says that I'm not a romantic. I can't decide if I think he's right or not. I know romance as such is something that I tend to keep very much internalized - it's there, but no one, often even my husband, really experiences it - and Brownie's experienced more of it than anyone else. I'm nervous to death to let anyone else read the NaNo writings because so much of the internalized romance is out there, even if in the muted, disillusioned way that I usually externalize it - that sort of mode that is captured so masterfully in the texts mentioned above (and which I would dearly love to kid myself I'd be someday capable of imitating). I don't know what it says about me that I was in love with Persuasion by the end of junior high but didn't discover cheesy high school romance novels until late in grad school (although who am I kidding - it's partially to figure that shit out that I'm scribbling this all down now).

Dammit. I feel like I had it for a moment, but lost it as I was typing out that last parenthetical. Keep thinking.

Maybe what I really like is the idea of being able to (re)gain a sense of romance after severe disillusionment or disappointment - the idea that love doesn't end with high school or college, that love stories are just as potent (if not moreso, more honest) when we've experienced enough to have a better sense of what's out there and how great and terrible it can be. That when we're smarter and jaded about everything, there can still be that magic. It may be harder to find, but that might make it all the more wonderful.

Monday, November 16, 2009

But it was going so well...

I need a little writer's blocked smiley icon to put here or something. I haven't written much of anything since Friday. I *tried* to write last night, but managed something like 350 words of utter shit that will be deleted and gave up. I haven't counted those words toward the word count. I've got 2 different storylines going that need to be wrapped up to a certain point before I can launch into the last major plot arch. One of the storylines doesn't seem like it should be too difficult but for some reason I'm having issues with just getting writing down. The other storyline needs to incorporate the MC's new cat, new apartment, new job, new friends and new etc before I can introduce the love interest. I've gotten the friends about halfway in (insofar as they're introduced) and I've seen the cat once. She's gotten the job but hasn't started it. She's met her soon-to-be landlord's German Shepherd but doesn't know where she'll be living at the moment. It's like I know what I need to have happen but actually writing it all is just NOT. WORKING. I guess I'll go back to trying to slam through the rest of the other storyline first so that I can catch everything up to where I am now in storyline 2 and then go from there.

I doubt most of that will make any real sense. I'm just trying to get a bit of the frustration out so that maybe I can get something more written in an attempt to catch back up. I kinda feel like once I get the love interest involved it'll get easier to write, but I don't feel like I should start his section until I've gotten through the rest of it so that I know exactly what sort of mental/emotional state the MC is in when she meets him.

Also, kitty went to the vet on Friday due to continued UTI-type stuff. They took a urine sample and an earwax sample and I'm currently sitting around and waiting for a phone call from the vet to tell me what's going on. I hate waiting. I hope she's okay. She's not dealing with the antibiotics well - she keeps puking.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Odds and Ends

We got digital cable today. A+ for that. We also got a modem upgrade, so that the modem no longer DIALS UP. FFS, if I ever have to hear that noise again, it'll be too soon.

I'm obsessed with the song "1901" by Phoenix. You've heard it. It's in a commercial for I think a cell phone. And I feel like a total loser for loving a song that has been blessed by giant corporations and which they are using to make me think that something is ZOMG cool. At the same time, that's not the song's fault, and it is a good song. And I feel like a wanker for even worrying about it for a moment. It's a good song. Just enjoy the song and stop making it difficult, self.

I'm sort of stuck in a couple of places with NaNo. Mostly I've realized that MC is a giant PITA self-obsessed whiner, and I'm trying to figure out how to change that. So I'm finding myself revising certain chunks, adding in more conversation, etc. I also feel like some of the problem is the situation she's in, and when I finally let her get out of it (and when I have scenes that are not involved with the main situation I've been writing lately) she'll get better and less whiny and less self-reflective and maybe remember to pay attention to everything around her. But as a writer it's like I've gotten so stuck trying to figure my way through her thought pattern in the current situation that I'm not paying attention to anything else, including the characters she's interacting with. So that's a major problem that I'm glad I've figured out at least so that I can address it from here on out and then fix more later. I've got to stop with the revisions though, since that is NOT helping my word count. I need to get about 2000 in today to make sure I'm staying up to speed, which is do-able, but I'd like to try and get ahead over this week/weekend so that when Sparklefest hits next weekend, I'll be able to take a few days off.

Finally, I'm meeting with awesome non-hosebeast advisor to meet her kid today. I'm hoping hosebeast advisor does not come up because I just don't want to talk about her. At all. And I don't really want to have to explain why I haven't talked to hosebeast since January, since I'm perfectly aware that not talking to her has been hugely unprofessional on my part, but hosebeast makes me feel like horseshit and the very act of trying to talk *about* her has a tendency to reduce me to tears. So I'm going to try and avoid the topic. We'll see if that works.

