a strange 24 hours …
saw a show last night. the kooks … some young brittish hotties, i don’t know, nothing too significant, but nice to get out. i think i recognized one of their songs from a banking commercial … so it goes.
i had one of those rogue drunks last night. i violated nader’s rule about never drinking draft beer at shitty rock venues, and i think i did me in. other factors in play were that i had no dinner (yet i did have a big, late lunch), but, still, what happened was really out of the ordinary. i only had, probably, four, maybe five beers all night. yet when i got home and laid down …
puke.
fitful sleep.
shit.
today, i was really, really off my game.
i had a presentation in my marxism class and came off sounding like sarah palin. must be karma coming back at me for giving her such a hard time. seriously, i would have called in sick had i not had this presentation, and i could barely get through it. not good. i reached down and there was nothing there. the brain was a foggy sea of stupification. still is, but i feel like i need to confess my sins before rest …
today was a rough reminder of something that’s been bugging me about my present situation. the only way i can really manage to keep my head above water through all this work, with the reading and the writing and my job at lovetoknow.com and the house and the yard and mowing and blah blah blah … the only way i can really do it at all is if i’m running at 100% 18 hours a day. when i slip up, it just vanishes. poof. rug pulled out. house of cards scattered all over the table and floor.
this concerns me because i’m afraid i’m losing my critical facilities for looking at my own life. i spend a lot of time reading all this criticism, all these academic essays, all this fucking nonsense, and i think about them and talk about them, but i’ve lost all faith that i can read my own situation, my own desires, wants, needs, impulses, and see myself navigating through them. like, when am i just being a pansy assed wuss who doesn’t want to put in the work, and when am i just doing something i don’t want to do?
one problem is that i have lost the ability to relax on any level. seriously, this is no joke, and this isn’t healthy. i have two settings. maybe three. one, full speed ahead, no rest, constant motion. this is the 100%-on state i need to be in to make all this shit go. two is collapse. not relax, not whimsy, not whiling away time, but collapse. big difference. the third one is, i suppose, some kind of avoidance. drinking usually covers this, but, contrary to last night’s accident, i’m not drinking that much. exercise has become a positive thing, where some sort of relaxation creeps in during the post-hour or so when i’m on that little endorphin high. but, still, this isn’t relaxation in the typical sense (plus, i read on the exercise bike, so i’m still going, i’m just going in two directions at once.)
this friend of mine, after class tonight, gave me a little pep talk because, i think, he could tell that i was a stumbling, fumbling, mess. he said ‘no one wants to do pushups or put in two-a-days but everyone wants to play in the game.’ true enough, and i get that, and i get paying my dues, and i get that life is hard work.
but i gotta say i’m not quite sure how much i really want to play in the game. i don’t even know what the game is. it’s a weird space to be in. i have limitless options in many ways, but no direction.
or else i’m just dealing with the brown bottle flu and this is all overly dramatic (wouldn’t be the first time …) something’s not sitting right, though. i’m either taking things too seriously, not taking them seriously enough, or am taking the wrong things into consideration. either way, something is not sitting right.
on top of it, the dog has fleas. given him frontline religiously every month and the little guy’s got fleas. i reapplied two days ago and have waited to call the vet hoping the shit would do its thing, but he’s sitting here scratching right now. fleas suck … poor little dumbass.
i had an epiphany the other day that i desperately want to live a simple life. that’s it. not that that really exists, a ‘simple life,’ but certainly a ‘simpler life’ could be found. it’s like that byrds song ‘the christian life’ … great song. ‘christian’ life aside, the underlying intention of that song i can relate to. i just want to live simply and enjoy the garden and work on creative projects that are interesting and create. i want to work, like to work, need to work. but i also want to not work. to create. that’s the thing. i have tried to convince myself that scholarship is a form of creativity, and i think that it is, particularly for some people, but it honestly doesn’t feel creative to me. when i play music or post a blog, it’s life affirming, energizing. i give and it gives back. when i’m reading academic essays, i feel like i’m throwing my energy down a hole. i give and it keeps moving further away.
this concerns me.
course, i might just be hungover.
or a spoiled brat.
or lazy.
or all three.
or much more …
Tags: 15 Comments
15 responses so far ↓
I vote for lazy, shitbird. No worries dude . . . you’re coming to that bi-semester phenomenon where you consider quitting the whole shebang. It never fails. I just had mine last week. That, I CAN’T DO THIS SHIT ANYMORE! moment, and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. You just went into a new tunnel. It’ll pass. Otherwise, if that lovetoknow shit is getting to you, you should just quit and take out more loans. Won’t be for much, and you’ll start making money . . . eventually . . .
