15 Minute Identity Crisis

Why I can't review music:  I'd go off on a thing about how awesome this Radiohead (sort of? mini? ghost?) album is, and I'd end up sounding either like a pretentious hipster wanker or a wannabe pretentious hipster wanker (honestly not sure which is worse), so I'll not go there.  I could never get the hipster thing down anyway, even when I tried in college.  I'm sure I'm probably pretentious enough, but I'm not cool.

I'm feeling like the blog needs a(nother) new name.  I forget what it was first, and then it changed to "Interior Monologues" since that's what this all is, and then I changed it to "Suck it, Monkeys" as that's my general feeling toward the Ivory Tower and the denisens therein (not all, not even most of them - the thought is pretty much only aimed at the jerks who haven't let Brownie know one way or the other on anything in the employment realm, with a side hit to myself and my self-defeating ego-hampering maneuvers).  I've considered a few new names, but "Girl in Midst of Identity Crisis Babbles Occasionally" seems a bit unfocused (perhaps like the blog overall), "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA:  My Thoughts on Things and Stuff" sounds even less focused, and anything else I've come up with is verging more into "16 year old emoteen" than I'd like.  "Nunkin's Non-Sequiturs" seems like it's trying too hard.  I'm not sure I'm clever enough for that.

Having written all that, I've spent five minutes trying to come up with something to say that doesn't involve berating myself for my lack of recent accomplishments.  I've ended up staring at my desk.  On top of my desk is a small notebook I carry around so that I can jot ideas down when they occur to me, the pen that I keep stuck in the spirals of said notebook, a coffee mug, two bottles and untold imps of BPAL, a black cardboard tube with silver endcaps containing a bottle of CBIHP, the financial aid paperwork I keep forgetting to fill out (and which needs to happen before I go to bed), a towel, some carpet cleaner, approximately 20 cds, some old beer bottles with neat labels, my checkbook, some lotion, a New Moon chocolate candy thing that Brownie bought me last November as a joke, a box of cards for thank you notes and whatnot, three stacks of books, a mug full of pens and binder clips, and the manuscript I'm theoretically writing my dissertation on.  Underneath and next to my desk, it looks like a library has had severe digestive problems: a two foot high stack of assorted papers and approximately 50 books that I'm ignoring because they all have titles like Elites, Crises, and the Origins of Regimes. 

I think my desk is too big.  I'm planning on selling it when we finally move (whenever and wherever) and downsizing to something manageable.  The large desk feels like my "go-getter grad student" phase, like it's for big and important tasks.  At this point, I'd be happier with a small desk, one close against the wall, with enough room for my laptop, a notebook and a beer, maybe some better speakers.  And I'd like a comfortable desk chair to go with it.

Were there a way to end this with a song, it'd be Radiohead's "Go Slowly," which has been playing on repeat for about a half hour now.  I could listen to Thom Yorke sing forever.

On Radiohead and other joys of life

I am boggled by the fact that there has been an In Rainbows Disk 2 for months, MONTHS, now, yet I somehow was unaware of this until about an hour ago.  Having discovered the existence of such an album, I now own it (because Ceiling Cat forbid there be Radiohead that I don't own).  "Go Slowly" and "Last Flowers" are bleeding excellent songs and my initial favorites.  This being Radiohead, my favorite songs on the album a month from now will probably be ones I'm barely paying attention to now.

I am reaching incoherency after a whopping four hours of sleep after last nights' marathon grading session.  I love the marathon grading sessions because it gets the pain over in one swell foop, but I'm not a fan of my exhaustion level right now.  That said, I don't know that I would have gotten to bed any earlier than 2am anyway simply because my sleep schedule had turned to "weekend," meaning I didn't get out of bed until close to 11 yesterday.

The oddest thing about grading yesterday was that I ended up needing a notebook out for myself so that I could jot down thoughts for noveling.  I typically end up with a notebook nearby so I can scribble notes on what sorts of writing instruction I think the class may benefit from.  I'm not used to reading potato papers and feeling any sort of inspired thought about my own work - the usual thought process is more along the lines of "____________ OMGWTFBBQ DID YOU SRSLY WRITE THAT ______________________________ I'm bored" and etc.  Weirdly, last night, despite the plenty of "WTF" thoughts, I finally managed to figure out how to get the fight between the main characters going - the bit that was giving me problems a few days ago.  So YAY.