Monday, November 9, 2009

Weirdness from the NaNo World

I for serious cannot believe I've been researching popular Omaha hangouts during the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting so that I can get some ideas as to where Warren Buffett might hang out because for some reason I now need this knowledge in my novel. FFS. Also, you can get a lot of information about people through their cell phones. Also good to know for the novel.

The novel which is pretty much turning into a love story.

I swear I don't know what all is in my head right now but. I should probably make myself write for a while this afternoon.

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Scribbling away

I've hit a pretty good stride with the NaNo. I have a hard time writing during the day (or even really during hours I should even be awake). However, I end up thinking a lot about where I am in the novel so that I have a lot to write when I'm feeling writerly, and consequently have hit the just over 10,000 word mark. YAY! I can't believe I've made it so far already. Also, I have a tentative possible title that will change 800 more times because I'm terrible at titles. Terrible. Horrible.

And I perused the NaNo forums long enough to realize that I'm writing LitFic, which probably shouldn't be a surprise. I seem to fall under the category of "by the time you take out all the SRS BZNS themes, it's about a girl who does stuff." I hope I don't come across as a wanker. Or even if I do, I hope it's readable wanking instead of hyper-pretentious wanking.

Taking a brief noveling break this afternoon to make dinner for Brownie's parents. I've dismembered a pumpkin, roasted it, roasted the seeds, and turned part of the pumpkin into ravioli filling. The rest will probably be fed via teaspoons to the cats or turned into pumpkin bread. Brownie's starting the pasta dough now. Then we'll roll out the dough, slap the filling in, cut the ravioli up, cook it and serve it in a brown-butter sage sauce. With pumpkin seed garnish.

And typing that out and realizing that the only thing I've had to eat today is a raisin bran muffin with my coffee, I'm thinking I should go eat. Or at least demolish half the pumpkin seeds.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Harvard Magazine's "The Ph.D. Problem"

One of my old professors linked to this article on his facebook. I read it and promptly stuck it up on mine. They bring up a couple of issues with getting a Ph.D. in the humanities:
- the median time to degree is 9 years
- 50% drop out before they finish the program
- of the 50% who complete, only half ever get a tenure-track job
- humanities doctoral programs are admitting more and graduating more students every year
- the within-the-academy humanities job market is miserably bad
- spending so much time working on such specialized knowledge often eliminates outside-the-university job opportunities (which are obviously badly needed)
- the dissertation process does not produce particularly good research or research that is necessarily something that will help broaden our knowledge
- it takes longer to do a dissertation in the humanities than it does in the social or hard sciences because despite the lack of experimentation or much archival research, there is so much pressure to find a way to say something new or different about the same texts (i.e., to spin something in a new way, basically) that dissertations become even more difficult
- universities like having grad students around to teach their courses (i.e., cheap labor)
- the system seems built to produce ABDs rather than full-fledged Ph.D.s
- these problems deter many potential students, so that the only students who end up even starting grad school are exact duplicates of the professoriate, leading to very little in the way of new or challenging thought

So in general, yes to all. The stats are dire and have been for a good fifteen years at this point. The article points out it's really been this bad since the 70's.

Basically, I've been thinking about the article in terms of my own 6+ years of graduate school experience. I do tend to agree that the system works to produce ABDs. I am one. Getting through coursework was relatively simple and made sense. The process stopped making quite so much sense when I got to exams, but I got there and got through them. I've been ABD now for 2+ years. I was stymied and left without any real guidance or mentorship when it came to my dissertation proposal. It started out badly with my disclosure to my advisors of my ADHD - they responded both by telling me in essence it was just something I was going to have to get over because "adult scholars don't need deadlines" and then proceeding to give me zero helpful advice on what I should do to craft a workable proposal until mid-December, when the advisor I generally like sat me down and went through everything with me in detail, helped me understand what she didn't think was working and so on. The next draft passed no problem. Since then, nice advisor hasn't been particularly available (sabbatical followed by pregnancy/accompanying family leave) and hosebeast advisor has done everything in her power (from "I get the sense that this project is going to take a LONG TIME" to "I really don't think you're doing this right" without then telling me what she thinks would be right) to make me feel inadequate and unable to finish. I think this is mostly my fault: apparently I shouldn't have told them about the ADHD, but more I should be better about being my own advocate and in asking them point blank what the hell it is they're looking for since I seem unable to read their minds (particularly the mind of hosebeast). Add in the complete and total lack of departmental support, and things aren't going well for me or for the other students in my department that I've talked through this all with. Brownie aside, most people I've talked to don't seem to have a clue how to finish their dissertations because they keep getting drafts back marked "been said before." Well, yes - when there's 4 shelves full of books in our pitifully understocked library on a particular text, it's damned difficult to find anything new to say.

