This Blog is Having an Identity Crisis

And so it begins... again.

2010-08-22T17:09:00.000-04:00

The MLA job search list doesn't come out for almost another month, and already Brownie has found a position for NEXT August to apply for. Meaning that any possible sense of "yes, we could actually settle in and stay in this city" is already obliterated. I figure this is probably not all bad, in that it's good to remember that we very well could be moving again in 50-ish weeks, but it's also like &^%%%*OKIGDKF_)%^&FUCKING%T^Y&DAMMIT NOT AGAIN.

And so we begin another year of Brownie sending applications off to the void of department application committees, whence they will never be heard from again. Ever. A few years ago, I was pointed by a good friend in the direction of a blog whose author was going through a rhet/comp job search and posting the rejection letters with commentary. The blog was awesome (and even more amusing to me was that the blogwriter had decided not to apply for the opening at the school I was doing my Ph.D. work at because the Humanities Center website was WAYYYY to hippydippy to bother with). Meanwhile, last year, I don't think Brownie got enough rejections from schools that he could have done a blog mocking them - he wouldn't have had more than about 15 entries despite the 70-odd applications he sent out.

So, if you somehow trip over this blog and you're a member of an academic search committee: PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF CEILING CAT SEND OUT REJECTION LETTERS IN A TIMELY MANNER. Many, many lives are depending on the knowledge contained in those letters. It's much nicer to know for sure that one has been rejected than to sit around and wonder.

The above-yelled advice goes for anyone else who is in the position to reject someone from a job: please just send out a rejection letter/email/note/whatever. In the 20-ish applications I've submitted for jobs, I've gotten exactly one rejection. Everything else (so far, anyway) has been abject silence, which makes me feel less worthy of respect than even a rejection would.

My personal job search boils down to a giant quandary (which I'm about to explain poorly - my apologies). As of now, I'm unemployed. I started a beer blog (which I'm not linking to from here because there's a fairly limited number of people that need to know who the author of *this* blog is, given the amount of whining I do here). I'm hoping that I'll eventually be able to use that to start freelancing the occasional beer article. In the meantime, I would like an office-y sort of job with a vaguely respectable paycheck. However, I have no idea how long it will take me to find one. So I run into a problem: there's a chance we could be moving halfway across the bleeding country again next year if Brownie gets a job somewhere. Which would mean I would have to quit any job I were to get.* So I'm not sure how long I want to spend trying to get a "real" job before I decide to put that on hold pending it looks like we will be moving. Meanwhile, I applied to Borders, but I've heard nothing yet even from them. I suppose Starbucks is next. Or a liquor store.

My dissertation is still a douchebag, and my relationship with it is still strained.

The good thing: having nothing else to do, I've been plowing away at novel attempt number 2. There hasn't been tons of writing, but there's been a ton of worldbuilding and storyboarding and at least 2 chapters worth of writing. I'm playing around with point of view stuff right now and having a blast with it. I think the fact that I can at least spend my nearly limitless amounts of free time working on writing has been what's kept me from going nuts during this umemployment phase of life. I feel like I'm doing something productive, even if it ends up being only to amuse myself. I will publish a novel SOMEDAY. It may not be this one (it sure as hell won't be the last one - that was a disaster!), but it will happen. Dammit. :D

Good thing #2: I'm wearing BPAL Sundew today and it smells GORGEOUS.

* Brownie says that if I were to get a kick ass job and love it, that we'd stay no matter what happens on the academic search for him. I think it's sweet of him, but a long shot - I really haven't the foggiest fucking idea what to do with myself, job-wise, so I think it's unlikely that we'd be staying because of me. Not impossible, but definitely unlikely.

Moving in something under 33 hours

2010-07-30T00:05:00.000-04:00

So things are batshit now and have been for a while. I'd apologize for the lack of posting, but I haven't really been in the headspace for it. Anyway, the academic job search thing turned out not the way we'd initially wanted it, so Brownie and I are moving in with my parents in a few days. As my parents live six states away from where Brownie and I currently are, this has been something of an undertaking.

Most of the undertaking is ready to go, at least - 95% of our shit is on a truck in the parking lot right now, rather than in our apartment. All we have to do tomorrow is turn in the cable box/modem, get our tv and mattress on the truck, eat dinner/say goodbye to Brownie's parents, and then go to sleep. So that's tomorrow and it'll be sad and hard to say goodbye to his parents knowing that we won't see them next week as per usual. But for tonight, I'm sad about my bartenders.

Almost exactly two years ago, Brownie and I discovered the bestest little pub in the universe roughly a town over from where we've been living. By the end of the first visit, we'd discovered that they had a good beer selection, knowledgeable bartenders, and at least one bartender that was willing to shoot the shit for a few minutes when he wasn't busy with something else. Within three visits, we knew a few names and had discovered that the on tap beer selection changed frequently. Within a month, we were firmly regulars.

Two years later, we've just said goodbye to a whole bunch of friends and it hurts. I remember this feeling from when I moved 1200 miles away from home the first time - saying goodbye to everyone hurt like hell, and every time I've seen them after that has been slightly off, as though knowing that we're spending time together more because we were friends than because we're still active parts of each others' lives. I guess I'm assuming now that this will happen again, that even with the advent of facebook and whatnot, I'll never be as close to my friends there as I have been. And this is all natural and whatever, and I've got some really amazingly fantastic friends that I'll be going home to as Brownie and I relocate this weekend. And this all reminds me that if next year's job search *is* successful and we end up moving *again* that I'm likely to find friends wherever we go that I will in turn miss if/when we leave them.

But right now I'm sad, and I was half in tears while we were hanging out at the bar tonight, and I'm half in tears now and very, very surprised to find just how much it hurts to leave everyone there. And tomorrow night will be my last night in town, and Saturday night will be spent in a faraway plains state with two very freaked out kitties, and Sunday night will be spent at my parents in yet another, even farther away plains state. And life will move on and maybe someday I'll become gainfully employed and someday even farther away than that, maybe I'll manage to publish a novel. But not right now. Right now I will pet my cat, and I will mope, and I will hope my friends have a good evening.

Recipe time: Spicy Fruity Shrimp

2010-06-26T15:56:00.000-04:00

I've got a bunch of recipes that have come about from me futzing about in the kitchen trying to figure out how to use stuff up. I'll post them from time to time. The thing with me and cooking is that I tend not to measure anything exactly unless I'm baking or brewing - the upshot is that the measurements here are best guesses of approximately how much I've dumped into something, and the times are less likely to be times than they are "it'll look roughly like x when it's ready."

So here goes: Spicy Fruity Shrimp on Quinoa

Note: I've been making this with Pineapple-Habanero Salsa that Brownie and I pick up from a local salsa guy at pretty much every major festival in the area. The stuff is sweet and hot as all hell. As far as I can tell, however, pretty much any fruity salsa will work. The trick is to go a level or two hotter than you normally would (i.e., I'd normally never go near anything with habaneros in it), because there's some dairy in the sauce that brings the heat level down a bit closer to tolerable. If you can't find any superhot fruity salsa, get some not-so-hot fruity salsa and throw in a chopped jalapeno or habanero (seed it first) or a few drops of hot sauce.

You'll need:
- 1lb raw shrimp
- approximately 1 1/2 cups of hot, fruity salsa of some kind or another (and maybe a chili or two to heat things up if the salsa isn't already sufficiently hot)
- approximately 1 cup of pineapple (or mango, depending on what you can get ahold of)(peach might be awesome, too)
- 1 red bell pepper, cut into strips
- 1/2 red onion, chopped
- 1 cup quinoa (make sure to rinse the holy hell out of this: quinoa naturally produces a chemical on its surface that acts as a near-preternaturally-effective laxative. Rinsing (even just with water) will knock this right off, and the quinoa will be awesome.)
- 2 cups chicken broth (or veggie broth or water)
- 1/3 cup cream cheese (heavy cream will work too, but I didn't have it once and threw in the cream cheese and ended up liking it better that way)

Directions:
Peel and devein the shrimp. Toss the veins because they're nasty. Take the shrimp shells and throw them into a pot with the chicken broth. Let this simmer for about five minutes - the shells will turn pink and the broth will take their flavor. Once the shells have gone pink and everything smells nice and pretty, strain the broth to get rid of the shrimp shells (which can now be tossed). Set aside (and rinse the pot, because you'll need it again in a few minutes). Meanwhile, toss the raw shrimp in with the salsa and toss it around until the shrimp is covered.

Next, heat a drizzle of oil in a large-ish saute pan, and throw in the onion and bell pepper. Let them cook panuntil softened, stirring as necessary. When the onion/pepper mix is about ready, heat another drizzle of oil (about a tablespoon) in the pot from earlier. Toss the quinoa in the oil and let it toast for a minute or two in the heated oil (this makes it slightly nuttier). Then throw in the onion/pepper mixture and the shrimpy broth from earlier (some cumin might be awesome as well, if you're so inclined). Plop a lid on the pot to cover it most of the way and let it go for about 15-20 minutes. If, at the end of 20 minutes, the liquid isn't gone, pop the lid off, stir, and let it go until the liquid is pretty much gone. Let it sit for a minute or two when it's all cooked.

Meanwhile, dump the shrimp/salsa mixture and the pineapple (or whatever fruit)(and any chili you might be adding) into the saute pan and cook until the shrimp has turned a pretty shade of pink, stirring and flipping the shrimp as necessary to accomplish this task. Meanwhile, the liquid level in the pan is going to increase some - when the shrimp is mostly done, crank the heat up and boil off some of the excess liquid until there's only roughly 3/4-1 cup of liquid left. At that point, turn the heat down, throw the cream cheese into the shrimp mixture and stir until the cream cheese has melted into the sauce. Taste the sauce and adjust seasonings if necessary.

When everything's ready, plop some quinoa on the plate and spoon some shrimp, fruit and sauce over the top. Enjoy.

Boozy pairings: a Reisling works well with this, as does a fairly citrus-tinged IPA (Bridgeport would be a great example).

The leftovers store and reheat beautifully. This recipe makes somewhere in the 3-4 servings range, depending on how hungry you are.

The Waiting Game

2010-06-24T15:15:00.000-04:00

I had this dream this morning that I woke up from going AAAAAAAAAA. In the dream, Brownie comes in from a run, flops on the couch with a glass of water, and answers his phone. On the phone is Department Head from BFE University, the one we've been waiting to hear from. The phone call is to tell Brownie that he has indeed gotten the position. Brownie accepts. Brownie is then given a selection of happy, bouncing, roughly 9 month old babies to choose from, because apparently in the unconscious recesses of my brain job = noisy, crying, pooping pile of responsibility that will occasionally coo.

At least it was different from the other dreams I've been having for the past week - those have all been tornado dreams.

I think I've gone a bit nuts.

