And the crash
I've been keeping busy, busy, busy since K left, trying to stave off what I knew was coming.
I've tried, the best I could, to cook. I've tackled the Augean task of cleaning the apartment with elan, aplomb, and more than a touch of OCD, reminding myself that I merely need to create a little more order than entropy each day to eventually have everything exactly the way I like it. I've answered e-mails. I've gone to my evening classes, even when I didn't feel like it, and it meant riding my bike in subfreezing weather to get there.
And then tonight I had a dinner of cheese rice (as it sounds: rice with cheese sprinkled on top), and, um, half a package of tofu straight out of the fridge, and slumped uncomfortably in a chair, watching a bunch of crap TV (even more shamefully: on DVD), and spent a fair amount of time staring into space, wondering what the point of it all was.
One of the major problems I've had in trying to untangle my relationship with K goes a little like this:
I'm unhappy.
Is it (a) because of my relationship, (b) because of my job, (c) because I never learned how to be happy, (d) because of my crippling social anxiety, or (e) because my personal attributes, values, and goals, in combination, are horribly mismatched with today's world?
Multiple answers are acceptable.
I know, I know. It's supposed to feel like this right now. That little bubble of energy and serenity of the last few days was just the momentum of the elevator as it plummeted towards the ground. And I'm also exhausted: the cat that I always suspected liked K best has taken up a new hobby of wailing piteously for about ten minutes straight, pretty much every hour on the hour, all through the night.
And it's the job stuff, too. I think we're now in an all-out race between my finding another career and something fairly socially catastrophic happening with my current one. I mean, I've been diligently applying myself, for quite some time now, to maintaining the illusion that I give a rat's ass about my duties, and, frankly, the shields are starting to fail. Worse, the incredibly low stakes and utter irrelevance of my office mean that, naturally, there are a fair number of outrageously self-important people around the place. I've watched, recently -- helplessly, and in horror -- as some unbelievably arch and deflating things have shot out of my mouth as I've been speaking with these individuals; I just can't do this much longer.
I might not have mentioned it here -- Facebook has, unintentionally, become something of a substitute personal mini-blog as I've gravitated toward more mainstream topics on this one -- but I did get admitted to Ohio. I did not get admitted to Michigan (I feel compelled to point out that I had been previously admitted to another, more selective, Michigan program, so my ego isn't taking too much of a hit on this one). Penn has yet to respond, but I'm not hopeful. That said, I've having serious second thoughts about this whole grad school enterprise; I think K's assurances that this is what I ought to be doing had obscured my own lack of enthusiasm for the project.
So what, then? I don't know. I read journalismjobs.com and get wistful about minor reporting jobs on wintry Northeastern islands, but that might just be the last Proulx novel I read that's talking.
I've tried, the best I could, to cook. I've tackled the Augean task of cleaning the apartment with elan, aplomb, and more than a touch of OCD, reminding myself that I merely need to create a little more order than entropy each day to eventually have everything exactly the way I like it. I've answered e-mails. I've gone to my evening classes, even when I didn't feel like it, and it meant riding my bike in subfreezing weather to get there.
And then tonight I had a dinner of cheese rice (as it sounds: rice with cheese sprinkled on top), and, um, half a package of tofu straight out of the fridge, and slumped uncomfortably in a chair, watching a bunch of crap TV (even more shamefully: on DVD), and spent a fair amount of time staring into space, wondering what the point of it all was.
One of the major problems I've had in trying to untangle my relationship with K goes a little like this:
I'm unhappy.
Is it (a) because of my relationship, (b) because of my job, (c) because I never learned how to be happy, (d) because of my crippling social anxiety, or (e) because my personal attributes, values, and goals, in combination, are horribly mismatched with today's world?
Multiple answers are acceptable.
I know, I know. It's supposed to feel like this right now. That little bubble of energy and serenity of the last few days was just the momentum of the elevator as it plummeted towards the ground. And I'm also exhausted: the cat that I always suspected liked K best has taken up a new hobby of wailing piteously for about ten minutes straight, pretty much every hour on the hour, all through the night.
And it's the job stuff, too. I think we're now in an all-out race between my finding another career and something fairly socially catastrophic happening with my current one. I mean, I've been diligently applying myself, for quite some time now, to maintaining the illusion that I give a rat's ass about my duties, and, frankly, the shields are starting to fail. Worse, the incredibly low stakes and utter irrelevance of my office mean that, naturally, there are a fair number of outrageously self-important people around the place. I've watched, recently -- helplessly, and in horror -- as some unbelievably arch and deflating things have shot out of my mouth as I've been speaking with these individuals; I just can't do this much longer.
I might not have mentioned it here -- Facebook has, unintentionally, become something of a substitute personal mini-blog as I've gravitated toward more mainstream topics on this one -- but I did get admitted to Ohio. I did not get admitted to Michigan (I feel compelled to point out that I had been previously admitted to another, more selective, Michigan program, so my ego isn't taking too much of a hit on this one). Penn has yet to respond, but I'm not hopeful. That said, I've having serious second thoughts about this whole grad school enterprise; I think K's assurances that this is what I ought to be doing had obscured my own lack of enthusiasm for the project.
So what, then? I don't know. I read journalismjobs.com and get wistful about minor reporting jobs on wintry Northeastern islands, but that might just be the last Proulx novel I read that's talking.
1 Comments:
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Anonymous said...
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- 4:12 AM
Post a CommentI hear you, sister.
Last year at about this time, I could answer "yes" (even if only partially) to all five of your unenviable choices. And, as you know, I made some changes. Even with these changes, however, I can still identify with most of your answers, even though I feel less-unhappy than I did a year ago.
In other words, I would not say that I have found happiness per se, and I will spare you the sort of Confucius-say aphorisms that do nothing to improve the thinking person's mood.
That said (or, perhaps, not said), I'd nevertheless suggest trying to identify something in your day-to-day experience that makes you content, even if only at the moment.
Given the mundanity of one's day-to-day existence (even the Dalai Lama has ordinary days), that sort of contentment is surprisingly easy to come by (if you let it), and I suspect that those mundane experiences of contentment are what most self-identified "happy" people would say are the reasons for their happiness.
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