I can't wait to have a draft of the whole novel done so that I can completely rip it apart and reorganize it.

Anyway, I'm back to "I need to write my stupid resume for to attempt to find some sort of gainful employment."  And consequently back to "I should probably take some Adderall" (which, despite my last post, I still haven't done).  And back to feeling guilty about my distinct lack of progress in dissertationland, compounded by having run into Hosebeast Advisor in the hall today and her being completely friendly.  So I feel like I'm being lazy and wasting time, which basically means I'm wasting my life. 

Barista friend from a few posts ago bought herself a plane ticket yesterday so she can move to LA at the end of the semester to be with a guy she met and spent about a week with over Spring Break.  She's over the moon happy.  I think it's... well, I think it's awesome.  I feel like I should be thinking that it's not a smart idea, that she shouldn't be tossing grad school in the basket just to try out a relationship etc etc etc., but I can't make myself do it.  She's looking for jobs and I have no idea if she's planning on finishing her MA.  And I think it's awesome because she's doing something instead of locking herself up in the academy.  I think I'm kinda jealous.  I'm not jealous that she's running of to pursue a relationship - I think I'm jealous because she's doing something wild and wonderful and crazy that sounds a lot more like living than my 7 years of doing time in the academy.  And I wish that when I'd found it stifling, I'd done something wild and crazy too.

None of that is fueling my desire to work on my dissertation.  It does, however, fuel my desire to novel more.

Back to the Adderall

Job-type update:
I now have a profile on linkedin.  It has, well, very little information on it.  Why?  Because I still haven't finished my resume.  It's... extremely strange trying to figure out how to word things in a way that "sells" me as a good job candidate (or indeed good at much of anything).  I'm also not sure if I should be putting as my field the one which currently employs me or the one in which I think I might be tolerably happy in (i.e., I think I'm giving HR a try).  Also not sure whether I should be listing my zipcode as the one in which I'm currently stuck or the one in which I'd prefer to be living in, say, 3 months.  I'm open to suggestions. 

Frustration update:
I think the resume will be finished with Adderall.  I'm too scattered lately for my brain to function correctly.  I'm frustrated to all hell with my class (seriously, potatoes, it's Twilight - please drum up some interest to pick it apart or bash it or whatever - even bashing it would bring up some kind of conversation that I could work with!), I'm behind on grading papers (it's been a week and a half now - I usually never take this long), I still have to finish that wretched book to finish teaching on Friday, I need to get my financial aid stuff taken care of for the summer/fall as I will still technically be a student, I REALLY need to finish a draft of the resume so I can get it out there, I need to help plan one of my best friend's bridal showers (I'm matron of honor and bride's mom is refusing to help with anything - long story, not mine), and I'm still trying to get some writing done on the novel. 

Unfortunately, I've been feeling so pulled around that very little actually got done today (um, this week so far).  Class was awful (I feel like I'm not doing a great job with the text, but I also feel like the fact that one person in the room actually did their homework (i.e., play on the google to find out some idea of the real extent of Twifandom) had something to do with it as well).  (I'm apparently parenthetical happy right now - sorry for that!)  I didn't get much sleep last night either.  The upshot is that I got home, ate something, complained at mah forum ladies about my stupid morning, pixel farmed, and then stared at umpteen word docs to no effect whatsoever while listening to Doves' "Some Cities" album on repeat.  I can't keep doing this, so it's back to the Adderall after the funeral.

Family/Life update:
We spent the evening at Brownie's uncle's house with his family, mostly listening to aunts and uncles and cousins compare eulogies for Brownie's grandpop's memorial.  The family writ large has been inundated with food this week - apparently the main reason we all got together was that there was suddenly enough food from neighbors and other family members that help was rather desperately needed to eat some of it.  I had no idea people still brought food to neighbors after a death in the family.  I think it's awesome that it really does happen.  The memorial service is tomorrow morning.  Brownie's mom threatened us with promised that we'd be the recipients of any fruit baskets she gets, but that she's keeping all the chocolate (her preferred stress reliever).  She planned pretty much the entire service, so I'd say she earned it.  Brownie and I are taking Nutella cookies to her on Saturday.