The thing that bugs me with the dream I had this morning was that it was all and entirely about Brownie. I was just a passive observer. I suppose this is how most of my life feels at the moment - everything is on hold until we find out if he's gotten this bloody job and we can start planning the move, I can start applying for jobs, etc. I keep hoping U of BFE will call this minute, or this minute, or this, just so that we *know* finally. So that I can know for sure if my upcoming year involves finding a new job and career path, or if it involves being able to spend as much time as possible writing in an attempt to turn writing into a paycheck. For now, however, we wait.

And in waiting, all I've managed to do today is some arm weights, take a shower, eat some hummus, scribble this out, wait for beer o'clock.

So I'll end with a highlight of the week (and leave the trip to NYC for anniversary number two for a later post): after writing the post immediate prior to this, I hopped on facebook and looked up the one person I had managed to stay in contact with for a few years after Carleton. I found her. It's really, really awesome to be catching up with her. So YAY! for that - that's been fantastic.

The Rusted Root of my memory

2010-06-21T13:56:00.000-04:00

My iTunes Genius threw Rusted Root's "Send Me on My Way" onto a playlist that I had it generated based on Cursive's "the Recluse" (the latter being descriptive of both my physical being and my state of mind lately). I haven't heard "Send Me on My Way" in a few months (it's buried on some playlist on my iPod, so it does pop into my consciousness occasionally). It's one of those songs, though, that has an extremely strong memory association, one that pops briefly into mind every time I hear it. The strange thing (to me, anyway) is that the associated memory isn't one that has any strong emotional pull or any real significance in my life at all.

During the summer in between junior and senior year of high school, I spent three weeks at a Summer Writing Camp at Carleton College. Carleton is a microscopic, highly-regarded liberal arts college in Northfield, MN, a tiny town of about 15,000 roughly an hour southeast of the Twin Cities. The writing camp was, despite years of whining, begging, pleading and arguing, my only summer camp experience. We slept in rooms in the dorms, had a midnight "curfew" (meaning that the RAs walked by and did room checks every night to make sure we were back), spent a few hours most days in a combination of composition and literature type classes, quite a bit of time writing and critiquing each other's writing, and the rest of the time playing Ultimate Frisbee, listening to people play guitar, flirting, swimming, writing more, dancing, jumping through thunderstorm-created puddles, being eaten alive by the omnipresent bird-sized mosquitoes of Minnesota. It was idyllic. I gained a much better sense of how to construct an essay and how to brainstorm in a way that worked with my erratic thought patterns; my poetry remained (as it does to this day) a dismal mess.

And I had a boy breakthrough, as it were, thanks to crushing on this guy Joe-Lastnameforgotten. It was the first time in my life that flirting actually seemed to work (successful flirting was not the breakthrough): I managed to get to cuddle with him while hanging out by campfires and splash with him in the pool, and (exciting for a relatively inexperienced virgin) got a lengthy post-curfew backrub while out by a swingset, flopped in the grass and being eaten alive by bugs. I only managed to avoid getting busted for getting in late because my roommate told the RA I was in the bathroom when she came by for the roomcheck. Yet after the backrub incident, Joe backed way the hell off and stopped talking to me altogether. In normal (i.e., back home) circumstances, I would have wondered and angsted and avoided confrontation like it was my job. However, being that I was 500 miles away from home and knowing that if I made things awkward, I'd never see him again after that week, I cornered him and asked him what the hell his deal was. And it worked: he explained that the girl back home he'd had a thing for forever had let him know she wanted to try dating when he got back, so he'd cut the flirting with me when he'd heard from her. So the breakthrough was this: I figured out that it was a hell of a lot quicker to just ask a guy what the hell than it was to try and figure it out for myself, and that whatever answer I got from the guy was likely to be more accurate than anything I came up with on my own.

None of this, however, has anything to do with the "Send Me on My Way" memory. The picture that comes into my head with absolute clarity nearly every time I hear that song is banal in the most everyday type of way: I had just eaten lunch with some friends and was wandered by the post office in the Student Union on my way back to my room to get my stuff for an afternoon writing critique group. Sitting at the post office desk was a guy with shaggy blond hair, baggy shorts, a ratty tshirt, and Birkenstocks (pretty much the Carleton uniform) - he had to be a work study student, leaning way back in his chair with a dog-eared copy of Neitzsche and talking to some girl that was leaning into a doorframe on the wall opposite where I was standing. There were papers and boxes everywhere, posters of every imaginable band crammed He had "Send Me on My Way" blasting on a boombox. I got my mail (only a note from the camp telling everyone we'd be heading up to the Minneapolis Zoo that Saturday) and wandered off. That's it. Yet for some reason, that's what enters my head when I hear "Send Me on My Way."

I don't know. Maybe I had concocted some idea that college would look like that - easy and relaxed with Rusted Root playing everywhere, long conversations about philosophy in between games of Ultimate. Maybe it was just that I hadn't heard the song in a while and noticed it because I liked it. It could be just that it was a particularly relaxed moment in a happy stretch of summer days. But there it is: "Send Me on My Way" reminds me of the post office in the student union at Carleton College.

I promise I'm not dead or anything

2010-06-15T18:08:00.000-04:00

I've been out in the great Midwest the past couple of weeks, marrying off a friend (whose hellish wedding probably deserves a post), spending a weekend in Tulsa, hanging out with my brother and so on. It's been a strange combination of hellaciously busy and completely bored while waiting for bridefriend to bother getting back to me, etc.

Anyway, the actual news-not-news is that the university we've been waiting on to find out if Brownie has a job with them this upcoming year has told him they'll get back to him sometime next week. This means two things: 1) after next week, we'll be able to make firm plans on where/when/how we'll move (FINALLY) and 2) next week, until they get back to Brownie, is going to be filled with him being anxious, not sleeping and so on. I'm going to try and suggest he spend most of it cooking or something like that, because the anxiety can be really difficult to cope with (for both of us, honestly - his anxiety has a tendency to fill whatever space he's in) and I'm trying to come up with ways for him to be busy.

As for my preferences, to the degree I'm allowing myself to have any, I'm not sure. On one hand, it'd be awesome if Brownie gets the job because that means we'll have at least one guaranteed income next year *phew*. OTOH, the job is in a small PA town, meaning that it'll be really difficult for me to find a worthwhile job. I don't relish the thought of sitting around endlessly jobhunting next year. Brownie has told me that I can just stay home and write next year if I'd like, and I do relish the thought, but I need to have some sort of job that will allow me to get the hell out of the house sometimes or I'll go batshit insane -- a feeling compounded by the fact that if we end up in said small PA town, I wouldn't know anyone at all besides my husband.

Meanwhile, if we come to the Midwest (back home for me), it'd be much easier for me to find a job, and we've got a huge social network out here, and there's generally more to do. I'd be much happier on a day-to-day basis. However, if we move out here, Brownie won't be teaching anything in any kind of academic capacity unless something really strange happens and he manages not only to get into the adjunct pool at any of the local places, but also manages to get a course or three to teach.

The problem is that being in academics, a year off can be nightmarish to explain on the job market. He says he feels like if we move here, he'll be giving up on a long-fought-for, not-quite-achieved dream. That's understandably difficult, and so while I'd be happier in the Midwest, I kinda hope we end up in PA so that he can have the change to do another round on the academic job market, since that's what he wants. If that round doesn't work out, however, it's over. Period. My choice on that. I can stand to go through this one more time, but after that I'd like to know that we're going to be able to settle down for a while and get around to starting a family and so on. He's agreed. The whole academic job search thing is too big a strain to repeat any more than that.

So that's that for the moment. I hate the waiting, but I'm at least used to it by now. I feel like that's all I've been doing for close to a year now.

omg tvtropes WHY

2010-05-23T02:18:00.000-04:00

ARGHH.

I somehow just managed to waste something on the order of 6+ total hours today reading tvtropes.org.

This is embarassing. (Also I was warned, but that's irrelevant. I really thought that when my brother told me not ever to go on that website ever because I would never read anything else again that he was kidding. He wasn't kidding.)

My attempt at self-justification:
- it's an intelligent website: clever, funny, well-written and thoughtful
- it really is funny as hell (e.g., referring to a fantasy religion which bears a distinct resemblance to Christianity but which cannot use Jesus as its central figure due to being made up or whatnot as a Crystal Dragon Jesus)
- it covers all kinds of examples of particular tropes in action as it were
- it's one of the most hyperlink-happy sites I've ever seen, so that it's almost impossible to make it through an article without seeing 2-3 links worth clicking on (the Crystal Dragon Jesus article leads me to click on Dead Unicorn Trope, Power Crystal, and Messiah, among others). The upshot is that by clicking on Dead Unicorn Trope, I then get another fun page with a clear description of the trope, plenty of examples, myriad hyperlinks, and an admonishment only to add an example if one is sure that it really an example - i.e., recognize the size of one's reference pool (Small Reference Pool then comes up, which was the next thing I clicked on)

Anyway, I'm way more click happy here than I've ever been on wikipedia (or really any wiki at all). And I feel... not particularly thrilled with myself for it, even though it did make the Ritual Saturday Night SyFy Movie Fest with Brownie more entertaining ("look! It's the First Girl! She'll be the romantic interest...").

Tomorrow will have to include no tvtropes. SRSLY.

It will, however, include Brownie's hooding ceremony. So YAY for Brownie's hooding, and I should go to bed so that I'm functional enough to help railroad the 30-odd people that will be there for it tomorrow.

A mini book review and some other thoughts

2010-05-21T12:45:00.000-04:00

My main internet forum of choice has been mostly down for days now. It's making me half-nuts having it gone, even though I've lately been making a concerted attempt to keep myself off the internet as much as possible because I feel like it's sucking away my ability to concentrate -- and this coming from someone who's already ADHD.

However, even what with trying to spend less time on the internet, said forum is still very much the backbone of my non-Brownie social life - it's where I get the vast majority of intelligent conversation, lulz, and genuine friendship. I hate having it gone. I hate not knowing if there have been any new datewrecks, any job interviews, wild familyfail stories, or whatever else may be going on. So to those who might be reading: hello, mah h0rs, and my the forumfail be fixed as soon as possible.

Other than that, I've devoured the City of Bones/Ashes/Light over the past few days, which were generally quite awesome. I'd highly recommend them to anyone into YA Fantasy. Highly. Clare does a great job with urban fantasy, melding the fantastic aspects of the story seemlessly with the weird awesomeness of New York City, and she does a particularly good job of getting the teenage mentality down well: the characters are flawed, but not detestably so; they have a tendency to believe their own ideas a little too fervently; they don't always understand themselves or what they're doing, but they're not idiots either. They're teenagers who, despite special abilities, act more like real teenagers than the twenty-somethings that populate teen dramas on tv. I have my gripes with the series (namely that Clary's special ability, once discovered, seems to fix everything a little too easily), but I really enjoyed it.