Ultimately, I think I'm angry that I had no idea about how dire things were for graduated Ph.D.s before I began my doctorate - I'm not entirely sure I would have even started it. And it sucks watching a bunch of intelligent, articulate, thoughtful people falling apart because the dissertation isn't working out right, or rotting away in graduate school when they could be doing something that gives them a better work/life balance, etc.

Perversely, I'm still not convinced I can quit without having the dissertation finished. And I think if I do, I'll probably end up being an asshole to people who are considering starting, and wearing my "grad school dropout" badge with too much "I'm covering up for my insecurities" type pride. You know, the type of pride that tends to create douchebags. So if I end up doing this, I can only hope my friends like me enough to tell me.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

This Whole Noveling Thing

I can't work on it while Brownie's in the room. I almost can't work on it when he's in the apartment unless he's asleep. He's completely supportive about this whole idea, but I'm petrified to show him anything. I don't get myself on this one. I can't decide if I'm afraid that he won't like it or afraid that he actually will. Not that there's way too much to show him yet. Or that I'm writing in order, or have written enough of anything that it would make sense to anyone else.

I do like how the characters are only sort of paying attention to the personality traits I had listed for them. Certain things will work but as I get them in dialogue, they suddenly do something else and I find myself thinking 'okay, that made sense, but that wasn't what I was expecting.'

Finally, I wish I could get it out of my head that I'm just pretending to do this, or that I'm somehow pretending to write fiction just because I've never had a class in creative writing or really done all that much of it (see: failed attempts at bad poetry in high school). As I know from cooking, I don't need a class to become good at something. Maybe I have a block on this because it involves writing - like after all the college classes and grad school classes I don't feel like I should write anything that I haven't had lengthy discussions about beforehand.

So I lack self-confidence. Fuck it. That hasn't stopped me from doing things before, and I almost always lack self-confidence. Ergo, lacking self-confidence here shouldn't stop me from scribbling more. So what if I think I sound like an eighth-grader sometimes. That's what revisions are for, right?

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Beginneth the crazy

NaNoWriMo starts today. I haven't had time to do anything yet - Brownie's dad got us tickets to a wine-tasting/Habitat for Humanity benefit, so we're leaving for that in half an hour. When we get home I'm going to eat dinner and then lock myself in the office and see if I can get the intro fairy tale written. If I can do that, I'll feel good for having gotten something done while getting over my hangover from last night. Will report back later!

Thursday, October 29, 2009

An afternoon with the Adderall

I wonder if they spelled it "adderall" to make sure that "ADD" was prominantly featured in the name of the drug.

(at 2:20) I've written this during the course of an afternoon. I took Adderall with lunch today to see if it helps me to get through the mountain of grading I've fallen behind on. Hopefully it works. I took it an hour ago. It's had time to kick in and I can tell that it has because I can feel the sort of light rushy feeling that it tends to give my body. However, I've made it through precisely three microthemes before deciding I should chronicle it and shifted to this instantaneously. Score 1 for the ADD, 0 for the Adderall.

(at 3:02) I've finished grading the last few microthemes, alphabetized and sorted through two stacks of microthemes so that I can hand them out more easily during class tomorrow, and graded 2 papers. I feel like I'm having a hard time writing with a pen - my brain wants to write faster than my hand is capable of moving and my handwriting is smaller than usual. I keep having to cross things out because I'm trying to go too quickly and end up missing letters. I'm wondering if it will be legible to anyone else. It's legible to me, but I'm used to my writing and know what I'm saying. However, I've gotten through those papers fairly quickly and didn't get distracted in the middle of each like I usually do. Score 1 for Adderall, I think. I'd like to be writing more clearly. Will try and focus on that as I keep going.

(at 4:04) I now have 7 papers graded and have just figured out that I have 3 papers on my email that I need to grade as well. However, I'm a third of the way through, so that's a bonus. That also means I've graded 5 papers in an hour. Dude. +5 or something for Adderall. Back to grading.

(at 5:04, which strikes me as funny as it's been precisely an hour) I've graded 11 papers and figured out dinner (which will be pizza and hopefully, if Brownie picks some up, some beer), which is a bonus because that means I don't have to deal with cooking or cleaning up afterward. I want a break, but I keep telling myself I should push through while this stuff is still in effect so that I can be done before Vampire Diaries tonight. Also, who on earth thinks it's appropriate to quote from THE BACK OF THE BOOK to support an argument about a text? Adderall 1, student 0 *headdesk*

(at 6:09) I'm tired and I wish I were done with this but I've got three more physical papers and three papers online that still need to be graded. I'm feeling braindead and tired of repeating the same things (i.e., explain your quote so I know what the hell you mean by quoting it, and try and have an actual thesis please). So it occurs to me that I've been doing this for four hours and am entitled to a break. At the same time I think well, I may as well keep going.