I should be sleepy by this point.  I'm exhausted, but I always seem to get something of a second wind along about 9:30/10.  I *hate* the timing on this, because I need to go to sleep.  The service tomorrow is at 8:30 way the hell at the other end of town.  I love when I can use this time for noveling, but that's been like pulling teeth out of a pissed off yak the past couple of days.  There's a fight that needs to happen that the characters don't seem ready to have yet, but that I need them to have within the next 12 or so hours of plot.  I can't figure out if I'm forcing the fight when the characters aren't quite ready for it or if I just haven't hit the right head space to write it.  I just can't hear it yet.  I can hear the aftermath loud and clear, but not the fight.  I'll have to backburner it for a few days and see what my brain dreams up while I'm working on other things.  I don't exactly have time to novel at the moment anyway, sadly.

some non-sequiturs on life, death and writer's block

Lots of thoughts swirling in my head right now.

Brownie's grandfather finally died late Saturday evening after having a massive stroke on Thursday night.  There's a memorial service on Thursday morning.  I feel funny calling it a funeral or anything else because, although knowing he'll be missed, Brownie and family seem to be having a difficult time going through the "mourning" process.  There isn't really anything to "mourn" - he suffered a catastrophic stroke a few minutes after bowling a turkey.  He was mentally and physically in very good form, and lived a long and very happy life.  Like if anything it's actually something to aspire to.  Live happy and die on a high note.

Meanwhile, the death and surrounding activities have come with the sort of family reunion that these sorts of things tend to have.  Brownie's sister and brother-in-law just got into town today.  She's six months pregnant with their first kid (whom they've nicknamed something utterly unspellable)(and I'm not a bad speller!).  We had dinner at Brownie's parents with them.  The dinner was punctuated by Brownie's sister grabbing the hand of the nearest person and clutching it to her belly, hoping we'd be able to feel the babbybump kick.  It was really fun.

And somewhere in the back of my head I get this horrible thought about "wow, circle of life, how very twee is all of this."  Yes.  It's twee.  Life is actually like that sometimes.  So I'll leave that in its twee-ness and move on to this morning.

One of my sacred rules of life is that I will always treat and tip well the person who serves me a drink, be it caffeinated or alcoholic.  (Obviously the same thing goes for waiters and anyone else in a service type of job - the rule in my head specifically refers to drink-related people as they're who I see most often.)  So maybe a month and a half ago, I had gone in on a Monday morning for my usual coffee run before heading off to tutor.  The barista, whom I'd never met before, was playing Bloc Party on the stereo.  I commented on it, she commented that she didn't know a lot of people who knew the band, we got into a discussion about music we liked to run to (Bloc Party being high on my list).  The next time she was working when I wandered in, we established that we're both in grad school (albeit different disciplines).  Since then we've been really chatty every time I've gone in that she's been working.

Anyway.  I was working in the Writing Center this morning, and she turned out to be my appointment for the first half hour.  The appointment ended up going an hour and a half.  It turns out she's ADHD as well and has a bunch of the same sorts of organizational difficulties I struggle with.  I ended up sharing every writing strategy I could think of as we worked through sections of her paper, things that have worked for me that might help her as well; we compared Adderall experiences, work habits and patterns.  The writing stuff is what interests me most:  I'm hoping I run into her soon so I can hear if anything that works for me also works for her.  That said, I'm going to throw the ideas out here in the hopes that, as they've helped me, maybe they'll help another ADHD-type brain.