true enough, chin … but i’m still seriously wondering what in the hell i have signed up for. maybe it’ll pass. three more years of this shit though? fucking hell … i don’t know. i’m trying it, trying to give it hell, but i don’t know. course, the next questions is ‘if not this then what?’ that’s a real doozy …
gay porn???
that’s it!!!
i don’t know chin, unless chin is not your real name, but chin knows kc.
like that time our freshman year, early, before you were pulling it in nightly and i never saw you, when you leaned over and gave me that long, wet kiss. i knew before then, but that confirmed it.
but i digress.
you must chill.
yes, academia sucks your life energy, and yes it seems like it will never end, but it will,and you’ll have your fucking phd, and unless we’re all hobos by then, you’ll get a job somewhere really cool.
i hated taking two landscape design classes over two semesters that the professor i was working for paid for, but i got through it. and learned shit.
you aren’t married and don’t have kids, so just get it over with.
not to mention, and when the script call for a doctor, you won’t be acting.
it just occurred to me.
why am i, a cubs fan still reeling from a game 1 slaughter at home, counseling you, a single man with a cute dog in a college town?
I don’t know any of you but I’ll go ahead and comment. Kevin’s current state resonates. Some years ago, I was halfway through a phd i could care less about, quit, rejoined, psychologically quit again. I’m also someone who would prefer to spend most of my waking hours creating. Now, I have a job as a professor which is cool because I don’t really have a boss, my income provides, and I have an insane amount of time off. Yet, I fantasize regularly about quitting my job, selling my home (as if, in this economy) and spending my waking hours in flow mode. All I can offer is that I don’t think these urges and conflicts go away and having a phd at the end of my name has served several utilitarian purposes. even i could give a shit.
lastly, remember fall is a melancholy time and maybe that explains your mood.
in the words of a fb friend who wall posted me today:
“Without a doubt Fall is most melancholy. As an acorn has the essence of the oak tree in it, each season has the essence of the one to follow deep within. Winter is despair, but lightened by the new birth of spring. Summer is sweet, but tinged with the sorrow of Fall to come. But Fall is sadness tinged with the despair of winter.”
where to begin … first of all, hooch, that was the best night of my life. i don’t remember much, but when it ends in snuggles drinking protein shakes in bed, i think it’s safe to say that everyone wins. sorry about the cubbies, dude. god forbid if the cubbies and obama both blow it. i’ve already drawn up the contingency plan. if the cubs get down two games, sarah is informed to start removing sharp objects from the house. if mccain pulls ahead in the polls, you’ll be bound in duct tape until i arrive. jen beck, although our past interactions have been minimal, you may be my life mate. thanks for your thoughts. they help. makes me feel slightly less disastrously lost. academia is such a slippery slope for me these days. i’m having this realization that, perhaps, my insistence on writing about controversial things and constantly wanting to stir shit up is not because i have some passionate plan to reform academia, but rather because i really don’t like, don’t respect, don’t believe in academia and am, essentially, doing the 34 year old equivalent of acting up in class. this is problematic. i left my backup plan in the back seat of a cab on 5th avenue, however, and dispatch isn’t returning my calls …
white – you gotta be careful with them epiphanies. they make people do all kinds of crazy shit. you could be selling houses one day and the next thing you know you might find yourself onstage telling dick jokes…well, it’s either that or take the first flight up to dutch for opie season.
- white
ps – hate to say “i told you so” about the draft beer. but i told you so about the draft beer. sometimes i know what i’m talking about.
white, i knew you’d find this post particularly disturbing. i am a fruit cake. when does opie season start btw? and i will never disparage your honor again by drinking draft beer.
funny, the same thought recently crossed my mind.
jen, thankfully, i’m not delusional on that front … still delusional on most others, of course.
Just wanted to throw it out there that no one really knows if what they are doing is the right thing. I don’t think anyone has the luxury of being completely certain. You just have to keep moving. And in the event you decide you want to do something else, I am not allowing you to join up with Sig or Phil, you have to come home to us. Topanga isn’t the same without you! We miss you!
farrug, was that a deadliest catch reference? very nice, although this tells me that your husband is still watching way too much tv. i wish i was, sometimes. like tonight, when i realized the baseball playoffs have been going on for days and i hadn’t seen a second of them. something is wrong when i’m missing the playoffs. the ghosts of october – the closest thing i’ve ever had to church – are doing their thing, and i’m dicking around in baton rouge with no tv. amazing …
Hey now, I can hold my own when it comes to the Deadliest Catch. I have a huge crush on Phil.
I never thought you’d be a Phil kinda girl, Farrug. You seem like you’s go for Sig to me. But I gotta say, that’s hot. Phil’s a real dirtbag. I love the fucking guy, but he’s an animal. I think you’re projecting some of your most deeply repressed desires (sexual) on that filthy, dirty, animal Phil. That’s hot, Farrug. Good on ya …