(at 6:46) I'm done with all the papers except for the ones I received via email, which I need to download so I can grade them later. However, that's 18 papers graded with substantial marginal and end commentary, plus the microthemes done and everything sorted and ready to hand back tomorrow.

Basically, I have to admit that the Adderall does help when I'm trying to get through piles of shit that I'd rather not deal with. It did help cut down on the mental chatter and relunctance to try and focus that usually makes grading take a good two or three hours longer than this particular set of papers has taken me. I'm really glad that Adderall is one of those "turn on, turn off" type medications rather than something that I need to let build in my system (like an antidepressant) - mostly I'm glad that I know the effects will wear off soonish and I'll be able to think a little more like myself. I'm too tunnel-vision like this to have anything interesting to say. But I had a productive afternoon. I'll be interesting some other time.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

a propos of a quote

"I feel I could do something much more important. Yes, and more intense, more violent. But what? What is there more important to say? And how can one be violent about the sort of things one's expected to write about? Words can be like X-rays, if you use them properly -- they'll go through anything. You read and you're pierced. ...Can you say something about nothing? That's what it finally boils down to." - Huxley, from Brave New World (er, p. 70 in the Harper Perennial Modern Classics edition, because if I don't put all that info in I feel wrong)

Mostly: "Can you say something about nothing?" (I'll ignore my interior monologue telling me to launch into some sort of bullshit "What Is Nothing?" type pseudophilosophical diatribe and move on) -- I run around in circles with this and I'm going to try and see if I can sort through this in a manner that anyone else might find comprehensible (i.e., all of this is so tangled in my head that I'm not sure I'll be able to get it out in under-40-word sentences, but doing so will nonetheless be the goal).

Issue number one, which will be returned to: words are hugely important. I feel like I should be doing my best at all times to use them well, especially as I spend most of my time ripping apart words. Good writing, really really wonderful effective writing, is probably not as rare as I think it is (as in, I need to get my head out of academic books). The last time I got really wrapped up and soaked in words that somehow wove themselves into me was when I finally read His Dark Materials over the summer. Fucking amazing. I couldn't pull myself away, I couldn't put the books down, I actively fought having to stop reading for anything other than food. I felt like my brain was firing all over the place, emotions were ripping through my body, and when I finally did finish I felt simultaneously fulfilled and drained and wonderfully satisfied. So a week later I picked the books back up, determined to go through and figure out to whatever possible degree how the hell he did that. That lasted for about a third of the Golden Compass before I got just as sucked in as I had the first time, and I ended up polishing off all three books in a matter of days yet again. I think part of my fascination is in picking apart Pullman's reading of Paradise Lost, but part of it comes in trying to figure out how he managed to balance his interpretation of Paradise Lost with everything else he has going on, and how he managed to get me so wrapped up in the Lyra/Will relationship that the end of the Amber Spyglass reduces me to tears every time. I suppose it's all in the subtleties, but it can't completely be. When I'm reading any of those books, I never stop and think "FFS SRSLY?" at either a bad phrase or some inane plot twist. I never stop and think. I get so wrapped up that I actually forget that I'm reading. To be able to write like that would truly be something incredible.

To come back to the quote and my own writing then, I suppose my ultimate goal would be to write something that would allow the reader to forget that they were reading. (and to this point I'm finally glad for once that I'm making myself blog, since that is literally the first time I've been able to think that) To do this, then, would take pretty much a total paradigm shift in how I think about writing. Academic writing forever forces the reader to remember that they are reading - theorists in particular are fond of shoving together words or breaking words up (his/story for history comes to mind). The whole idea ends up being a way to remind the reader that the encounter with a particular text is an act of interpretation which requires work on the part of the reader. That's all good and fine or whatever (perhaps headdeskingly pretentious) to do, but I hate reading like that and I fervently hate writing like that. I feel like dissertation writing is somehow an assumption on my part, a role that I don to please necessarily critical readers. It also ends up feeling like a whole lot of writing about nothing.

To write then, to write for real rather than according to some criteria that I don't want fully to ingest (for fear that if I do, it will take over me completely), requires that I write about *something*. Hence the decision to do NaNo in November: an attempt to find something to write about that is somehow more violent, more intense (as though anything could be less intense than ripping apart mechanisms of institutional change in some manuscript no one else has heard of). But then the question comes up of what to write of, and I find myself again with nothing. Or not really nothing, but something plotless. I felt like I should write about something I feel like I (partially) understand - relationships - but I can't do full-on romance without the snark sneaking in and I don't feel like I really want to write a "lookitmebeingallironical" type novel because then I'll just feel like a douche. So romance as a genre is out. But I still want to write about relationships, so I'm shoving all writing attempts for the moment under the guise of "fiction" and will, I suppose, try to stop categorizing it beyond that until we see whether or not I actually end up writing something worthwhile.