Thinking about it, that's probably the closest approximation to a book review I've ever had on this blog.

Anyway. On the writing front: the book idea which I've been playing with that I mentioned in the last post is, if I didn't mention it then, YA fantasy. Partially because that's the age of the main characters, partially because the idea itself is firmly fantasy, and partially because YA fantasy has been the vast majority of my reading lately simply because I've had more fun reading it than I've had reading anything in YEARS. I love teenagers-as-chosen-ones: they're already busy trying to understand themselves in normal life, trying to understand where/how they fit into the world and what might begin to form their place therein, so putting them in the position of "chosen one" as it were both gives them a way to frame the identity-angst as well as a way to begin to work their way out of it and toward a better sense of self-understanding. Anyway, between loving the genre and having a hook that fits better there than anywhere else, I'm playing with it. If it ends up going somewhere beyond the roughly 2K words I have now, great. If it doesn't, then that's fine too. When it gets farther along, maybe I'll actually post a sample.

Time to move on?

2010-05-16T13:58:00.000-04:00

Sign I'm not the dominant one in the relationship: It just took me five solid minutes to get the cat (Pigger rather than Nunkin) to move off of her spot on the couch in the study so that I could sit there. It's the only spot in the office where the internet cord reaches my laptop. I *hate* that we don't have wireless.

Meanwhile, I randomly got an idea for a story of some sort of fantasy type which I'm now playing around with. Somehow I ended up deciding it would be a good (or at least entertaining) idea to make my facebook status a request for ideas on multidimensional MacGuffins. One friend suggested an omnispatial nexus key which, if used, would disrupt the fabric of the space-time continuum. I love the idea but it won't work with the outlines of the story as they're working their way through my mind. Meanwhile, I wrote roughly 1000 words of starting conversational stuff and showed it to Brownie on Friday (who has never actually seen any of my fictional writing before, but then neither has anyone else for that matter, something I badly need to change). He actually liked it (I think - I don't think he was being kind), and we spent most of the afternoon talking through ideas before finding out that a friend was having something of a life crisis and spending the evening with her helping her talk stuff out.

So back to the writing. I don't want to get into the premise yet, and I need to flesh out the plot/world more before I can write too much. But I keep thinking that I could do something with this in a way I couldn't with the story I've been working on - that story is too character/not enough plot to be particularly marketable. I think maybe I could get somewhere worthwhile with the idea I have now. But (again), at the same time I'm swirling with thoughts that I should finish the project I'm already working on (just to prove to myself that I can, maybe?) and more thoughts that I should be finishing the dissertation (but still don't have any motivation). So I feel like I'm half-nuts, like I shouldn't be grabbing onto any idea that comes by and start scribbling. However, I kind of feel at the same time like I very much should grab onto an idea when it presents itself and seems worth working on, because one of these ideas might actually pan out, and I don't think my last project really will. I'm not convinced it's marketable.

So maybe I shouldn't feel bad about abandoning one project in favor of another. I can't really say that anything I've written has been a waste of time, even if I don't think I'll be able to publish it. I've learned from it, and I know I'll learn more from whatever I end up writing that holds my interest. And then maybe someday I'll manage to publish something.

However, I still need a day job.

A Love Note to Ugly Nail Polish

2010-05-12T18:10:00.000-04:00

My nails are currently polished in OPI's Fiercely Fiona, a sort of color that can best be described as somewhere between the color of pollen coating a car and highlighter yellow a few ticks down on the grayscale. It's, well, pretty hideous. It's also noticeable. Not blinding, just noticeable. As in I keep seeing people look at my nails and then fail to mention them. I find this deeply amusing. It was an unholy streaky mess to apply, taking four coats to even out all the way and get rid of the nail line. I should hate this polish.

I've had this hideous, awful, slightly ill-looking color on my nails now since Sunday (still chip-free!), and it has filled me with glee every time I see it. I adore it in its silliness, its inability to fit in, the fact that it clashes with everything in my wardrobe except for the unseen stripes on a particularly bright pair of underwear. It's like the nail equivalent of my purple-hair days in college (also known as "the days after I'd discovered fun hair dye but before I'd discovered the wonders and glories of teal, which all told looks much better with ginger hair than does purple").

But why like it? Am I just being perverse? Am I trying to find some way to express my "I don't think you'd fit in here" side just as I'm trying to figure out how to squeeze my insanity into a possibly corporate mold? Am I trying to take something generally coded as feminine - nicely manicured nails - and change it into a statement of something other than beauty, thereby saying that polished nails don't have to be standard feminine beauty, can be androgynous, can, in fact, be ugly? Am I trying to find something beautiful in the ugliness? Is it some empty postmodern statement on consumerism?

No. Honestly, it's probably for the lulz. I just like the polish.

I do, however, have to wonder why on earth OPI thought "dirty-pollen-yellow-two-shades-away-from-sinus-infection-snot creme" would make a good polish color. But then, I'm the weirdo who bought it.

As a side note: http://stupidnailpolishnames.blogspot.com/ is pretty awesome.

In Limbo

2010-05-09T14:38:00.000-04:00

So grades are done with the exception of two potatoes who haven't gotten around to turning in their final papers. So I await their final papers, sending them nagging emails reminding them that they'll flunk if the papers don't get turned in. Not my fault - department policy. I'd rather they just get them in so I don't have to deal with them anymore. I just want this done and off my back.

Having everything else done and calculated and ready to enter means that I can shower and go buy myself some nail polish, which was the treat I promised myself for getting through the remains of the grading.

Once the grades are in, it's done. Like really, truly done done. And I can find a job doing something else and hope that one day over the next couple of years my motivation to finish the dissertation returns in full enough force that I finish the stupid thing.

I'm still not sad it's over, so I'm assuming at this point that I'm really not going to be. Honestly, though, it's hard to feel much of anything. I have NO idea at this point what's going to happen in my life over the next few months, no idea of what to expect, no real way to make plans. Brownie had an interview with a college in BFE of this state and they called his references, who reported that and sounded as though college in BFE is really interested in him. We haven't been to the town at all, so we're trying to keep an open mind, but the truth is that neither one of us is even slightly excited by this prospect. The idea of packing up and moving back to KC instead sounds so much better, so much more likely to bring employment for both of us, but it doesn't sound definite enough for me to want to hope for it. Not knowing what to think or what to hope for or what not to hope for so that I don't end up disappointed again has become an exercise in teeth-grinding.

I guess what I do for the moment is go shower (finally, at 2:30), drag myself out to the bookstore to look at books on writing resume cover letters for a while, pick up my nail polish, grab stuff to make salmon/asparagus pasta for dinner, and then flop with a book or with my laptop and novel for a while. Something to distract me from me.

An email I can't believe I had to send

2010-05-05T23:20:00.000-04:00

Quick backstory:
One of Brownie's uncles is a born again Christian of the Conservative Glenn Beck-loving mold. Over the past few months, he's taken to sending out a bunch of tasteless jokes about how liberals are all unpatriotic idiots, reminders that Jesus loves good mommies, and various bits of tea party bullshit. He's been mass emailing these to everyone in the family and some friends (from his work email, which I find tasteless as well, but whatever). I've been ignoring/deleting them, hoping at some point that he'd figure out that spamming friends and family is not a good way to get his point across yet is, well, rude.

This afternoon he sent out a forward of some Shepherd Smith (a FoxNews anchor) insanity about how Obama never takes his wife to Muslim countries because he's Muslim and doesn't force his wife to follow Sharia Law or some such bullshit. I'd post a link here but I honestly don't feel like helping anyone to read the steaming pile of idiotic faux-rationality FoxNews came up with - I don't like spreading lies.

Anyway, I'm fed up, so after stewing about it for hours, I finally sent the following email:

Dear Uncle _____,

I've been enduring these Conservative emails from you with no comment because I felt, as family, that I should. However, you've now crossed a line in my eyes. In sending this email, you've stated a belief that Obama is a Muslim. Per the link that Aunt _____ sent out [a reply-all with a link to the Snopes article on whether or not Obama is Muslim] and, well, reality, Obama is not a Muslim. He is a Christian, of the UCC denomination. Here is a link to an article from Newsweek that eloquently describes Obama's Christian faith and his journey to it: http://www.newsweek.com/id/145971 The article is from Newsweek, a publication I frankly find to be Conservative; as I assume you will most likely see Newsweek as being somehow Liberal, I'm hoping that maybe we can ultimately agree on it as a fairly neutral, factual source.

To continue, however, were Obama in fact a Muslim, the fact would be irrelevant; this country has no official state religion, ergo being Muslim would not disqualify him from the job he was elected to do. Furthermore, to imply that being Muslim means that Obama (or anyone else of that faith) might be working against the best wishes of this country is deeply prejudicial. That sentiment insults not only the President, but the citizens of this country who used their best judgment to elect him in a free and open election and all the members of the Muslim faith worldwide. Khalid Sheik Mohammed is no more the poster child for Islam than Timothy McVeigh is for Christianity.

It saddens me to see an email like this in my inbox, filled with prejudice and hatred, from someone of whom I had thought better. In consequence, I am requesting my removal from this email list. The insult to the President, who, as President of the country I love and Commander-in-Chief to the Armed forces, demands my respect, is beyond what I find tolerable. I can roll my eyes at stupid jokes, but I can't roll my eyes at this. My sense of patriotism demands more of me than an eyeroll. Please stop sending me these forwards.

Yours in Christ,

Your niece-in-law, nunkin, the embodiment of the secular-progressive-liberal-socialist-communist that Rush Limbaugh and FoxNews warned you about, and yet still a Christian and a patriotic American. +

Happy Gurglings about Reading

2010-05-04T13:05:00.000-04:00

I flipped the name of the blog again because the most recent name didn't quite sum up anything I felt toward anything anymore. So that's that.

I've been largely offline for the last two weeks or so. I feel like I keep missing things going on in my online life - I have only a vague idea of what's going on in the lives of most of my online friends, I've barely been on facebook, I even managed to forget about farmville long enough to have some crops wilt. I feel bad (mostly about missing stuff in my friends' lives), but.

Instead of being online, I've managed to read more in the last two weeks than I have since my exams. It continues to be awesomesauce. I nabbed the brandspankingnew Philip Pullman novel on Friday and am all kinds of excited to read it. At the moment I'm finishing Alison Croggon's Pellinor series - I think Pullman will go right after that. Maybe I'll throw a review up when I'm finished since it's still so new.

I know I've already posted once about how happy I've been devouring books, but it's exhilarating. I have stories flying through my head all the time now, these incandescent pieces of loveliness that remind me that there really are ways to escape the inside of my own head, or which, conversely, remind me that the inside of my own head has stories of its own that want out too. I need to stop reading long enough to write some more but haven't wanted to.