Without further ado (and possibly to be reposted, later, with additions and without the huge run up):
- BRAINSTORM.  Start by mapping/webbing.  This is something that a lot of us (in the 80's, anyway) were trained to do in elementary school.  Take a piece of paper.  Write your main topic in the middle and draw a circle around it.  Then write one of the large supporting ideas that you'll be discussing somewhere else on the paper - say in the upper right corner.  Draw a slightly smaller circle around that.  Connect the circles.  As you have large supporting ideas, do the same with those.  Supporting ideas need support too, so as you come up with smaller supporting ideas, figure out which of the larger supporting ideas the smaller ones fit with, and place the smaller ideas in groupings around the larger ones.  If a smaller idea fits more than one of the larger ideas, connect it with more lines, etc.  What you'll end up with is a series of clusters that are linked together.  You can then transform the giant clusters into a workable outline, and write a paper from there.
              For an ADHD brain, the beauty of the mapping/webbing style of brainstorming is that it allows the flow of thoughts to come in random, scattered, oddly-connected ways rather than in linear ways.  I know lots of people who can think linearly, form linear arguments easily, who see things in very cause/effect-type ways.  Outlining tends to work well for them.  However, for those of us for whom linear thinking is difficult at best and an utterly foreign concept at worst, mapping allows space to write the thoughts wherever they seem to belong whenever they come up (so that there needs be no attempt to force thoughts to stay only on one of the supporting ideas at any given time), and allows, through drawing lines to connect the ideas, a way to "see" the connections more strongly. 
- When writing at a computer and stuck with writer's block, take out some paper and a pen (or crayon or pencil or whatever) and start writing by hand.  Write anything until you get going on a new idea.  N. Katherine Hayles  and Sherri Turkle (among others, but these are the two who come to mind right now) have both argued that the technology we work with affects the way we think.  I've found that, for me at least, this is very much true.  This means that I can, to a degree, manipulate how I think through the material I work with.  Through writing ideas out by hand, I'm forced to slow down significantly from the speed that I'm typing at - this seems to force my thoughts to slow down and settle a bit more than they do on the computer.  I wonder if there's more to it - if the way I'm working with my hands somehow changes my thinking, or if the fact that I can doodle in the margins when I'm using a pen - something that obviously doesn't happen with computers - somehow changes what my brain is doing.  I doodle a lot when I'm writing by hand.  Computers are great because they allow for thoughts to be recorded extremely quickly (and edited just as fast), but they don't allow for some of the right brain-type action that can come out when doodling.  Anyway, if you're at a computer and stuck, take out the pen.
- (This one more super-specifically for ADHD than for any other type of brain)  Plan on a rough draft that is roughly half the length of what you actually need to churn out.  One of the problems that I've seen with many ADHD writers is the tendency to skim along the surface of thinking rather than explain the depth of each thought.  Instructors get really frustrated with this (understandably, I think, coming from the side of the student who has turned in very "surface-y" work and from the instructor who has received it from her students).  The problem with ADHD writing isn't that the depth of thinking isn't there (though this is often what's perceived): the problem is that the depth of thinking often isn't explained fully (if at all).  When pressed on a point, the writer can nearly always explain layers upon layers of thought that went into the final point (the final point being the only part that actually made it into the paper).  When asked why all that thinking wasn't put into the paper as well, the answer is often that either the thought process itself didn't seem all that important or that the connections seemed so obvious to the writer that writer assumed everyone else would see them as well.
              This is why I suggest starting with a rough draft that is only half of the required length.  Once the main ideas have been spelled out, stop writing and start asking questions (or better yet, find someone else to ask the questions - writing is best as a group effort).  The goal is to resemble an eager, why-asking five-year-old as much as possible.  Five-year-olds, when asking "why" about ANYTHING, are inexhaustible: they're trying to understand everything as fully as they possibly can.  In adopting this tactic, the ultimate point is to make sure that the thinking behind every point, every conclusion, every sentence is explained as fully as possible.  (This is another reason why mapping is so helpful - it gives a diagram of the thoughts that went into each major point so that nothing is left out.)  Explain EVERYTHING, even the seemingly most unimportant points and digressions.  Then and only then, go back and edit out the truly extraneous sentences. 

That's the short version of paper writing for the ADHD brain.  Like I said, I'll probably repost and expand it later (like, say, when it's not 1am, I haven't been up since 7, am on more than 4 hours of sleep...) - I have no idea how clear any of that is at this point because I can't see straight for yawning.  But I'll work with it soon - I'm not the only person with ADHD who's found themselves needing to write a paper.  If this has worked for me, then it will work for someone else.

I'd try to come up with some bizarro way to link back to the beginning of this post, to bring it all full circle (again?), but it isn't happening naturally and I don't feel like forcing it.  This should be two posts, really.  However, I've typed it all out and I'm not changing it now.  Enjoy!
(Really, Pandora?  You're advertising CLUB MED to me in between songs? Heh.)

Life

I'm sitting on the futon in my office with a warm orange purring ball of kittyfur curled up next to me and making my left leg warm.  This is inherently soothing.  Purring cats are the best thing on the planet.

As mentioned previously (not that this is in any way escapable outside of the realm of this blog), it's March Madness pt. 1 this week.  And I love March Madness.  And my team played tonight.  Brownie and I spent way too much time coming up with game plans (probably because talking about anything else - aka "where the hell will we get paychecks after May 30th - is too depressing).  We were about halfway into the first half, excited and squealing and cheering, when Brownie got a call from his mother: his grandfather just had a stroke and is now in the hospital.  He'll be there at least overnight, and we have no idea what all is going on.