I'm not really sure why I'm doing this, to be honest. I mean, yes to everything I've just said, but I don't harbor any real fantasies that anything I write over the course of the next month will ever see paper or a publisher or anything. The few attempts I've made at a short story sound more like Stephenie Meyer than Philip Pullman. Maybe I'll just title the novel Practice or something. If I want to do anything real with writing, practice is what I need. So I will tell myself that this next month is practice, and that it doesn't need to have a goal beyond that.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

15 minutes

I hate how I often think "ooo, I should blog about _______" when I'm not near my computer and then go completely blank when I am sitting at my computer and able to type away. This is probably part of the reason behind my lack of blog posts (beyond teh lazy). So in an effort to get myself back to writing at least as often as I was over the summer, I'm enforcing a 15 minute a day blog session every day this week. We'll see if I come up with anything worth pontificating about.

I had a cold or sinus infection type deal a week and a half ago while I was in Kansas and while I've finally gotten over it to the point that I was able to go out on a run yesterday, I still keep feeling moments of too-tired or really weak or whatever which tend to come in waves and which for some reason have been throwing me into mild panic attacks. I'm sure I'm probably still getting over the illness to a degree or whatever, but I could do without the accompanying "what if I pass out and break my head" panics that come with it. I suppose what I'm really saying is that I'm more tired than I think I should be and that I'd like for the panic attacks to FOAD.

I'm teaching Brave New World this week. I usually enjoy teaching it, but my class last year thought the whole dystopic society in the novel sounded a) roughly like what we're headed toward and b) excellent. The biggest issue for them was that Bernard was "an emo whiner" and that they didn't see why there should be any sort of glorification of emotion when that gets in the way of getting stuff done. This is so antithetical to my general state of mind (i.e., the point of sadness or emotion is to work with it and learn from it) that I was genuinely shocked into not knowing what to do or say. I'm trying to come up with responses to this general sort of sentiment in case I encounter it with this class tomorrow or any other point during the week. So far I'm not getting very far with this. One of the reasons I feel like maybe I shouldn't be a teacher when it comes down to it is that when they express things that take me completely off guard, I feel like it takes me too long to recover - I don't want to quash their ideas entirely, and I don't want to come across as though I think my stance on an issue is the only valid one, but I really ought to be better at challenging them into a deeper train of thought than I am - aka me sitting there flabbergasted doesn't bode well for my ability to help lead them into a better understanding of anything. At the same time, if I'm sitting there absolutely flabbergasted by what someone has just said and what many others are agreeing with, chances are someone else in the room is just as shocked as I am but less willing to say anything about it. So maybe I should express the shock. Or maybe I should take a bath and think through how to deal with this so that I can express something more productive than shock.

I wonder what the hell type of job I'll have in a year. I hope I *have* a job in a year.

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Yes I AM going to write in this thing

Ideally, I think I'd spend 15 minutes a day scribbling in this thing. I can't for the life of me figure out why this isn't happening, as it's not exactly like I don't have 15 spare minutes to scribble here. I'd probably have less time for this if I were, say, working on my dissertation, but as I'm not I can't figure out why I'm not doing more of this. So I will type while I'm trying to figure out dinner and while I have a cat smashing my arm down and not wanting me to get up and being very sweet and purry.

Let's see. I finally got out on the first run I've been on in two weeks because of the non-hamthrax that kept me benched for a while. A+ for getting out, C for the actual run. I only made it about two miles and had to walk a few times. My calves are killing me right now.

I had a giant alcohol-fueled meltdown on Brownie last night because I feel like everything in my life is on hold until he gets a job and I can start trying to find one, because that feeling is intensely frustrating, and because he's so busy with his dissertation and so anxious about it that I feel like I never get to spend any real time with him. And because the whole idea that he'd calm down once the job applications were in fell immediately by the wayside in that it's now "I'll calm down once I get another revision of my introduction turned in" which holds off him "calming down" for another week or so. So I flipped out last night from several months of holding all the frustration in and then informed him that if we move somewhere for his job and I hate it there, then it's my turn to decide where to move and we're doing it. He was actually okay with this. For all the ridiculous stress he's putting on himself over this job thing, he seemed remarkably okay with moving on to something else if I'm miserable wherever we go. I'm alternately like "well, good," or "really? You think you could give up a tenure-track job that easily?" and being remarkably unsure about that. I'm also feeling bad for dumping so much of my stress and frustration on him since I think he's stressed out enough without my emotions running rampant, but I think all in all it's good I told him.