As I read, I'm ripping apart everything as I go along, examining how authors have gone about dealing with plot, character development, description, all that - all the stuff I never looked at while ripping apart lit for grad school. It continually boggles my mind that after ten years of English (from the three years I worked through the major in college to the two years of my MA and five (so far) years of my Ph.D.), I've never gotten to talk about anything of those things, never really had time to examine the craft of writing for the sake of writing. I can read and interpret ANYTHING at this point, but when it comes to thinking about the writing, this is all still fairly new to me. It occurs to me from time to time that I should look up some books on writing and read those, see what others find important, but I haven't quite wanted to do that yet. I think at the moment that I'm happy with what I'm picking up, and I'll move on to what others have picked up on soonish. This isn't a "my thoughts will be more better and smarter than theirs" type feeling - it's an attempt to get some sort of idea as to what I think about things before I start to get into the prevailing wisdom of the world, much the same way I'd research a text by reading it, developing the beginnings of my own thought patterns about it, and then going off to read articles about it in order to challenge and develop my thinking even further.

AKA, I'm approaching writing now roughly like I'd approach dissertation research. *headdesk* The more things change, as it were.

A semi-farewell to teaching

2010-04-26T15:03:00.000-04:00

I've been an antisocial flake the last few days. It may have been the overkill from super-social Friday night out with the department followed by the Saturday of chili fest/Ben Folds concert/getting drunk with Brownie and department close friend followed by the Sunday hangover nursing and then dinner at the inlaws.

Whatever it is, by the time I woke up hungover Sunday morning, I was pretty convinced I didn't want to see anyone other than my cats for the next week. This is, of course, impossible, so I got up this morning after a scant 4 hours of sleep (including an hour of semi-consciously smacking the sleep alarm, resulting in my arrival on campus about ten minutes late). Then I got to tutor more sessions than I've had this semester, all of which were people who were having problems brainstorming, and then I got to go babysit my class while they did peer evals for their final papers, which itself turned into tutoring-like sessions with my own students who also seemed incapable of brainstorming on their own.

I completely understand that people get writer's block and get stuck on what it is they're trying to say. I wish that had been what my students/tutoring sessions wanted. But they didn't want to be unstuck. They didn't want to take the time to come up with their own ideas at all. The worst was a reflection paper on a group project. The girl came in and sat down with an assignment that asked her to write five pages about what her group did. She had one page written and "nothing else to say." She expected me to tell her what to write. I'm not exaggerating, sadly: the words "I don't know what to write now so what do you think I should write" actually came out of her mouth. So I sat, staring at her assignment sheet, asking her what they did for the group project, trying to come up with any question I could to give her something to think about. But she didn't want my questions. She wanted me to tell her exactly what she should put in each paragraph.

I am not going to miss this.

I do wonder if it will feel weird next fall when classes start and I'm not walking into one, gradebook and lesson plans in hand. I can sit here and think about that, that I will never do this again, never teach again. I feel like I should feel sad or strange or something about it. Perhaps even relief. At the moment, however, I feel nothing about it. A blank. Is it because I still have to tutor that this hasn't hit yet? Will it hit?

On resumes and rediscovering reading

2010-04-23T00:38:00.000-04:00

I have a workable draft of my resume finally (erm, well, I've really had one since Sunday evening, but whatever). So that's good. That means I can stop with some of the overthinking and the "OMG WHAT HAVE I DONE FOR SEVEN YEARS OF MY LIFE" angsty bullshit that's made the process of writing (and re-writing, and re-writing) it so ridiculous and painful. Because really, one's spouse's first reaction to reading one's resume should NOT be this: "this makes you sound like you hate yourself."

After that reaction, I took a day off and then returned to it. Rephrased. Rethought. Rephrased more. Talked it out with people. I feel better now.

Possible interview question: variation on a theme of "what do you consider to be your biggest problem in the workplace?"
Answer: I overthink things. I can overthink ANYTHING. It's like a ~~crippling mental disorder~~ talent.

Resume aside, I'm down to only a couple of classes before the teaching portion of my career is (99% likely) finished. This puts me at 3 paychecks before I hit the abyss of not knowing where my money will come from. So that's... terrifying.

The dissertation really is on hold now, pretty much officially, until Brownie and I are moved wherever we end up moving and I'm in a better head space to deal with it. The department, bless it, is covering my tuition until it's done. I actually feel good about this, and in feeling good about this, have been reconceptualizing how I want to go about arguing certain aspects of it. I had been arguing about institutional change, but what I've really been *trying* (albeit failing) to get across is that the point is to look at the effect of fiction on institutional change, which really then is the effect of fiction on our understanding and creation of reality. Which, oddly, seems more manageable to me than institutional change itself. And more fun. So Imma let that keep simmering in the dark reaches of my brainspace until I'm ready to return.

Meanwhile, I've been devouring books like they're about to poof out of existence. Lots of books. The Hunger Games (and Catching Fire)(to feed my Gale crush) and The Elegance of the Hedgehog and Misconception and Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You and so on. And it has been magnificent. Like rediscovering an old, dear friend.

It feels almost strange to say "I love to read." In some ways, I've always felt that way - I wouldn't have pursued a Ph.D. in English without loving to read. In so many other, more important ways, however, it truly has been a rediscovery: the joys of perusing books in the book store, of losing track of time while completely immersed in another world, of stories, plots and characters. For so much of graduate school, reading has been associated with guilt: if I was something I enjoy for the sake of enjoyment, then I felt guilty for it. If I read something for class/exams/dissertation work, then I didn't enjoy it; in not enjoying it, my ADHD would flare; in the flare of the ADHD would come distraction, lesser comprehension, and more guilt. Over the past seven years, reading has been so intricately entwined with guilt that I've largely avoided it when unnecessary. Suddenly (almost unconsciously) letting go of the guilt has let me read again. And that makes me really, really happy. (As a side note, this is the first post that has had a reading tag. That says a lot to me.)

Woe

2010-04-13T17:08:00.000-04:00

It's one of those days where I've spent the vast majority of it staring listlessly at my computer trying to get myself to do something that someone else would deem productive and have gotten nowhere. I'm waiting for another 45 minutes until I can leave to go do a Zumba class all the way across town with Brownie's mom and aunt. I hate exercising that late - it throws off my schedule and pretty much guarantees that I'll be up until 3am. Joy.

I sent Brownie my resume such as it is at the moment in hopes that he'll have some suggestions. I've only managed to come up with four bullet points of what my job as a teacher entails, which doesn't seem like enough for something I've been doing for 6 years - essentially for the job that is the backbone of my resume. I can't decide if I think I need to try and break things up more (i.e., am I squeezing too much info into each line) or if I'm forgetting things that seem so obvious to me that I'm forgetting to write them down or what. Part of me is wondering what the hell I think I'm doing trying to get out of academics anyway, wondering who is going to want me when there are people out there with more applicable experience who don't have jobs and who will be fighting for the same jobs I'll be fighting for. The doubt spiral needs to stop because it's led to immobilization and too much pixel farming, but I'm stuck today.

An Odd Brief Moment of Honesty

2010-04-11T17:47:00.000-04:00

The Writing Center I work in has meetings every two weeks where we either talk over recent tutoring issues/problem cases/what do I do in X situation or we meet with the head of some group or other on campus to talk over writing issues on campus. The meetings consist of the Writing Center director (a faculty member in my department) and the tutors, all of whom are Ph.D. candidate-level grad students.

This past Thursday, we had two people from the Career Center come in to talk to us. One of them came in for the reason we were expecting - so that we could talk over expectations for med school/law school/grad school personal statements. We see a ton of them in the Writing Center, so it was good to have someone else's version of what it is that each type of school is generally looking for. Good times and all. Productive. As an aside, I was amused when she said that successful law school personal statements tend to sound arrogant.

The other person from the Career Center was the Grad Student Career Counselor (the same one I met with a few weeks ago). She came specifically and only to talk to us about things that people can do with English Ph.D.s. We weren't expecting her at all - she was someone the director invited along without warning any of us.

If it hasn't come across by now (given my reasons for being mostly anonymous in this blog), being in the humanities in the academy and acknowledging that you're leaving is often a recipe for disaster. Typical reactions include being shunned, being called a failure, being told one isn't sufficiently committed to one's scholarship and so on. I've heard of people saying they were leaving academics and being told that their committee didn't see the point in letting them finish the degree. I think it's the combined effect of working in a little understood field, one which is desperately difficult to get into, and one which requires pretty much complete dedication to in order to survive. Add to this the fact that the people who make the decisions on who stays in and who ends up being forced out are themselves professors of the same subjects who themselves have had to maintain decades of complete dedication in order to survive, and you end up with a situation wherein the casual mention of "I think I'm going to do something else" can feel, to those staying in, like a personal attack. Hence the repercussions I've already mentioned.

Anyway. Having someone walk into the Writing Center and point out to a group of 15 English Ph.D. candidates - in front of a faculty member - that most of us will end up doing something not-English-professor with our lives was dead shocking. It felt like the first honest career discussion I've ever had in that building, the first time anyone has allowed us to acknowledge openly that the job market sucks giant donkey balls and that getting out is not only something that we need to consider as a Plan B, but quite possibly something we should consider as a Plan A.

I'm writing about it here because it felt like a breakthrough, at least for my department. If we're allowed to discuss so-called "alternative" careers openly, maybe it will help cut the stigma that not going into academics is synonymous with failure. Given the fact that only 1/5 of graduating Ph.D.s will actually get the pipe dream tenure track job within five years of graduation, it seems like the ONLY intelligent thing to do is to have one (or two, or three) backup plan(s) ready to launch. It's good to know that at least somewhere in my institution, this is something we can finally discuss.

I'm asking the Writing Center director to be one of my references when I'm in tomorrow. I've worked with him for seven years now so he knows me well, and I know now that I can ask him to be a non-academic reference without worrying that asking him could have some kind of blowback for me with my dissertation committee.

Fuck you, this week

2010-04-10T01:09:00.000-04:00

Basically, I spent the week walking into things and maybe gave myself a really mild concussion. Because I sat down wrong in my car - like I misjudged how far down I had to sit in order not to hit my head on the roof of the car. That I've had for seven years. I'm hoping the headaches stop at some point over the next day or two.

I'd also like the pollen to dry up and die, but a) I'm hardly alone in that sentiment and b) that would be bad for the plants. I'm dealing.

The worst thing was losing my computer for two days because I rebooted it and it didn't recognize my user profile. This happened to me last October. I brought it to the campus helpdesk when it happened last time and they had it back to me the next day. I brought it there this time and they ignored it for two days before telling me that they'd booted it up and didn't know what my problem was BECAUSE THE STUPID THING HAD FIXED ITSELF. I think it just wanted a break or something. Or it's begging me to use any operating system that isn't Windows Vista.

Anyway, we did have a good meeting in the Writing Center yesterday that I need to scribble about, but I'll do that tomorrow in its own separate post. At this point it's 1am and I need bedtimes.