Poof: the oxygen was sucked out of the room, and we spent the rest of the first half pretty much silent.  Brownie finally managed to get ahold of his mom again during half time.  We found pretty much nothing else - we have no idea what condition he's in exactly, or where they think the stroke hit, or if he's in danger or what.  Brownie then watched about 3 minutes of the second half, cheered some, and packed it off to bed.  His mom called right as the game ended to find out the final score.  I think she and Brownie's dad were leaving the hospital then.  I think. 

Right after we heard, we both settled into the really helpless feeling of knowing that someone's life is in danger, that there's nothing we can do, and that a lot of people are really upset because of this but there isn't really any way to help.  Add to that Brownie dealing with the possibility of losing his grandfather.  He clammed up and didn't really want to talk (he was getting really sleepy), so I don't know exactly what he's feeing.

I'm torn, really.  I started initially to feel guilty for being able to enjoy the game again after halftime, after we'd gotten just enough news to know that his grandfather hadn't died on the way to the hospital.  I don't know if I need to feel guilty though.  I don't really think so.  The thinking goes like this:  if it had been necessary or if us being there would have been able to help anything in some small way, we would have quit the game, hopped in the car, and joined his parents and aunt and uncle at the hospital.  And that would have been more than fine.  However, we were told to stay home and enjoy the rest of the game.  Brownie was tired and went to bed and eventually I really did enjoy the rest of the game.  But I wondered: should I?  or should I worry? or fret? or... what?  There really is nothing I can do for anyone.  Therefore, it's better that I enjoyed the rest of the game, rather than that I sat and worried and did nothing, isn't it?

Brownie's family (very Catholic) is fond of teasing me (Episcopalian) that I have no sense of Catholic guilt whatsoever.  I'm typically very proud of this.  I can't, however, figure out if what I'm feeling right now is a type of guilt, that I'm having fun when something awful has happened to a family member, or if I did the smarter thing by managing to let go of some of the worry once I knew I couldn't do anything, couldn't help anyone, wouldn't be sitting by someone in a hospital waiting room all night.

Is there a script out there for this sort of thing?  Something out there somewhere that I missed?

March Beer Week, 2010

Mid-March comes, as it does every year, with the promise of a week filled with MOAR BEER. To illustrate, here are the next few days:

Tomorrow is St. Patty's, obviously (we're having corned beef and colcannon for dinner tonight - squee!).  Brownie's family is mega-Irish (and mega-Italian:  hello East Coast!).  We're meeting a bunch of his aunts and uncles for drinkie bits at happy hour.  I will play my usual St. Patty's  "how many total strangers offer to buy me a drink because I have curly red hair" game.  For some reason, despite my total lack of Irish ancestry, the hair is sufficient for free drinks (or would be if I were willing to take any of said strangers up on the drinks, which I am not).

Thursday marks the beginning of March Madness.  Thursday is also the day of "the game wherein my undergrad's team mops the floor with my grad school's team."  I cannot wait.  I've been getting a bunch of questions from people who don't know me all that well, but do know me well enough to know which schools I'm referring to.  They always have questions about which team I'll be rooting for.  I figure I'll just answer here (despite the fact that pretty much no one who knows me IRL knows about this blog*):  no one in grad school would EVER root for their grad school over their undergrad.  It's simple: undergrad is fun; grad school is soul-sucking hell.  Undergrad wins, every time.

Friday, Brownie's undergrad team has its first tourney game.
Saturday and Sunday, MOAR BASKETBALL.

In between all of this, I really do need to start grading papers so that I don't find myself grading until 3am Sunday night.  I try to get papers back to my students within a week.  Managing to do so reminds me that I actually am capable of getting things done, which gives me a mild self-esteem boost.  I can go for as many of those as possible. 

On the job front, I contacted an aunt of mine who works in HR at large corporation to see if I could bounce resume questions/drafts off of her.  I'm planning on working on an initial draft Wednesday pre-St. Patty's beers and Thursday pre-game.  Here's hoping the research I've been doing pays off.  I'll be posting general thoughts about the format I'm using and the whys and wherefores as the draft gets going.

Side note: while typing this, I've been noticing that my keyboard doesn't seem to be registering every key that I type - if there are words that are missing letters and I managed not to notice/correct it before publishing, my apologies.