Also, I've been thinking about it and I don't think that everything in my life really is on hold, even if I'm frustrated career-wise right now. I might actually start up dissertation work at some point, and I have an almost-plotless novel to write in November which I'm really kind of excited for. And I'm laughing at myself that I'm excited to write creatively for once but far too chickenshit to tell anyone IRL except for Brownie that I'm attempting to write at all, and too chickenshit to tell even Brownie exactly what it is I'm going to attempt to write. I have a hard time calling myself a writer even as an amateur-for fun type thing.

Dinner, I *think*, is going to be a bag of mussels steamed in a garlic-tomato-wine broth with bread and a thing of spicy tomato-covered goat cheese. And maybe some spicy sauteed spinach or something.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Cliches

At some point I will remember that going to Kansas to visit anyone for any reason whatsoever inevitably ends up being something along the lines of $600 once I get out there. Always. This time I went out for a wedding of a good friend. The wedding was great, the reception moreso: it basically functioned like a giant reunion for my old college crowd (the pictures of which are now on facebook). We're seriously getting old here - while I managed somehow to stay out on Friday night until 2 for the first time in so long I seriously can't remember, the reception went until about 10:30, a few of us went out and grabbed a quick snack after, and I was back at my parents by midnight. People, I am not even thirty yet. Sometimes I really miss college.

The oddest thing about the trip was Friday before I went out - everyone was in town by Friday dinnertime, so I was expecting a giant group of us to get together, have dinner and play. All of that fell through - I ended up only meeting up with one friend and his boyfriend at 9 or so - and so I found myself sitting around for most of Friday early evening online and chatting with my mom and basically feeling lonely and out of the loop. I'm used to feeling like that where I am now, just as I'm used to the fact that the vast majority of my social life atm is online, but it was a really weird feeling to have that happen back home, where I generally expect to be hugely busy all the time. Brownie wasn't out in KS with me either, which compounded the lonely feeling, and I'd failed to manage to get together with any of the friends that still live in the area because everyone was too busy and I was getting over a cold. It was like going home and being a stranger to everyone not in my family. Things got better once I got out late Friday and the wedding on Saturday was a blast, but I can't count the number of times I thought "I hate adulthood" while I was there. Anyway, even the lonely and isolated bit wasn't bad since it helped me figure out how to start bringing the NaNo novel to an end.

I know that all sounds like a giant "you can't go home again" or "growing up sucks" type thing, but I don't mean it to. I think part of why some of the lonely/isolated feelings were resonating so strongly with me was in how I remembered those feelings being a much more considerable part of my life in high school or college than they are now. Not to sound maudlin, but I don't think I ever fully felt at home when I actually lived there, so it shouldn't surprise me that I often don't feel at home there now.

So I got home Sunday night and was greeted with the coming of Monday's mail by the arrival of a BPAL order and some samples of CB I Hate Perfume scents from a lovely wonderful online friend. It's almost stupid how much new smellies make me happy. Also: I just discovered that a new Editors album came out last week, so I've now downloaded that. It sounds like the Editors spent six months drinking with Depeche Mode and then decided to record it. I'm generally in favor of this.

On the ADHD/dissertation front: I now have enough legal speed to keep me awake through 2011. I should take one and dissertate this afternoon but I just. don't. want. to. because burnout. so I'm contemplating grading instead, or perhaps being completely academically non-productive and spending the afternoon testing smellies, listening to the Editors and fleshing out the NaNo outline some more (i.e., figuring out town layouts and so on).

Thursday, October 8, 2009

WOAH FOCUS

The cat whose vomit I just cleaned up is now being MsCuddlecakes. It's sweet, I'm glad she's feeling better, but it's kinda gross all the same.

I tried the Adderall today. I ended up cutting the pill in half since I've never had anything like it before. I feel uncomfortably like flying, like my blood pressure is a little off or whatever, and like I'm breathing much deeper than usual. I've also:
1) gone through Brownie's writing sample for his job applications, which is 23 pages of an argument about Bacon and Donne and which I finally, for the first time, feel like I was paying enough attention to grasp fully and thus to comment effectively
2) written a letter of recommendation
3) given my class a huge list of paper topics
4) forgotten lunch because I was concentrating on the first task I mentioned, remembered lunch at 4 and finally ate
5) cleaned up cat puke :
6) worked on my NaNo outline

All of this since I got back from a meeting at about 1:15. My normal afternoon would have involved getting through about half of number one, giving it up as a bad job, forgetting about number two completely, waffled about even bothering with number three, would not have even begun to forget number four, would have done number five anyway because it needs to be done, and would have considered six but wouldn't have actually typed anything out. If it weren't starting to get dark out and if Brownie weren't on his way home with pizza, I'd be going on a run right now.

