S O S

If you were to ask me the things that I found most distressing about my life, my first and foremost answer would be the fact that I am female.  There are a lot of strong women out there – women who know how to use their female-ness to their advantage.  I am not one of them.  I will never have children.  I will probably never have a long-term relationship.  Everything about me and my life choices is antithetical to my biology, and frankly, the biology is in the way.  If a sex change wasn’t both extremely expensive and socially challenging, I’d have done it long ago.  Because the only thing I’ve gotten from this whole female gig is a stupidly high tolerance for pain – and really, that is actually more trouble than it is worth.

I joke about my karmic unbalance – the fact that it is not unusual for me to face more problems in both quantity and severity in a month than most people face in a year.  And I have gotten used to that.  True, I have periods of stability – times where I forget how things can go – and then I get reminded.  How about surgery the week that you are finishing your master’s thesis, a week after the worst flu in two years, and three weeks after a debilitating three day episode of abdominal pain?  Oh, and let’s make sure you remember that you don’t get paid for any of those days you took off, and that your insurance is both expensive and minimal and that you will undoubtedly be spending the next two years paying this all off.  Remember that.  Also remember that there are rats in your attic, that you lit your hand on fire two weeks ago – in part because it is slowly going numb, and that you have both hives and a now-chronic migraine.  Oh, and you haven’t had a decent workout in over a week.  I’m going to be late on almost all of my bills next month – I did not plan for both a vacation – the first real “you do not have to think about work/school” vacation in 5 years – and surgery to happen at the same time.

I’m having this dual response to everything that is going on right now.  Part of me is all “you can do it – it will all be ok.”  And the other part of me is all “die.  just give up and die.”  I’m trying to ignore that second part right now, but every day that I don’t exercise – every day I don’t get my endorphins, it gets a little louder – a little more insistent.

I should be working on my thesis tonight.  I’d planned on finishing my maps.  But being female caught up with me today and instead I’m doped up on vicodin and booze, and even then I can still feel the cramps and the aches.  I can’t walk in a straight line, but I can sit here in pain.  Good times.

Today I was able to observe a couple of apartment raids with the police department of the city where I work.  There were no doors getting bashed in or any of the like.  But a couple of folks who had violated their probation got picked up, along with a few warrants.  It was an interesting situation.  Everyone in the briefing room assumed that I was the weak link, and several times I reminded to stay out of the way.  I did not explain my past.  I did not tell them that I have years of experience in physical confrontation – both armed and unarmed.  I did not say that, the mood I was in, anyone who wanted to start something with me was most likely unprepared for what they would get in return.  I just nodded and agreed to stay out of the way.  And I didn’t get nervous.  I could feel the anxiety bleeding off of the others in the group.  I could smell their adrenaline.  But when we were actually on site, I felt like I was in my own neighborhood.  I felt the kind of calm that I used to feel when I was squaring off against an opponent that I knew was far stronger, much faster, and way more skilled than I.  The kind of calm that comes when you give up the fight for status and for face and for pride and for your sense of right and succumb to the fight for survival.  It has been so long that I’d forgotten what it was like.  But it was strange – all the anxiety around my presence in the briefing room disappeared when I was on site.

I will be doing this again – more regularly and with a higher level of participation.  My role is not to catch “bad guys”.  My role is to help make these apartments safer and to encourage residents to take a more active role in improving their living conditions.  I believe this is something worth doing.

I’m not going to work on my thesis tonight, and the loss of this time will hurt me.  I absolutely must have a completed draft by this Sunday.  If I don’t, I’ll have to postpone my graduation until this summer.  My trip abroad will be tainted, my stress level will not decrease, I will not be able to relax.  I have not relaxed – really relaxed where I don’t have to think about what I am going to do the next day and how I’m going to fit it all in and damn if that deadline isn’t rushing at me faster than I can fathom and what about all that work that I am postponing that is going to catch up to me and brand me a failure – in so long that I have a hard time remembering.  It has been years.

The last two weeks have been brutal.  The next two will be even worse.  I’m already at the point where I don’t feel that this kind of life is worth living.  If it wasn’t a temporary situation, I’d give up.  When it gets worse, it is going to be difficult to remember that this is all short-term – that soon things will be different.  I’m going to try, but this here is an apology for when I fail.  Because I will fail.  Because there is that part where karma is still trying to teach me a lesson and it will wait until I am at my weakest before delivering the killing blow.