15 Minute Identity Crisis

2010-03-30T23:29:00.000-04:00

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

2010-03-29T15:04:00.000-04:00

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

2010-03-24T23:52:00.000-04:00

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

2010-03-23T01:08:00.000-04:00

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

2010-03-19T01:46:00.000-04:00

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

2010-03-16T18:04:00.000-04:00

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

2010-03-14T21:44:00.000-04:00

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

2010-03-11T15:23:00.002-05:00

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

2010-03-10T15:31:00.002-05:00

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

2010-03-05T00:31:00.004-05:00

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?

Liver, I am disappoint.

2010-02-28T11:34:00.003-05:00

Seriously, I think that in turning 30 my body decided that we're done with alcohol. Two beers has me very toasty. Three beers, as I discovered Friday night, has me near-blackout drunk and hungover much of the next day. Seriously, what the hell? Two weeks ago, I handled three beers no problem. Last Friday night, at my 30th birthday party, I had 3 beers, ended up hiccupping most of the night and sort of hungover in the morning. Last night, 3 beers and BOOM. Liver, I am disappoint.

As an aftereffect of getting accidentally way more drunk than I meant to on Friday, Brownie and I had a talk yesterday about me/drinking. Getting drunk like I did was absolutely nothing I wanted to do on Friday night. I meant to just go out, have a couple of beers with Brownie, and then we were going to make fish and chips and watch the Olympics and have copious amounts of sexx0rs. This sounded like a fantastic idea. Anyway, so this all ended up not having because the beer made me way drunker than I would have guessed it would, and Brownie has taken from this the idea that I'm not being careful enough about drinking and that this lack of care is a) self-destructive and b) a sign of how stressed and unhappy I've been. His solution is that I should go talk to someone about it. I generally figure I should talk to someone anyway, but I don't know that I see the hangover yesterday as symptomatic of anything other than I need to institute new limits for myself, since the old limits apparently lead me to being non-functional. Non-functional after drinking was barely acceptable in college. At this point it's beyond unacceptable. And I really hate that pretty much all I did yesterday was stare in rapt horror at CNN while waiting to see what the tsunami would do to Hawaii.

Anyway, so I will go talk to someone in the therapy sense of things, because if nothing else my attempts at dealing with myself and exercising my way out of depression have done nothing whatsoever and I'd be glad to get a bit more help. Preferably of the non-drug kind, since my last encounter with antidepressants lead to an extreme and total loss of my sex drive. Now that Brownie's finally getting his back in the post-dissertation era of his life, I don't want to lose mine to some drug that locks it up in a straightjacket somewhere in the back of my mind.

Snowpocalypse 3: This is Getting OLD

2010-02-26T00:27:00.002-05:00

It's snowing again. We're at 8 inches and counting. And dumping. And dumping, and whirling flying spinning pausing, dropping straight to the ground and piling up even more. The gusts don't seem to know what way they want to go anymore and so the poor snowflakes are getting blasted around everywhichway imaginable. I think. They were earlier, anyway, but at this point between the wind and the sheer amount of snow coming down, it's more or less impossible to see across the street. At this point, there's this awesomely mauve-ish radiant glow coming in from outside, as the reflections of all the streetlights in the area are bouncing around through all the snow - I can't see any of the streetlights individually anymore except for the one directly across the street, but they're having this cumulative effect of lighting everything up so that it's much brighter than I'd think it normally should be at 12:30am. Why this has decided to go mauve is beyond me.

I'm teaching Baudrillard tomorrow, which I haven't yet re-read. I have roughly 12 microthemes left to grade. I've spent the day pixel farming, watching the Olympics, foruming, playing around with my new MyPlate account in an attempt to get a vague idea as to what the hell I actually eat, and killing my arms with Jillian Michaels. Nothing productive on the teaching front other answering emails from my students wherein I promise to meet them tomorrow after class to discuss paper topics, the which class I am currently thinking may be cancelled because (due to aforementioned whiteout) I am not sure my car will make it all the way to campus. My beloved little car is not happy with the snow.

The food tracking thing will probably last about a week. I'm just sort of curious to see what sorts of food I eat through the week. The tracker is counting calories (hate) and then breaking up my food intake into carbs, fat and protein. In two days, I've figured out that I apparently kick ass at getting enough fiber, but it (the tracker will from here out only be "it") doesn't think I'm eating enough carbs, which I find near-riotously funny because I often feel like carbs are 95% of my food intake (which I don't think is bad). I'm uncomfortable with the calorie-counting thing, however. The way it works, there's a baseline caloric intake that it thinks I should be eating every day: it starts with that total and then subtracts out everything I tell it I've eaten. If I work out, it adds a few calories back in for me so that it can subtract them back out later. I suppose this is probably the way to go about getting a general idea of what I eat, but I hate thinking about calorie levels. I've known too many people who have been calorie-obsessed, and I feel like having a calorie count in front of me is like trying to get myself to think of my food in terms of numbers rather than in terms of "red veggies are good for me, so I should have them." Like with a potato, for instance: when I see a potato, I think of how potatoes have shittons of potassium along with the carbs and are therefore good to eat before I'm planning a major workout (mashed potatoes at dinner tend to make for superawesomesauce running fuel the next morning). However, I know too many people who look at potatoes and think only of the carbs, that carbs are bad (RRRRRRRRR, South Beach Diet), and that the potato should therefore not be consumed (or, more unfortunately, that the potato is eaten guiltily). I'm oversimplifying this a lot, I know, and I know that the people for whom food=numbers rather than enjoyment tend to have that attitude toward food for numerous reasons, not all of which are bad, some of which are very good. At the moment I'm feeling guilty for a half-piece of cheesecake that I ate for dessert because it put me over my MyPlate caloric allotment for the day. I hate feeling that guilt, especially because I don't feel like I should be feeling it.

I guess my point here is that food for me isn't about numbers, and I don't want it to become that way, because for me that type of thinking tends to be unhealthy for me personally. If I think of food in terms of bright colors and nutrients within rather than calories, I eat much better and with much less guilt. So I'll track my food intake for a week or two to see roughly what I eat, and then I'm stopping it, because I can already sort of feel the numbers game running in my mind and I don't want it to get ingrained.

A Milestone Birthday

2010-02-22T14:03:00.005-05:00

I turned 30 as of a few hours ago. I've yet to be struck by some great profundity of this event, although people keep assuring me it will happen. I can say that my twenties were by and large unrepeatable and that I am really quite happy to be past all that.

I thought of a bunch of different things I could do for a 30th birthday blog posting, but none of them seem all that worthwhile. There's the "accomplishments of my life so far," but beyond listing the grad school stuff which I don't want to list because I'm fairly frustrated with having done it, I don't really know what to list. I know a lot of people who would call getting married an accomplishment, but I think of it as a life choice rather than an accomplishment. As in, I'm happy in my relationship and I like having it cemented as a marriage, but I don't think that makes me somehow better off than someone who's single. That's just a different life choice or circumstance or something. Grad school, OTOH, was a product of being overly idealistic and of receiving a shitton of bad advice. So not entirely an accomplishment, even if I have (and may shortly-ish receive more) letters to shove after my name when I so choose. Meanwhile, do I have a house? No. Financial security? No. A career? No. Does this make me "behind" where I should be by now? Not really, because all of that is from a sort of arbitrary checklist of how to be a successful middle class person, and "successful middle class person" is a goal I'm only half-heartedly pursuing.

Alternatively, there's the "things I'd like to do by the time I turn 31/35/40" type list. However, I didn't have one of those "things I'd like to do by the time I turn 30" type list, and I'm glad for it because I'm not sitting here with the residual guilt or feelings of failure for having not accomplished something. Imposing some sort of structure on my life like that, when not strictly necessary, ends up causing me more stress than it really needs to: in other words, it becomes an imposition rather than a structuring mechanism. Things generally go relatively well when I work with whatever opportunities pop up anyway, so I will continue in that vein. I'm sure it seems aimless to some, but I've learned a lot with the aimlessness.

What I suppose is weird to me (and what is propelling the writing of this post) is that I, who can usually find the significance in anything (given that is ostensibly what studying literature teaches one to do), am lost trying to find the significance in a birthday that is typically seen as being some sort of milestone. I don't feel any older or any wiser than I did yesterday, or last week, or last month, and I suspect I will not feel any older or any wiser tomorrow, or next week, or next month. Life will continue to throw curveballs at me, and I will continue to respond (and occasionally to throw curve balls at it). At some point I will get a draft of my novel finished and decide what next to do with it. At some point I will finally get the dissertation done (or tell it to fuck off forever). At some point I will not feel so lost and confused, and at some other point I will feel just as lost and confused as I do now, or perhaps even moreso.

More quickly than all of that, however, and generally much more certain, is that Brownie will get home soon and we will go get me a birthday beer and then come home and make penne vodka for dinner. And tomorrow I will wake up and still be 30, and that will be okay.

Probably time to hit the career counselor

2010-02-15T00:01:00.004-05:00

Had a long talk with Brownie about everything I was posting about last night - i.e., can I trust that we'll move someplace and be there for more than a year if he's planning on continuing the academic job search - to which his reaction is that he'll only do the job search if we're unhappy where we end up. I'm not fully satisfied with this since I think it takes more than a couple of months (which is all we'd have before the job search starts) to decide if one really likes an area. I honestly think it takes a full year to really get to the point of beginning to understand the rhythms and patterns of a place.

Anyway. So the outcome of the conversation is that I (well, both of us, but this blog is about ME, dammit! :) ) should start putting together a resume and applying to jobs (at this point in either city we've been discussing). This is all good and fine. So I hop on monster.com out of curiousity to see what's out there...
... and haven't the foggiest idea how to figure out what I might be qualified or good at or anything at all. Like, not the foggiest. I'm not unintelligent here. But this job searching thing is leaving me feeling very, well, "buh?"

So I figure I need to go hit the career counselor at University on a Mountain and ask them how the hell I go about figuring this out - this is emphatically not the type of training I'll ever get in my department (especially since I still sort of have to keep up something of a charade that I'm still considering academics, since disclosing otherwise to all but a few people is a recipe for social/political disaster). This should be interesting:
Counselor: "What can I help you with today?"
Me: "Well, I'd like to find a job."
Counselor: "What sort of job are you interested in looking for?"
Me: "Anything but this (i.e., academics)." Because that's about how far I've come in narrowing it down.
So, um, yeah. Should be interesting. If I end up taking some sort of "what kind of job should you be trying to find" type survey, I'm going to laugh my ass off. Those things always tell me I should be a teacher or a professor or a counselor or a priest or a writer. The same variety of options typically appears in my Myers-Briggs type as well (I'm an INFP with a vengeance, if that weren't pretty obvious by now for anyone reading who knows that typing system well enough to guess).