On the whole, I feel like my brain is working as fast as it usually does, but only on one track as opposed to having 6-10 going simultaneously. If the rest of me would settle down, I think I would like this stuff, at least on days when I have a ton that HAS to get done. Honestly, I prefer my crazy jumping-around butterfly brain - I'm comfortable with it and I feel like the random jumps and constant mental chatter make me more creative than I've felt like I've been today. I think the Adderall makes my brain work like other people think it should, rather than how it actually does. Like I've just been 'normalized' or something. I'll have to process that more later, I think.

Anyway, none of this should be construed as a "this drug is awesome go get some" type thing, and I feel like I should reiterate that I have this because I have a prescription for it and the diagnosis of the "disease?" "condition?" it "treats?" (maybe "affects").

It strikes me that I should write about the pros/cons of ADHD (as it affects me, anyway - there are different forms of adult ADHD and I can only talk about the experience I've had with mine). But that will have to wait until after pizza, which just arrived.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Compocalypse Averted

Thank FSM for tech support. University on a Hill's tech support was partially staffed during Fall Break, and so (again, thank FSM,) I have my lovely wonderful laptop back. Because my laptop borked itself, it's been renamed Beeker until I come up with something better. I didn't lose anything (thank FSMxinfinity) and am celebrating by going out tomorrow to pick up an external hard drive. Mom said she'd buy it for me so that I don't have to wait for payday. I love her for this even though it makes me feel like I'm 12. At almost-30, I feel like I should have the type of job where buying an external hard drive shouldn't have to be a "wait for payday" type thing because it really isn't that expensive. Realistically, it wouldn't probably be a big problem if I hadn't spent monies on the BPAL update Friday night, but whatever. It still would be.

I've figured out that I'm going to bookend my NaNo novel with obscure fairy tales - one as a prologue, one as an epilogue. I was going to work them into the novel itself but I think I prefer it this way. I thought this over in ridiculous quantities of detail while knitting during my computer-free weekend. I need to come up with a title, too, but that's probably going to be a near-end-of-project type thing - I SUCK at coming up with names. I either overcomplicate things or I try (and fail) to be witty.

Does anyone know if it's possible to do strikethrough writing on this thing? Bolding and italics aren't enough, and I don't know html well enough. I think I'll be googling later. (Sidenote: I love that "google" is a verb now.)

I now have an official prescription for Aderall. I'm scared of the stuff, to be honest, and not entirely convinced I'm going to fill it. Psychopharmaceuticals and I have a really mixed history. I may see if I can do a partial fill and test one before I commit to having it around. I think my problem is that my brain is already on spin cycle 24/7 - the concept of dumping speed in on top of it makes me vaguely nauseous. I also kind of feel like I should try it to see if it helps me focus enough to finish the stupid dissertation. I'll report on findings when I gutsy up enough to test the stuff.

Also, I just realized that I started every sentence in the paragraph before this one with "I." I'd fix it to make it sound better, but I'm tired, Keith Olbermann just started, and I suppose it's fine to leave the paragraph as testament to my solipsism.

Monday, October 5, 2009

Complaining

So I hate Windows Vista. Friday night as I was update-stalking BPAL and chatting and listening to Pandora and playing Spider Solitaire and so on, everything in laptopland was fine and dandy. I closed my laptop around 1 and went to bed.

Saturday afternoon when I got back from a run, I opened my laptop. The icons were all the same, and all where they should be. My first sign of impending terror was that my wallpaper was GONE. It is emphatically not a happy thing to be expecting to see a wonderfully sardonic xkcd strip and find yourself confronted with "supergeneric default wallpaper one." Also, everything I had opened up - iTunes, spider, the novel outline, a chunk of a novel chapter, my email - was all closed. So I clicked on iTunes. It said "now configuring iTunes." I sat there and waited in dawning horror as it finally configured and there was NOTHING. I have 1400 songs - not as many as some but quite a few nonetheless. ALL GONE. Shaking, I opened my documents. EMPTY. Photos? POOF. This is when the screaming panic set in.

Eventually, Brownie decided we should call my dad, who, being a supergeek, is wise in the ways of Windows. He made me reboot, which I had been terrified to do in case it made the loss of everything permanent. It came up saying my user profile wasn't loading correctly (um, no shit). So Dad told me to find a real geek since he didn't want to attempt to walk me through everything on the phone, and that everything would be fine and calm down.

So I've sort of calmed down in that I know everything is apparently accessible and that I will in fact be okay. At the same time, of everything on my computer, all that's backed up is one dissertation chapter and half of the dissertation introduction. There's another half chapter and a shitton of notes that aren't backed up at all. My music isn't backed up. My photos aren't backed up. My novel work isn't backed up. None of my old papers or anything else is backed up. I have recipes and knitting patterns and crochet patterns and all sorts of shit that could just disappear forever. Lesson learned: BACK SHIT UP. I'll be buying an external hard drive when I get paid next Thursday. And using it.