That lesson better be worth it.  I’m thinking the secret to world peace or the secret of the universe or something equivalent.  Cause otherwise I’m going to be a might bit irritated.

I spend so much time sitting behind a computer either studying or working – so removed from the reality of the world and the people around me – that I forget what it means to be human.  I feel like a search engine with a corporeal body.  I feel like a machine – and I’m sick of it.  Whatever I do next will have to compensate for that – because I don’t think I can take much more of it.  All work and no play…

A confession of geekery

First, current status:

I’ve been writing – actually writing now for about seven days.  I am about an hour’s worth of editing away from having four complete thesis chapters.  This is going to sound cocky, but even though I haven’t had these chapters read by either of my professors, I know they are acceptable.  The just feel right.  I can’t explain it better than that, and even if I was asked to rewrite them, I would resist.  I’ve gone over them several times now, and there is a flow – a level of connection that surprises even me.  They make sense.  This is original research.  It isn’t great quality original research, and anybody with half a brain will be able to totally take it apart, but for now, it is new and different, and that is the only thing keeping me motivated.

Originally I had a plan where I would reward myself with trips to the gym for every completed chapter.  Then I got sick.  Sinus infection/ear infection/sore throat – the works.  Plus the hives.  I’m not surprised.  I’m not even particularly daunted.  I knew I was nearing my limits when I started having consistent stomach pains.

A good friend recently told me about her co-worker’s philosophy.  He aims for 80%.  No more, no less.  And the reality is that for the vast majority of situations, 80% is absolutely sufficient.  At first I was incensed.  It’s an overachiever thing.  But the more that I’ve been thinking about it, the more it makes sense.  I’ve been going for 110% at everything – the job, the thesis, the workouts – the whole shebang.  And I haven’t been meeting any of my goals.  Because they are currently unattainable.  Seriously.  That’s at least 33o%.  It doesn’t make any sense – not mathematically, not theoretically, not in any way.

So this week has been a lecture in my physical limitations.  I’d be depressed and daunted, except… I’ve been taking lessons from Bleach.

Bleach is a manga (Japanese comic book) and anime (Japanese animation) that is a study in perseverance.  The man character is pretty much constantly getting his ass kicked, and then pulling his shit together to persevere no matter what the odds in the end.  I can feel that.  I’ve been living that for a while now.  And watching episodes of Bleach as a brain break between my hours of writing and research has been helpful.

But it is also distracting.  As in, Just One More distracting.

This is the kind of series that is in a constantly stat of “to be continued…” and that is absolute torture to someone like me – someone who thinks they know how it ends and must know if they are right NOW.  Not later.  NOW.

In case you decide that you will give this series a try, and are currently logging into hulu (or more directly, bleachget) for episodes, let me warn you that there are numerous filler plots.  Numerous.  Some are better than others.  All of them are completely independent of the main story line.  And they can be confusing.  I mean you know what the main characters are capable of before they do because they exhibited the ability in some filler plot.  It can be disconcerting to find yourself telling the animated character on the screen to just use his bankai dammit, and doesn’t he already know how it works?  GAH.

I’ve been watching this series on and off for almost two years now.  I’ve watched a total of 311 episodes.  Which is saying something, even if the episodes are only about 22 minutes long.  I have watched a lot of them with the volume turned down as I read the subtitles and practiced my guitar.  And I’ve watched a lot of them when my vision was so blurred by whiskey or brandy that I couldn’t even remember what I was reading.  I’ve watched all of them in Japanese, and now know a handful of  Japanese terms simply by association.  Sugoi, Shikasi, Demo, Nashi … I’ve been listening to Japanese reports about the earthquake, tsunami, and failures at the Fukushima power plant and I’m surprised at the number of words I know – and at how difficult it is to link them together.

I would love to learn Japanese.  I’ve had a fantasy of going over and studying with the same school that my sensei studied with for almost 10 years now.  I already know that I would not fit in – a 5’10” gaigin female with a penchant for muscle development would definitely stand out.  But then I stand out here too – either that, or I disappear.  It really depends on my intentions.  I can wallflower as good as anybody.  Or I can be the center of attention.  What I have a difficult time doing is simply fitting in – being a part of whatever is happening without either dominating or excluding myself from the process.  It is a Gemini thing, I’m learning.