*quickie reason for the anonymity at the moment:  the anonymity is nothing I really want to keep up forever.  However, until the degree is completed and I've got a real, non-academic job, I need to keep it relatively anonymous.  The academy is none-too-friendly about people announcing that they'll be leaving its ranks, and I want to avoid any possible blowback from the actual academics I know about my decision to leave until after I have gainful employment: leaving academics is tantamount to burning bridges big time.

Breathing in Brooklyn

Brownie and I "ceberated" Spring Break yesterday by going to NYC to spend money stimulate the economy play.  Along the way, we saw Hugh Jackman heading out of a Gap near Union Square.  The man, he is tall.  And wet.  Near soaking, actually, as were we all, because the Northeast got hit with a Nor'easter this weekend and it was sheeting rain all damn day.  Re: Mr. Jackman, no I gawk openly, chase him down the street, attempt to get a picture or anything else.  I did do a double-take.

Anyway, the highlight of the trip was easily a trip to the CB I Hate Perfume gallery in Brooklyn, the website of which I've linked to in the blog title.  The gallery is fucking awesome.  It's a medium-sized room with white, cubbyhole type shelves on two sides of the wall (this is where the testers are displayed), a table, some random stools, and then a few steps up to the back area where they mix all the scents.  There are several lines of perfumes which tend toward the natural/outdoorsy side of scents, as well as several series of single-note accords.

Basically, it's a perfume heaven.  The other perfume heaven, of course, is Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab (BPAL).  The difference, for those who know neither or for those only familiar with one, is fairly simple.  BPAL works to create scents that are olfactory interpretations of literature, artwork, myths, experiences - whatever has captured Beth's attention.  The clearest example of this is the Salon series, where a work of art has been "translated" into a scent interpretation - certain notes in the perfume may have been chosen because they're represented in the painting (i.e., a painting with sunflowers will have sunflower in the scent oil, etc), other notes may have been chosen because they match the color of the painting (i.e., a form of synesthesia: the way we often think of the color orange when we smell the fruit of the same name).  The blends then create a sort of mood or feeling.  Example: Falling Leaf Moon gives off a mood that is reminiscent of wandering through a forest in New England in late October - melancholy, damp, woodsy, and the idea of a pumpkin pie floating in the background.

CB I Hate Perfume, conversely, can best be described by the accords.  The accords aren't interpretations.  They flat-out smell exactly like what the label claims.  If the label says Mango, it smells like a mango.  If the label says Clean Baby Butt, it smells like baby powder.  Smokehouse smells exactly like a barbeque joint.  The perfumes are interpretations of ideas or experiences, much like BPAL, but whereas BPAL will create a scent that gets across the mood, CBIHP will create a scent that smells like the actual moment.  To contrast with BPAL Falling Leaf Moon above, CBIHP has a scent called M3: November which smells exactly like you've been dropped into a forest in the late fall.  It isn't a mood, it's an experience.

That said, the differences are obviously minor, but distinct.  Another small difference:  CBIHP smells 'cleaner' to me, BPAL 'richer,' if that makes any sense.

Brownie and I wandered in at about 1:15 and were met almost at the door by one of the employees, a British-sounding chap named Russell.  We were allowed to dump dripping umbrellas in an umbrella stand, told to drop our coats on one of the stools, and then given a brief tour of what was where: perfume series to the left (with water perfumes available to spray at will; CBIHP doesn't use alcohol in their perfume) and accords to the right.  We were then told that any accords we wanted would be made to order, told if we wanted Cradle of Light to order about 25 minutes before we wanted to leave so that they'd have time to make the water perfume up (quite expensive, that one!), and were then left alone to sniff, sniff, sniff and sniff some more.

They have damn near everything.  There were only two scents I could think of that I would have loved that they didn't have: sunflower accord and neroli accord.  Everything else, however, was there.  And I mean everything, from wet concrete accord (smells like rainy sidewalks) to roast beef accord (beefy and lightly herbed - made me hungry!) to an accord jokingly called "You know what this is..." which was, I am not kidding, Play-Doh.  Honest to FSM, Play-Doh.

