Woe

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.

15 Minute Identity Crisis

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

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

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

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

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

On Radiohead and other joys of life

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In which I emo some

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.