Back to Bleach.  This series has affected me in ways that only Japanese media can.  For some reason the Japanese like to make antagonists that you can not only identify with, but to some degree even root for.  Yeah, you want the protagonist to win.  He’s the good guy after all, but if you make the bad guy complicated enough, if you hint that maybe, given a chance he might not have been such a bad guy, if you allude to circumstances out of the ordinary that have places these otherwise sympathetic characters into the bad-guy pool, then it is difficult for someone like me – someone with an essentially dual personality to begin with – to actually view those characters as real antagonists.

And in anime, even the antagonists are seldom really antagonists.  Rarely do they do what they do because they are total assholes.  There is always a back story.  It may be flimsy and weak and suggest that this particular bad guy suffers more from a lack of character than anything else, but there is a source.  This is true in many American comic books too, but I’ve found it lacking in a lot of films.  The bad guy is simply the Bad Guy and that is all there is to it.

Bleach, and I’m going to do this without any serious spoilers, just in case you find yourself wanting to watch 300 plus episodes of animated action with subtitles, has three main antagonists with over a dozen minor antagonists, yet it is very difficult to let go of some of those antagonists, even when you know that for the story to progress, they simply cannot survive.  You don’t know how they will die, but that they will die there is no doubt.  And it is depressing.  These are characters with something akin to souls.  Watching them suffer and die – even knowing that they are the “bad” guys is difficult.  You want them to survive – t0 have a second chance.  And at the same time you know that if they were to survive it would demean their present existence – and in some cases their sacrifice.  I struggle with the concept that there is anything but complacency and defeat in death.  I personally view it as a way out – a cowards way out when taken directly, and a “pass go, collect $200” way out when triggered accidentally.  Yet for these characters there is a kind of integrity in accepting death – almost a form of honor – even when they know that what they were doing was wrong.  Or worse, that what they were doing was perceived as wrong even though it wasn’t.  It’s tragic.  And it’s confirming.

The theme of the series, if it could be summed up in one sentence, is “don’t give up”.  The corollary would be “because there are people who care about you and who are counting on you and who need you and giving up is selfish and short-sighted”.  It’s funny, particularly since I’ve been actively practicing my “think positive” campaign (still working, though difficult to maintain, as I predicted) that I’ve come across this series in this way.  I guess it really is true – when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.  The trick is not being so conceited as to not recognize the teacher when it does appear.  Even if it is a cartoon.

I’m still vacillating between being able to finish this thesis on the timeline I’ve set for myself and requesting an extension.  I know in my heart that an extension will not help me.  It will only fuel the apathy.  What I need now is focus.  And something to dull the itch.  Hives are a bitch.  I wish I had some adderall or Ritalin.  Something to keep me focused.  I know that I did not have ADD as a child, but I also know that I have it now.  A couple of severe head injuries can change things in the brain, but I will tell you know that getting a diagnosis as an adult is much more difficult than as a child.  So I’m doing the best I can with what I have.  And I’m watching Bleach when I need to restart my noggin.  There are worse addictions out there.

If you are at all interested in anime, and think you could spare the time and energy to get into a series, here is my list of favorites.  In order of what I would buy if I had the cash.

Samurai Champloo – Two fighters with incredible skills team with a teenage tea house waitress to unravel the shogunate’s antipathy towards Christianity and the impending influence of the outside world.  With hip-hop soundtracks.  There is enough history in this series to make it worthwhile before the characters are introduced.  And they are very well created characters.

Trigun – a series about sacrifice and self-discovery.  I want to say more, but it would spoil the story.

Cowboy Bebop – Seriously, I don’t know where they come up with these names.  Anyway this is about a group of space age bounty hunters trying to figure out their real place in the world.  It’s deeper than it seems, and is done by the same guy  who did Samurai Champloo.

Soul Eater – this is a series about kids with the responsibilities of adults.  Which is exactly how I feel about my life most of the time.  I mean really, who said I was ready to deal with this sort of responsibility?  Not me!

Ouran High School Host Club – this is a guilty pleasure of mine.  I’m not sure why I even like this series, but I’ve watched it through twice.  I know I’m a sucker for gender-bender series.  And the character development is clever.  Plus there is something about the purity of the characters – even though they are trying to be superficial.  I won’t read too much into it.  If you’ve made it this far into the list than you’ll probably get it.  Probably.