The thing that really blows my mind, however, is the water line of accords.  I've seen and tried lots of aquatic perfumes, but I have never once smelled one that smells like real rain.  With BPAL, I always feel like the aquatics are something that lend more to the mood of a scent rather than a description of "this here smells like an actual ocean."  So when I picked up CBIHP's Rain Storm accord, the last thing I was expecting it to smell like was a thunderstorm.  BUT IT DOES.  It smells like actual, real, true, falling from the sky RAIN (which I had ample opportunity to verify, given, as I mentioned earlier, the city was being drenched in the stuff).

I ended up with two perfumes and three accords:
- Fig Leaf / Revelation perfume
- I am a Dandelion perfume
- Rain Storm accord
- Wet Lawn accord
- Pimms Cup accord (a quick google later tells me that Pimms Cup is a gin-based citrus liquor, which I'm now mad to try)

A lovely time was had by all (except my wallet, of course).  I'm thrilled with my scents and will review them in later posts.

Commencing the job search hardcore

This post is likely to be some sort of linkspam type deal, put together from the discoveries I've made this afternoon while researching how the hell to get myself out of academia and into some sort of suitable job.

Questions that I've been wrestling with as I've been researching:
- how do I turn my CV into a resume that is attractive outside of academics?***
- how do I translate 7 years of working my ass off in graduate school into a set of skills that makes sense to the outside world?**
- how do I locate jobs to apply for that I'm not simultaneously over- and under-qualified for?*

* fuck me on this. I'm still trying to figure this out. One of the main purposes of going to my university's career center was to figure this out. The career center gave me some books and sent me on my way. This was NOT HELPFUL. So I'm relying on my researching skills to figure this out.
** I'm researching buzzwords. 6 years as a writing tutor: "good at coaching in one-on-one situations" etc
*** lots of revising, I assume


Things I have discovered:
http://www.leavingacademia.com/ - so far, the most helpful site I've come across in terms of being honest, cheerful enough that I don't regret pursuing the Ph.D. every moment of the day, and realistic enough to say 'yes, you will need to network, etc.'

http://www.beyondacademe.com/ - more of the world of "get me out of here"

#alt-ac : the current twitter hashtag going around for alternate-academic (read: non-professorial careers in the ivory tower) (I'm not as of yet on twitter, but I think I may have to change this)

www.phds.org/jobs/nonacademic-careers/nonacademic-employers-that-hire-phds/ - fairly self-explanatory - a list of employers who actually think that the training that goes along with a Ph.D. has some sort of usefulness to the outside world

listservs - wrk4us is a prime example (which I think I'll be joining)

I also read that it would be worthwhile to join theladders.com - that site that prides itself on the $100K job listings. The point of this isn't to start grubbing for money - apparently the site has some spectacular career advice. I'll be joining up to see what all the hype is about. I'll report back here if there's anything worthwhile.


Anyway, that's what my doings of the day have looked like, despite my sunny and happy "Spring Break is for lovers" post of yesterday. I was hit with a blinding 2am panic attack that I have 5 more paychecks coming before I'll be thrown out to the wolves. Ergo today=work on that.

Spring Break: A Panegyric

This being the last of my years in academe, this is the last of my Spring Breaks. Younger me would think that I should be marking the occasion by going on a trip. Grad school paychecks being what they are, however, there won't be any major trip.

Honestly, though, I'm okay with that, or perhaps even sort of happy. This break is going beautifully (albeit way too quickly, as per usual). I'm working out every morning (still doing the Jillian Michaels 30 Days of Hell dvd, which is toning me up something fierce), I'm ACTUALLY EATING BREAKFAST (this is a new and very unusual thing), I've been crocheting (the stupid scarf I've been working on since January is finally almost done), and I've been noveling again (FINALLY). I've gotten a couple thousand words so far this week. Nowhere near my November pace, but it's good, and I'm back to the characters having conversations I wasn't planning on them having and having those conversations drift off in directions I hadn't seen before they happened and I've re-planned out how the novel will begin and things are generally going swimmingly. It feels really good to be writing again. It's also really nice to have the week to write and think and write some more without the nagging constant guilty feeling that I'm supposed to be focusing on my teaching and trying to force some work on the damned dissertation and work on the job hunt and everything else.

Even better: it's been in the 50s all week. After the snowiest winter I have ever lived through, the concept of the 50s is near-tropical. We even saw the sun here for a couple of days!