Really, all I'm looking for is a job in "adventures in earning a paycheck" for a time so I can figure out what sorts of strengths and weaknesses I bring to a non-academic environment and can figure out where I'd work best with said strengths and weaknesses. Really.

At least until I get a bestselling novel published. :P

Apparently I wasn't feeling so ambitious

2010-02-14T00:19:00.002-05:00

So much for the "I'll try and post every day between now and turning 30" if this is only my second post of the month - whoops. No guilt, though, because I refuse to allow myself to feel guilty about a blog right now. If I have a blog that becomes important for some strange reason, I'll feel guilty about it (er, I'll probably update more, since that would seem to be important). Anyway.

So let's see. A bio prof in Alabama was denied tenure and shot and killed some of her colleagues. I feel horrible for the families of everyone involved in the tragedy, and I hope that they're able to mourn and to work toward healing in whatever manner they need to and without prying media bullshit surrounding them. I hate that I'm not surprised that it happened, however. What I'm surprised (and thankful) about is that it doesn't happen more often.

Brownie got a signature for his dissertation on Monday, which is bloodyfuckingfantastic in that he's finally relaxed enough that he's been able to talk about things other than his dissertation or the job search for the first time since roughly July. So we topped Monday off by getting into one hell of a "discussion" about acceptable levels of stress, the job market, academics and so on, and somewhere in there Brownie announced that he doesn't think he wants to do the academic thing because he hates what it's been doing to our relationship. I hate it too, and have for a long time, and view the problems academic careers can cause in a relationship as one of my major reasons for getting the hell out, but I've also always figured that him staying in or also getting the hell out is something that he needs to decide for himself. He's always seemed to lean toward staying in, and I've dealt with that as best I can by figuring that we are really happy together and that a lot of that happiness comes from being together at home - all the cooking we do together and so on - so that maybe it doesn't really matter where we live, etc., as his going into academics means that we get no say in where we're living.

So then Monday he announces he thinks he wants out, that it just isn't worth it.

Cue me bursting into eleventy hundred tears, because it's the first time in months (maybe longer) that I've started to feel like maybe I'd get some kind of say about where we'd be living. And all of these realizations I've been struggling desperately not to have - that the whole job search thing has been entirely about him and his career, that I'm shoving my career off to the back burner for him, that I'm having a lot of anger towards myself for doing that, that I've been feeling by and large unimportant for a long time because of all of this - all this comes tumbling down all around me. Suffice it to say it's probably good that I've been sick and snowed in all week. Not that I ever lack for introspection, just that the sick has kept me from wanting to cry as much as I probably would otherwise, and the snowed in has meant that the sick hasn't been as in the way as it usually is.

Anyway, we've pretty much narrowed it down to a move to either KC or to Portland, OR. KC is where I grew up - Brownie loves it out there, I have a ton of friends and most of my family out there, and it would generally be (relatively, anyway) an easy move. Plus: thunderstorms. YAY! Oregon, however, is this place that we've both always kind of wanted to live, despite the fact that neither of us has ever even visited - just from the sheer aspects of food, beer, wine, and love of exercise, we both want to live out there. Plus it's fucking beautiful. So as much as I'd love to be around my family again, there's a part of me that wants to move to Portland too, I guess because I have a sort of feeling that if we don't do it now, we never will.

Brownie tells me today while we're out getting drinks that he's not sure he's ready to give up on academics yet. That he might do the job search again next year. And that he really wants to focus in on moving to KC rather than Portland because of all the pro-KC reasons I just mentioned and because for him, it's an adventure either way, which he then acknowledges (albeit jokingly) as being selfish. I'm objecting to the idea of getting rid of Oregon yet simply because this whole "I get some level of say in this" idea is brand fucking new, and I'm not about to close off options any earlier than I have to.

This is probably not a line of thinking I should continue on, because I'm writing myself into more anger than I felt initially about it, and I probably don't need to do that. It's making me think that I do need to reopen the whole "how I've been compromising v. what I've been getting in return and vice versa" conversation, since I'm apparently still pissed. I'm pissed for two reasons. One, that I had allowed myself to hope that we might end up living someplace I'd actually like to live - really, that I'd allowed myself to hope when hoping in this whole mess has done nothing but make me more disappointed than I'm already typically feeling. Two, that he could change his mind and say sure, maybe we could move halfway (or all the way!) across the country come May (or June or July), but don't consider it to be an assurance that we could actually stay there since he may very well decide to do the academic job search again, meaning we'd just end up moving again in another year.

I think I'm starting to reach the end of my ability to push myself and my career off any more than I already have. I need to figure out exactly where my limit is and draw the line, because I am tired of feeling more excited about nail polish than my future career prospects.

In which I emo some

2010-02-03T21:55:00.005-05:00

So the dissertation is still frozen in time, although this is not the fault of playing Farmville of facebook. It's just me and my performance anxiety/self-fulfilling-prophecy-fear-of-failure type thing. I probably can do this damn thing. So I should get on that so that it's done. So that I can stop grinding my teeth at night - my jaw hurts all the damn time. So does my back.

The novel is fairly well frozen in time at the moment as well, but not quite for the same reason as the dissertation. I've spent a fair bit of time with the novel docs open on my computer. I've mentally rehashed a particular character, and need to do the rewrites on that. Mostly I'm just stuck, however: like I've gotten it to a certain place and I know the other really major event that needs to be worked through, and then it needs to end... but I'm not entirely sure exactly how it ends and so have spent a lot of time mulling it over. A LOT of time mulling it over. Often while playing endless games of 4 suite Spider Solitaire (w00t 8% won!) and listening to whatever music seems helpful for whatever chunk of writing I'm trying to think about. There are so many ways this whole novel fits together in my head, but they feel blocked right now. We're supposed to get a Snowpocalypse this weekend, so mayhaps I'll spend probably-snowed-in-Caturday slathered in BPAL Block Buster and see if that has any discernable effect.

I'm having a hard time believing it's February already - I know I spent half of January out in KS but it still feels to me like it should be January. Or really, last October maybe. I know that I'm in mid-SAD for the year and that this is probably contributing to my general sense of nothing (nothing in the sense that nothing really affects me anymore, in that I'm already feeling just down and blank and whatever). I don't feel like I can think at all right now, like my brain knows it has a job (several, really) to do but isn't up to the task(s). This round of SAD is less self-involved and introspective than usual. I assume this is due to Brownie's ongoing job/dissertation stress, which has so overtaken his life that I feel mostly unable to live my own; keeping him even half-functional lately has been above and beyond my emotional capabilities. I don't blame him for this, really - I do think it's 99% how obnoxious and awful the whole academic job search thing is. I'm hoping he hears something soon so that we can even attempt to make some sort of near-future life plans. He did finally say (and seemed truly to mean it) that if the job stuff doesn't work out this year, we can pick a city, move there, and see what happens. I kind of adore this idea, but I'm not holding my breath.

So I do think that most of the lack of introspection during my current depressive funk is due to everything I just mentioned, but I also wonder if part of it is just that I've basically figured most of my shit out for the moment, but lack the energy or motivation to actually DO anything about any of those issues (i.e., classic depressive problem). I just wish I could get excited about something again, anything really, because I don't remember the last time I actually was excited. My basic range of emotions is this: genuine concern/care for family/friends, and blah. Like I'm turning 30 in 2.5 weeks. My thoughts on this are not OMGFREAKOUT, nor are they YAY (which is actually what I was expecting - my 20's are something I'm glad to leave behind me), nor are they anything at all other than "oh, I have to teach that day." Brownie has something big planned, but I haven't been able to get excited about that either. I've told him I am, and I very much want to mean it. It's just that finding the energy to be excited seems beyond me right now.

I think the depression is bigger than seasonal affective, because it's been going on way too long (erm, for at least the last two years). I've never had any luck with antidepressants, so I'm really resistant to going on them again. I hope to Ceiling Cat that leaving grad school behind will help - I've pinned my hopes for my sanity on that event.

I'll sign off for now. If I get really ambitious, I'll try and post every day until I turn 30 so as to chronicle the last few weeks of my 20's.

Is it Spring yet?

2010-01-27T00:17:00.003-05:00

I really, really, really should get off my ass and stop playing Jungle Jewels on facebook (maybe I should play farmville? I think it would be more social somehow) and go read the stuff for class tomorrow. I'm not particularly worried about class tomorrow in that I'm teaching the first half of "the Dead" (YAY JOYCE! says the lit geek, fully aware that my class will hate it), and I've pretty much got it memorized. Ergo I've been having a hard time convincing myself to reread it and will probably just hunt through it some tomorrow during my tutoring hours so that I know exactly where I'll be pointing the discussion.

Silly thing of the night: I'm sitting on the futon and fart a little bit. Right as I'm doing so, Nunkin jumps up on my lap. I tell her what I've just done. She cocks her head at me, turns in a circle and sits next to me, about two feet away. About a minute later, she comes and curls up on my lap. I swear cats understand us.

I've been sitting here trying to write on this blog and telling myself that as I write, something about which to write will magically appear in my brain. It often does. Right now, however, it's not happening, and all I can think about is my horoscope for the day, which told me I was going to be oversensitive and whiny. This has been entirely true for the day (erm, for this whole blog - like all of it, not just this post), but I had to laugh about the horoscope because as true as it is, I just can't picture a random planetary configuration causing all of this. Mostly I do think it's the SAD hitting as per usual. I am trying to remember to take vitamin D to see if that helps. Who knows - it might really do something if I can manage to remember to take it daily. If nothing else, I'm hoping for a placebo effect, which I figure would work as well as anything else on winter blahs.

Goal for tomorrow: get something - anything! - done. ANYTHING.

2010-01-24T23:51:00.003-05:00

It's ten to midnight on a Sunday. I've been playing MarioKart Wii in hopes of unlocking new characters and eventually getting to the point where I can play the Mirror Mode. I'm starving so I've turned on the oven to heat up some pizza rolls, which I'm not entirely convinced are food, to fuel the rest of my evening.

The gym today was a total bust. You know how people always say that you may not want to go to the gym, but you'll never regret having gone? Today I totally did. I had some sort of nervous pent-up toxic energy that I figured would be awesome for running off on the treadmill (too friggin' cold and rainy to run outside today), but I managed to run the toxic energy off in something like five minutes and was dying for the last ten minutes on the treadmill (that I spent 15 minutes only on the treadmill tells me that I was tired), followed by another 12 or so on the bike, followed by a weak and pathetic attempt to lift weights, all of which ended in me realizing that I was fairly sure my heartrate had been too high for a while and that I was feeling faint and getting dizzy, so I decided to go home rather than risk passing out. On the way home I stopped into the bookstore to get the one book that I didn't receive a desk copy of and stopped again to run into Walgreens to pick up a protein bar. By the end of both trips I was weak and shaky and really ready to sit back down in my car and pant for a moment before driving again. Many hours later I'm not as tired as I was, but I have no idea WTF was going on with me today. I've had bad workouts in the past, but nothing like that.

