Back to the Adderall

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

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

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

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

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

Life

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Milestone Birthday

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

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