I cannot believe how dependent I am on my laptop. It feels like half my life is inaccesible to me. I mean, I can still log on to the various websites and online things that I need by using Brownie's computer, however irritating it is that I can't just click on a bunch of links in my favorites and be pre-logged in and whatever. It's extremely strange to me that there's a forum that I frequent which I don't know the address to, so that I could only get to it by clicking on a link to it in the siggie of another person on a different forum. I couldn't remember my password for this blog - I had to go through and create a new one. All of this is just irritating, but it's basically fine. The real heart attack is the writing on my laptop that is currently dead to the world.

The weirdest thing - probably the most telling, and the part I should be paying the most attention to - is that the fact that the dissertation may have up and disappeared was the thing that I was least concerned about. It wasn't my first thought - it wasn't actually my third. The thoughts went in order of novel, music, pictures, and then dissertation about two minutes later. Most of that time was devoted to freaking the fuck out about the novel. It's the novel start I'm planning on using for NaNoWriMo - I have a few chapters more or less okay for the moment (about 15,000 words total), and was planning on using NaNoWriMo to flesh out and write the vast majority of the rest of it (i.e., the writing I have done so far won't be counted toward the 50,000 word goal). The idea of losing those chapters is stomach churning. So (to wrap it back around)(yes, I do have ADD) I feel like I should have cared more about the dissertation than the novel as it's the dissertation which would land me a Ph.D., whereas the novel isn't realistically likely to do anything for me. And yet I didn't much care about the dissertation. I know I'm that burnt out, but I guess the degree itself doesn't really mean much to me anymore. This, however, is a different post, which I will write when I'm ready.

So other than that, I've had 4 panic attacks since the initial horror of possible compocalypse (to borrow a term from Cleolinda)(and holy shit, her actual compocalypse blows mine to bits), drank a goodly bit more than strictly necessary Saturday night, and probably need to go on a run, which I'll do when I get done here. My current institution of higher ed, wherein lie the particular geeks who can fix dear laptop for free, is on fall break, meaning no one is around to fix my laptop until then. So Imma knit a scarf instead, and try and think through the rest of the novel outline that I cannot type since I cannot access that document. I hate this.

Friday, October 2, 2009

Good job, self

First, quite random thought: if I'm referring to myself as "self," it needs to be lower case to distinguish it from any babbling I may end up doing about KU basketball, as their head coach is Bill Self - he would get the capitalized version.

Second thought: I started this blog with the intention of writing in it. So far, that has led to one post and this bit of brain dribbling now. The last few days have been busier than usual, but I'm disappointed that I haven't gotten back to this before today. I'm going to try and make more of an effort to post at least every other day - it really shouldn't be too difficult to find 15-30 minutes to bang something out, right? It's not like I'm working on my dissertation or anything.

Third thought: I may need to find some smileys. I've gotten so used to smileys from forum life that I find myself almost disappointed when I can't use them as sentence punctuation.


I've decided that in lieu of dissertation work, I'm going to spend November trying out my first-ever NaNoWriMo. I've got an idea I've been playing with for months, but which has very little in the way of actual writing. So I'll start writing it and see what happens. I wonder if anyone ever does much with the writing after they've finished.

Maybe I'll post more while stalking the BPAL update. I'm taking off to go see Zombieland right now.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

learning to write again

I've been thinking for a long time that I needed to get back into blogging. I finally decided on a whim to create one about three minutes ago as I was sitting on a futon listening to the wind bluster outside.

This blog isn't going to have a specific theme unless it spontaneously develops one of its own accord. I plan on using this as a repository of whatever I'm thinking about at the time. By and large that will include beer reviews, thoughts on getting out of graduate school and academics (I've been working on a Ph.D. in Medieval English for what feels like a far too significant portion of my life and am very, very burnt out), thoughts on writing, books, perfume reviews, cooking, knitting, vampires, films and cheesy television. I'm sure there will also be the occasional livejournal-style introspective whining, because a) everyone needs to at some point and b) I've been in something of an existential crisis for a while (see grad school: burn out).

I've titled this post "learning to write again" because I feel like 6+ years in grad school has nearly destroyed my style and my voice. Ultimately, I think that's what I'm trying to recover here. I don't particularly want to sound like a jargon-heavy pompous twit. I really don't think most academics sound like jargon-heavy pompous twits, but it does seem to me like several of the more famous ones do (at least in the humanities); I can say that jargon-heavy twitwriting has been by and large what I've been encouraged to do for a long time.

Nunkin is one of my cats. I'm stealing her name for this endeavor, but I don't think she'll mind.