If I have one working braincell that still has the desire to finish this stupid Ph.D., I will email my advisor this week. Preferably tomorrow. I need to schedule a meeting with her so we can figure this shit out. I'd love to say I've done something about the diss since the last time I talked to her, but mostly I haven't. Okay, really I haven't at all. I suck. Twenty year old me wouldn't have this problem - twenty year old me would be done by now, or very close to done and about ready to start collecting signatures, because twenty year old me was tenacious and worked on school stuff from eyes opening in the morning until eyes closing at night. Twenty year old me would have fought harder for one of the topics she really wanted to work on, rather than letting my advisors decide what they thought I should be doing and then weakly agreeing with them, hoping that my capitulation would help it all end quicker.

Nearly thirty year old me feels much smarter and more experienced than twenty year old me ever was or could have been, but nearly thirty year old me has zero drive to get anything done. I still have some sort of ambition, I think, however unfocused - I'd like, when near death, to be able to look at my life and say "this was important; I am proud to have done this and proud of how it made a difference for others." I wish the goal of this ambition were rather more in focus - I feel like if it were then I'd have some sort of path to follow, some sort of (however vague) script to run my life along again. When I was still planning on the academic path, I had a script. Diverging from that path feels like the right thing for me to do, but it does leave me scriptless, and I wonder how much of my current lack of motivation to do anything is because I don't feel like there's a reason to do it.

All of this, I presume as well, is exactly why I have such a hard time getting out of bed in the morning (to wrap back around to where I was 11 hours ago). I'm going to hit the vitamin D supplements hard for a while and see if that helps with anything - maybe killing some of the SAD will help me feel a bit more able to accomplish something, I hope.

Getting out of bed

2010-01-24T12:44:00.003-05:00

Getting out of bed in the morning has taken to posing something of a problem for me (er, moreso than usual). I can't decide how much of this is January/February-standard SAD and how much of it is the general "where is my life going"-type angst that I've been feeling for the past year. Admittedly, part of the problem this morning is that it's gray and raining (boo, January, it's supposed to be snowing now, not raining!), and rain is guaranteed to keep me in bed as long as possible.

So by this point it's 1pm. This morning I have managed the following:
- finally pull my butt out of bed around 10:45-11
- eat a bowl of oatmeal (breakfast is a new thing I'm trying as of this morning, so we'll see how that goes)
- drink my coffee
- check my email, facebook and forum
- sit and contemplate blogging for a while before deciding to attempt to get a post out

I was going to blog last night because I was in sort of the right mood (i.e., contemplative or whatever), but then it occurred to me that I had pot de creme in the fridge (leftover from Brownie's birthday on Thursday) and an unwatched Vampire Diaries on the DVR. I went for the easier option. I didn't even feel guilty about it, which I figure is a good step for me. But then, Saturday night at midnight shouldn't be a time to feel guilty about wanting to relax.

At this point I'm trying to convince myself to go to the gym. I really should: the running is good for me mentally and emotionally (well, and physically, but I never seem to think about that as much this time of year - it's all about trying to keep my mood at a supportable level).

It's idiotic the things I contemplate when I'm sitting here at 1 o'clock on a Sunday and trying desperately to get myself to do something about which I might actually feel good. I've spent 20 minutes trying to figure out what BPAL I have that is appropriate for a miserably cold and rainy winter day. I have a few that work for miserably cold and rainy autumn and spring days, but for some reason none of those seem right for winter, as though winter were to need something with that extra level of "well, it really should be snowing but it's not." In the grand scheme of things, this entire line of thinking is insane, and I know this, and I also know that chances are extremely high that I'll throw on something woodsy and be done with it. And none of this matters.

What I probably should do is get my ass off the futon, go to the gym so I can run and lift weights for a while, come home, shower, and work on the novel for a while. I had a lengthy conversation on Friday night which ended at 3 and kept me up until after 5 thinking about how guilt can be used as a subtle, awful weapon in a relationship. Nothing about the conversation itself need be said, as it's not my current issues that were being explored, meaning that this isn't a space for any of that to be discussed, but it did occur to me at some point as I was lying in bed reeling from some nasty memories which I wish would just die already that a problem with the novel in current form is that I was nowhere near hitting exactly how guilt can be used as a mechanism of control, but that this is something I can fix in revisions. Therefore I think I ought to be revising while all of this is fresh in my head (or, really, sort of fresh - I've been turning this over and over and over for about a day and a half now so that everything's shifted a few times by now).

I think I am going to go to the gym. It's probably the best thing I can do for the blahs at the moment.

I know it just won a Golden Globe and all

2010-01-17T23:22:00.003-05:00

...but I still refuse to see "Dances With Smurfs."
Okay, maybe it's technically brilliant and I gather it's so flipping beautiful that it depresses people to see our own world or whatever (seriously - CNN said so), but my fucking FSM I NEED A PLOT IN MY FILMS. OR AT LEAST PLAUSIBLE CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT. Honestly, Up in the Air was excellent, and The Hurt Locker should have won for director (which in the interest of staying honest I will admit here to having not seen yet - I've been waiting for dvd and Netflix so that I can watch it with whatever breaks I need to take to be able to deal with it). At least Glee won, so I can deal with that. And Robert Downey Jr's speech was perfect.

In reality: classes start tomorrow. I managed to do better than I have some semesters in dealing with this problem. My syllabus is already photocopied, even - two years ago I managed to photocopy my syllabus five minutes before class began. I'd have been fucked proper if the copy machine hadn't been working. So this semester the syllabus is done (finished mostly last night around 1am - such a fantastically fail way to spend a Saturday night), I've got everything that I could find online up on Blackboard already and a list of the last few articles/books I need to request from the library ready to go on my laptop for some point in the next day or two when I feel like bothering the folks at the ILL desk. My nails are polished in a fairly non-professional yet course appropriate black-with-red-shimmer and I know exactly what BPAL I'm wearing tomorrow but am still stumped on actual clothing (aka, the only part of my appearance other than my hair that my students are likely to notice in the slightest). Story of my life - the details are all put together but I'm missing a few of the major pieces.

As far as it being the start of my last semester of grad school, I keep thinking I should have some deep or profound thoughts about it, but I don't. I don't even really have a "yippee" type feeling about it. I just want it to end. I'm hoping the class goes well (it generally does - this is my third go-round with the syllabus), but beyond that I just want it over and I want to move on with my life.

I started reading some of the novel last night because I felt like working on it but wasn't being particularly productive in the writing sense of things. And. It's not awful. I wasn't embarassed for myself when I read it. So that's a bonus, because embarassment was pretty much what I was expecting to feel. What I read needs fucktons of work before I'd show it to anyone else (at which point it would need fucktons more work, I'm sure, because that's how these things go), but at least for the moment I'm not feeling bad about it (definite bonus, as I've got this irritating won't-go-away guilt about working on novel stuff when I "should" be working on my dissertation... it maybe time to return to old attempts to rid myself of "should," as "should" never leads to good feelings).

A propos of nothing, I made an apricot-pine nut tart from a Lidia Bastianich recipe, and it was AWESOME. I'll post the pictures and stuff when I figure out how to post pictures here (read: when I bother uploading them from my camera).

I'll just end it here by reiterating that I'm surprised that I'm greeting my last semester of grad school so... blandly. I'm much calmer than I would have thought I'd be.

Also good for calm: The Flaming Lips' "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots."

In which, after yesterday's ramble, I complain for a time

2010-01-16T00:14:00.004-05:00

I'll start off with a simple "today sucked."
Except that today didn't fully suck. Brownie and I went and saw "Up in the Air" FINALLY this afternoon and then crashed at Favorite Pub for dinner and that was fine and lovely. Really, only this morning really sucked.

What happened was simple. Somehow, last night, I'm not sure how, I managed to forget for the first time in my life to take my contacts out.

This, in and of itself, really isn't the biggest problem of all problems. It actually wasn't a big deal for a while. I took the contacts out when I realized they'd been in all night and left them out while I showered. Then I put them back in and didn't think about it, finished getting ready and began to attempt to run errands (biggest errand: I'm out of checks and new checks haven't arrived yet because my lazy ass hasn't ordered them. I need to pay rent. I went to the post office, but the computer there had borked itself and wasn't running debit card payments, so I was unable to procure a money order for my rent payment. As my bank is in KS, merely running by the bank wasn't an option. Anywhere else requires I pay cash, but it's not possible to pull the requisite amount of cash out of the ATM all at once. Ergo, rent remains unpaid (hopefully only) until tomorrow).

As I was driving in the car after running by the second post office of the morning (which was apparently having the same computer issue)(argh), a mote of dust flew into my right eye. Or SOMETHING flew into my right eye. It honestly felt like a giantass chunk of kitty litter. Anyway, it hurt so bad I yelped and damn near wrecked my car by driving it into the car next to mine. I managed to avoid that, but barely.

Being closest to the grocery store (and it being 1pm at this point, and me having neither eaten nor caffeinated myself for the day), I drove the rest of the way there mostly blindly and ran into the store with tears streaming down my face so I could get into the bathroom, pop out the contact, and try desperately to figure out what the hell had gotten into my eye.

Answer: nothing that I could find, although my cornea still hurts and I'm vaguely wondering at this point if I scratched it.

Finding nothing, I popped the contact back in, waited until the pain was more or less tolerable, and ran around the grocery store getting coffee and everything else I needed so I could go home.

When I got home, I got rid of both contacts, still couldn't find anything wrong with my eye other than OWFUCKPAIN, and ended up sitting on the toilet crying in frustration. Brownie knocked on the door to ask if I was okay and somehow ended up being treated to an hour's monologue of OUCH followed by screaming fit followed by me punching myself, the toilet seat and the floor followed by a long sob of existential angst. As the angsty bits have all generally been spewed here before, I'll spare everyone the details. Mostly it was long, self-involved, probably melodramatic, and leaves me wondering if there's a healthy-yet-still-effective way to deal with some of the "O GOD O GOD WUT DO I DO WITH MY LIFE" type feelings, because I sure as fuck haven't come up with one yet.

Brownie has decided he thinks I should see a therapist. I've been telling him I think he should see one since he promised me he would back in November, so I told him this afternoon that I'd bite if he did. I don't know that I should wait for him to, however, as it might actually be good for me to stop feeling like I ought to be able to handle myself and see instead if anyone else has any productive ideas.

At this point, I'm mostly mad that my eyes are still puffy from crying (seriously, eyes, it's been 10 hours, so quit that shit please) and that they still burn from having slept in the contacts. Also my right eye still stings in the same place it started hurting this afternoon in the car and I'd like that to stop.

