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.
Showing posts with label my interior monologue. Show all posts
Showing posts with label my interior monologue. Show all posts
Monday, February 22, 2010
Saturday, January 16, 2010
In which, after yesterday's ramble, I complain for a time
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.
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.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
a propos of a quote
"I feel I could do something much more important. Yes, and more intense, more violent. But what? What is there more important to say? And how can one be violent about the sort of things one's expected to write about? Words can be like X-rays, if you use them properly -- they'll go through anything. You read and you're pierced. ...Can you say something about nothing? That's what it finally boils down to." - Huxley, from Brave New World (er, p. 70 in the Harper Perennial Modern Classics edition, because if I don't put all that info in I feel wrong)
Mostly: "Can you say something about nothing?" (I'll ignore my interior monologue telling me to launch into some sort of bullshit "What Is Nothing?" type pseudophilosophical diatribe and move on) -- I run around in circles with this and I'm going to try and see if I can sort through this in a manner that anyone else might find comprehensible (i.e., all of this is so tangled in my head that I'm not sure I'll be able to get it out in under-40-word sentences, but doing so will nonetheless be the goal).
Issue number one, which will be returned to: words are hugely important. I feel like I should be doing my best at all times to use them well, especially as I spend most of my time ripping apart words. Good writing, really really wonderful effective writing, is probably not as rare as I think it is (as in, I need to get my head out of academic books). The last time I got really wrapped up and soaked in words that somehow wove themselves into me was when I finally read His Dark Materials over the summer. Fucking amazing. I couldn't pull myself away, I couldn't put the books down, I actively fought having to stop reading for anything other than food. I felt like my brain was firing all over the place, emotions were ripping through my body, and when I finally did finish I felt simultaneously fulfilled and drained and wonderfully satisfied. So a week later I picked the books back up, determined to go through and figure out to whatever possible degree how the hell he did that. That lasted for about a third of the Golden Compass before I got just as sucked in as I had the first time, and I ended up polishing off all three books in a matter of days yet again. I think part of my fascination is in picking apart Pullman's reading of Paradise Lost, but part of it comes in trying to figure out how he managed to balance his interpretation of Paradise Lost with everything else he has going on, and how he managed to get me so wrapped up in the Lyra/Will relationship that the end of the Amber Spyglass reduces me to tears every time. I suppose it's all in the subtleties, but it can't completely be. When I'm reading any of those books, I never stop and think "FFS SRSLY?" at either a bad phrase or some inane plot twist. I never stop and think. I get so wrapped up that I actually forget that I'm reading. To be able to write like that would truly be something incredible.
To come back to the quote and my own writing then, I suppose my ultimate goal would be to write something that would allow the reader to forget that they were reading. (and to this point I'm finally glad for once that I'm making myself blog, since that is literally the first time I've been able to think that) To do this, then, would take pretty much a total paradigm shift in how I think about writing. Academic writing forever forces the reader to remember that they are reading - theorists in particular are fond of shoving together words or breaking words up (his/story for history comes to mind). The whole idea ends up being a way to remind the reader that the encounter with a particular text is an act of interpretation which requires work on the part of the reader. That's all good and fine or whatever (perhaps headdeskingly pretentious) to do, but I hate reading like that and I fervently hate writing like that. I feel like dissertation writing is somehow an assumption on my part, a role that I don to please necessarily critical readers. It also ends up feeling like a whole lot of writing about nothing.
To write then, to write for real rather than according to some criteria that I don't want fully to ingest (for fear that if I do, it will take over me completely), requires that I write about *something*. Hence the decision to do NaNo in November: an attempt to find something to write about that is somehow more violent, more intense (as though anything could be less intense than ripping apart mechanisms of institutional change in some manuscript no one else has heard of). But then the question comes up of what to write of, and I find myself again with nothing. Or not really nothing, but something plotless. I felt like I should write about something I feel like I (partially) understand - relationships - but I can't do full-on romance without the snark sneaking in and I don't feel like I really want to write a "lookitmebeingallironical" type novel because then I'll just feel like a douche. So romance as a genre is out. But I still want to write about relationships, so I'm shoving all writing attempts for the moment under the guise of "fiction" and will, I suppose, try to stop categorizing it beyond that until we see whether or not I actually end up writing something worthwhile.
I'm not really sure why I'm doing this, to be honest. I mean, yes to everything I've just said, but I don't harbor any real fantasies that anything I write over the course of the next month will ever see paper or a publisher or anything. The few attempts I've made at a short story sound more like Stephenie Meyer than Philip Pullman. Maybe I'll just title the novel Practice or something. If I want to do anything real with writing, practice is what I need. So I will tell myself that this next month is practice, and that it doesn't need to have a goal beyond that.
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.
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