Tonight, Brownie and I are going to attempt to make duck. Why? We have the time, and I have some Wegmans gift certificates from my birthday to play with. On Saturday, we're taking our tax returns on a day trip to NYC. We're hitting the Strand for books (I refuse on principle to look for dissertation books), and I will finally (!) get to go play at the CB I Hate Perfume gallery. I mean, Cloudburst Accord. Wet Lawn Accord. And then we're going to go get some food somewhere. And maybe hit the Brooklyn Brewery while we're in Brooklyn.

What I'm saying is that I'm happier right now than I have been in months, if not longer. I think it's because I've given myself permission to spend a week not in academics, not surrounded by thoughts of the Ivory Tower, not wallowing in the overabundance of guilt and feelings of abject failure that I associate with my dissertation. I'm just taking care of myself and working on things that I find interesting and fun and productive. It feels awesome.

I know that when I get out of academics in May, I will be surrounded by the stress of a job hunt and then (preferably soon!) the stress of a brand new job in a brand new field and that leaving the academy does not mean that I'm leaving stress behind forever. To get this week, however, to devote to putting my emotional health back into some semblance of tolerability has been an absolute godsend.

So fare thee well, Spring Break. You've been good to me and I will miss you when you're gone. And I will probably try my level best to take a week off when possible in the Spring, just to see if I can recreate the sense of calm I feel right now.

events and memories

I went to the career counselor yesterday...
... and I'd rather talk about something else right now. To sum up: I don't think I learned anything I didn't already know except that my institution of some sort of learning has a database of companies to play with. Also that there's a "career library" which I'm going to raid tomorrow. Books along the lines of "what do I do with my BA in English," to borrow a line from Avenue Q.

Anyway. I could write more about it, but there's no point and my brain is being eaten alive by Baudrillard, which I'd much rather talk about.

This scenario occurred in two parts:
1) I decided that, for writing purposes, it would be an intelligent idea to have a little mini notebook with me to scribble ideas down.
2) I spent my lunchtime before the career counseling appointment reading Baudrillard, flipping through the The Illusion of the End after having taught an excerpt of it recently.

The essential thing here is that I tripped over a few lines that made me pause, ponder, rip out the notebook, scribble illegibly for a while, relate everything back to the novel-in-progress (the general setting and characters of which have formed the backbone of most of my daydreams for months now - i.e., how would MC deal with these thoughts? what about main romantic interest? friends? etc.), and then just mulled everything over in my brain for a while. At this point it's probably far too late, and I too tired, to get through everything I'm thinking; I may very well revisit this all later. However, I thought I'd get the quotes out there anyway. These are from Jean Baudrillard's The Illusion of the End, trans. Christopher Butler (Stanford UP) 1994.

"If there is something distinctive about an event - about what constitutes an event and thus has historical value - it is the fact that it is irreversible, that there is always something in it which exceeds meaning and interpretation." (13)

Baudrillard here is talking about events in the sense of global history (in the midst of a discussion wherein he asserts that we've lost history altogether). I find the quote to have tremendous meaning on an individual level, however, and have been dealing with it on that plane. I suppose that when it comes to memories, there are narratives and then there are events. Narratives would be the bits and pieces that are understood, readily placed within a larger overall arc of our lives, bits and pieces that accumulate like so much flotsam but which can be generally comprehended as continuous or flowing in some sort of storyline. Events, then, would rare, and probably often (I'd like to think not always) traumatic: those moments that defy interpretation, that can't be fit into an overall life narrative, that are just too BIG. I haven't figured out exactly what I think would qualify as an event in a person's life - I suppose that would be left to the individual (though I may have more thoughts when I'm more conscious).

"We have reached the point of seeking in water a memory without traces, of hoping... that something still remains when even molecular traces have disappeared." (31)

I'm not entirely sure why I latched onto this so strongly. Molecules in the body entirely replaced every seven years, so that on a molecular level we are entirely renewed, replaced, changed. I'm struck by the idea that I'm filled with memories of which my body has no molecular memory, that people who touched me, situations that affected me and that still live with me in my mind are, to the molecules of my body, utterly foreign. Seven years and the molecular traces vanish.

The seven year molecular replacement is an interesting way to conceive of time, to mark the distance from an event. If most memories are bits of narrative which flow through our minds, would the impact of an event be worn down over time as tiny, insignificant pieces shifted themselves bit by bit outside of our consciousness, or would an event stay true despite that shifting? Would an event be the one memory that time couldn't affect, that no amount of living could erase?