Mostly, however, what I'd like to be able to stop are the random screaming, flailing, ineffective outbursts that scare Brownie and do nothing to help me deal with anything. I kept trying to tell him once I finally sort of calmed down that all in all I really just needed to get some of the tension out, but he knows and I know that it's a bit more than that. Like I know that I need to get back into running and exercising now that we're back home and I have gym access and above-freezing weather so that running outside is feasible, but I also know full well that exercise isn't going to fix everything; going on a run won't make me feel suddenly fulfilled or like I have some sort of purpose or whatever. I know this. But it might help.

At this point I just need this last fucking semester to be over (she whines before it begins) so that I can move on from this awful and misguided chapter of my life (i.e., the Ph.D. years) and begin to see what life is like outside of supposedly-vaunted Ivory Tower. I also need to cut it with the "I'm worthless and unproductive" type thoughts, because they're not helping a damn thing. I try to stop them when I notice them, but I don't think I really consciously realize that I'm mentally bagging myself until it's been going on for a while. Like having written all this, I'm sort of realizing that much of this post involves me berating myself for flipping out earlier rather than trying to come up with a productive way to deal with it.

Problem: I haven't the foggiest fucking idea how to deal productively with anything anymore.
Solution: ??????
(Step 3: Profit!)

So my problems, are they big? Cheebus no, they're not. I have a roof over my head and a warm apartment and food to eat and an amazingly sweet warm orange furball of a cat sitting on my lap and purring and a wonderful and amazing husband asleep in our bed. I'm honestly fucking lucky that my problems center around general existential angst. I should probably just sit myself down and try and write and try to figure out if there's anything I can do for anyone in Haiti that involves more than just money. So I'll fuck off for now and promise to try to be in a better mood the next time I decide to blither on.

As a final thought: don't do a Ph.D. in the humanities. It damages the soul.

In which I ramble for a time

2010-01-15T00:39:00.006-05:00

Got back home from being home tonight, if that makes any degree of sense. I'm sitting now in my office in my apartment with Nunkin curled up against my leg and purring and Piggy bathing herself six inches away. It's a warm and cuddly feeling to know my kitties missed me.

We haven't put away the Christmas tree yet - I kinda meant to do that before we left, but ran out of time, so it's still up on its little table and will have to be taken down tomorrow in between bouts of syllabus finishing.

Otherwise, being home means two things:
- I have to get prepared for my FINAL (YAY) semester of grad school (done or not)
- I really do have to email Good Advisor so we can talk about me finishing my stupid dissertation, the thought of which (the dissertation moreso than the email) makes me nauseous, so I'm going to stop thinking about it.

While still back in KC, Brownie and I went out with my brother, his best friend (whom I'll nickname Romeo for the moment because it's terribly inappropriate both in general and specifically in relation to this person, who is as snarky and solipsistic as they come - he's hysterical) and best friend's sister, who is awesome. Awesome enough that I'll just nickname her Awesome for the time being. Anyway, Awesome will be graduating from college this year with an English major and spent most of the fall semester angsting over grad school. So she was telling me this last night and then told me about a conversation she had with her advisor, who pointed out to her that if grad school was already stressing her out, she didn't have to go (italics hers, in speech, I swear. They were audible.). And apparently that idea hadn't actually occurred to her before. So she's decided not to apply, even if that means spending two years working at a Panera before she comes up with something better. Brownie and I both traded fist bumps with her and congratulated her on her decision to keep her body and soul united together. In return, she announced that she was going to come crash on our sofa for a year while figuring out the rest of her life. I've been told to make sure we have cider on hand for her, as she's not much into beer. I am absolutely all for a visit from Awesome, but not sure I'd be able to help her on the non-grad school-career front. I'm about to the point of asking little kids what they want to do when they grow up just so I can steal their ideas. Except that I don't think I want to be an astronaut. Or a fireman. Hrm.

And at this point, it's 1am, and I'm tired. Purring kitties or not, I think it's bedtime. I'll deal with the "thoughts on the last semester's commencement" or whatnot as soon as I have some.

When meatballs attack

2010-01-11T14:44:00.004-05:00

Brownie makes the bestest meatballs ever. Seriously. Like, I'd have considered marrying for meatball access if I wasn't already married to him.

So when we got out to visit my parents, we made a fuckload of meatballs. Half went into the freezer. The other half has been sitting in the fridge since last Saturday. Brownie was swearing up and down that they're completely fine STILL.

Really, though? 9 days for meat?

So I decided they're probably not fine even though they smell/taste fine, and am going to toss them. But the thing is that I DID taste a bit of one. And it does taste fine.

Two things are now going on in my head:
1) I'm planning on throwing out perfectly good food based on the fact that it "should" in my mind be bad already. (aka "food guilt from my grandmother (Mom's Mom) yelling at us when we were kids and didn't want leftovers")(also aka "why can't bad food just start spewing green fumes like it does in the Sims??")
2) I'm simultaneously convinced that the meatballs can't be good any longer just because seriously, nine days, and that because I tried one I'm going to go into some sort of paralytic shock here in the next ten minutes, a feeling which has tripped a mild panic attack (which I'm currently trying to quell via breathing carefully and talking myself down by posting this) which itself isn't being helped beause it's almost 2 and I've thus far only had coffee today, so I'm getting shaky and headachy, which I rationally know is due to lack of food but which panicky brain is attributing to "ZOMG MEATBALL WILL KILL ME."

Fortunately, I'm at least recognizing that I've thrown myself into anxiety over pretty much nothing, so I should hopefully feel better after I've finally eaten the frozen pizza that is currently unfreezing in the oven.

So this is the New Year...

2010-01-11T02:02:00.004-05:00

...and I don't feel any different, she says, quoting a Death Cab song...

Actually, at the moment I feel roughly 10 pounds (probably closer to 6 in reality) pounds heavier, like I'd really, REALLY like to exercise a whole bunch and like my liver could use a break. The last of which entertains me because this was the first New Year's Day in ten years (literally, the first since 1999, which was before I'd started drinking) that I woke up sans any sort of hangover at all.

Since then, however, there has been rather too much in the way of dranks, and I'm looking forward to getting back to PA to rest my chemistry (to quote an Interpol song). Except for the wine tasting we're apparently going to on Saturday.

I'd love to have some sort of big "this is what I've been doing" type update, but the truth is that there really isn't all that much. Reason: SNOW. Like, SNOWMG or SNOWPOCALYPSE NOW or SNOWMAGGEDON or something to that effect. Also, REALLY EFFING COLD. Mostly we've all been hiding indoors because the outdoors has been murderous. At this moment there are roughly 18 inches of snow on my parents' deck, and this is after two days of bright sunshine and one day of hitting maybe 22 (tropical, really) degrees, which caused icicles, which means there was some melting. The windchill on Friday morning was -32. Hence the aforementioned lack of exercise and accompanying overabundance of dranks - there really hasn't been much to do.

What I have done: I got a chance to hang out with bridefriend and chat with her for a while and I think we might be going to look at bridesmaid dresses tomorrow. I've gotten to have dinner with Favorite Priest (who performed my marriage ceremony), seen Favorite Aunt twice, found out that my grandmother has Alzheimer's (not, I repeat, NOT a surprise) and have reaffirmed for the hundredth time both my inability to comprehend the amount of porcelain in my grandparents' house and my dislike for antiques.

The thing with antiques is this. My grandparents' house has always been more of a museum of antique French porcelain dishware than it has been a liveable house (in my memory at least - according to my aunt, they got like this at some point after all the kids had moved out). I've been to their house twice during my seven years of grad school, and before that, I don't think I'd been to their house since I was six, which was when they summarily banned visits from kids because they were worried that a dish might get broken. Once they banned visits, my brother and I saw them for birthdays and Christmas for a year or two, and after that it was down to Christmas and Thanksgiving only. As far as I can tell from our interactions, I didn't have much meaning to my grandmother from the age of six until I showed up with a fiance and a ring on my finger. Am I bitter? A bit, yes. Do I blame them? Partly, I suppose. Mostly what I really blame are the damned antique porcelain dishes on their hooks and shelves and and hangers and tables and covering every wall and every surface in the entire two story house, including the former rooms of my dad and his two sisters. So while I'm sad to hear that my grandmother has Alzheimer's, I feel like a bad person because I'm more sad that it happened in a general way (as in, it's a terrible disease and it's hard to see anyone go through it, or even to imagine anyone dealing with it) than I am that it's happening to MY grandmother in particular. I'm mad at myself for that, but I feel like I was never allowed the chance to get to know her, all because I might have accidentally broken a plate.

I have an irrational hatred of flea markets. I've been called a snob for this more than once (most memorably by the Bastard, who took me to several flea markets in an attempt to make me "get over myself"). It isn't snobbery at all. I know there's some seriously cool stuff to be found at flea markets, and that going could probably be a lot of fun. But I hate it anyway because of those stupid porcelain plates.

Blogging is strange and wonderful in some ways because I get started and end up writing about something that I hadn't been thinking about at all before I began.

Nearing the year's end

2009-12-30T22:53:00.004-05:00

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.

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

2009-12-28T22:20:00.008-05:00

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...

Some random thoughts

2009-12-13T20:05:00.003-05:00

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?

After a morning of facebook stalking

2009-12-10T13:49:00.004-05:00

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.

RRRRRRRRRRRR

2009-12-08T22:49:00.003-05:00

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.

In which I post for the sake of posting

2009-12-04T15:30:00.004-05:00

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.

Buh?

2009-11-29T21:04:00.003-05:00

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.

a propos of some great romantic tale

2009-11-28T14:32:00.000-05:00

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.

But it was going so well...

2009-11-16T18:02:00.002-05:00

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.

Odds and Ends

2009-11-12T13:55:00.003-05:00

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.

Weirdness from the NaNo World

2009-11-09T15:14:00.002-05:00

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.

Scribbling away

2009-11-08T15:02:00.003-05:00

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.

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

2009-11-04T13:20:00.002-05:00

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.

This Whole Noveling Thing

2009-11-03T14:23:00.003-05:00

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?

Beginneth the crazy

2009-11-01T16:04:00.002-05:00

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!

An afternoon with the Adderall

2009-10-29T14:00:00.002-04:00

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.

a propos of a quote

2009-10-28T14:08:00.006-04:00

"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.

15 minutes

2009-10-25T20:07:00.003-04:00

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.

Yes I AM going to write in this thing

2009-10-24T14:47:00.003-04:00

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.

Cliches

2009-10-20T11:00:00.003-04:00

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).

WOAH FOCUS

2009-10-08T18:04:00.004-04:00

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.

Compocalypse Averted

2009-10-06T19:51:00.002-04:00

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.

Complaining

2009-10-05T11:30:00.003-04:00

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.

Good job, self

2009-10-02T17:01:00.002-04:00

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.

learning to write again

2009-09-29T13:25:00.000-04:00

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.