There is also Bleach, of course, Fruits Basket, Darker than Black, and Avatar: the Last Airbender which is not a traditional anime, per se, but which is so well done that it is wasted on kids alone.  Cartoons aren’t just for kids, folks.  And I’m not even getting into the porn.

So that is my mental recharge – for when I cannot go to the gym and for when I’m feeling creatively constrained.  It is not Shakespeare, or even Wilde.  But it is compelling, if you can let yourself get into the story.  Because ultimately it is all about the story.

Pending Mental Refresh

I have just finished the text of my literature review.  I need to go back and read it through and edit it before I send it off, but first I need to think about something else for a bit – to cleanse my mental palate so to speak.  I’m pretty drained mentally right now.  Yesterday was a great step towards refilling the intellectual coffers a bit but it was only a start.  I’ll run through everything I accumulated yesterday before I am done tonight.

I got on the scale at the gym Friday.  I don’t know why I did.  I knew it was not a good time to weigh myself – I’m in the midst of another weight gain cycle.  I’m not particularly anxious – or at least I wasn’t until I got on the scale and it told me that I was 14lbs over my target.  Now I’ll grant that my target is 5lbs under my average.  I cannot seem to lose those last 5lbs.  And that’s fine.  At some point I’ll have to reassess the target.  Some future point, that is.  But 14?  Good grief!

There is the bit where muscle weighs more than fat.  Yeah, ok.  I’ve been lifting weights three days a week for a month now.  I haven’t seen much increase in my strength – which is to say that I’ve only gone up between 5 and 10 lbs in the amount of weight I’m lifting (barbell curls with 20lbs!  it’s a first for me) but I think that if I keep it up I might actually be able to do a pull-up by the end of the semester.  So maybe some of that 14lbs is muscle.  Maybe 3lbs of it.  Maybe.  The rest?  Stress fat – aka Booze and cookie fat.

Ok, not cookies per se.  I’m not a huge cookie fan.  Instead I eat these cardboard flavored granola bars.  I figured that if I got the ones that just tasted bad then I wouldn’t be so tempted to eat the whole box in one sitting.  Instead I’ve developed a taste for them – which is good in that it’s toned down my sweet tooth a bit and bad in that I was buying them by the Costco box.  I’m still trying to keep on the higher protein/lower processed carbs diet.  But I’m struggling a bit.  Mostly because it isn’t habit yet.  And I’m finding that I run out of my protein foods and my fresh veggies much faster than I ran out of carb based foods.  AND they’re more expensive.  So not only do I have to go to the grocery store more often (hell!) but I’m paying more when I do (depressing!).

To sum up, we’re going back on the no drink during the week pattern.  Just so I can continue to fit in my jeans, please.  I cannot afford a new wardrobe right now – especially since I want to buy some travel friendly clothes for my upcoming trip.  I am going to have to find something though that I can turn to for my after meal/pre-bed fidgets.  That is usually when my sweet tooth hits hardest, and I’m most vulnerable to eating all the dark chocolate in the freezer, drinking half a bottle of Amaretto and finishing it off with a big snifter of brandy.  Not a friendly way to end the evening, if your waistline is at risk.

I keep thinking about how things will be different when I’m not longer tied to my thesis.  I’m tempted to put some high expectations on this coming summer.  Tempted, but I’m going to resist.  It will be what it will be.  And it might take me a while to find myself again.  I was chatting with a friend Friday night.  She is one of the half-dozen or so good friends that I have made since I started grad school – only two of which are actually from school.  I told her that I thought they might be surprised to see how my personality is different when I’m not constantly struggling with too much work and too little time and way too much stress.  I told her that I was way more laid back.  That was kind of a lie.  Not to say that I’m not generally easy to get along with, but I was thinking about the last time I was unencumbered.  Hindsight being what it is and all that, I realize now that I was a bit intense.  It was not unusual for me to pick people up and carry them along with me – often farther and faster than they were ready to go.  I learned the hard way not to do that anymore, but I do wonder what will happen when I have recovered my energy.  I might need to take up a new hobby – or three.  🙂

Train Ride!

Tomorrow and Tuesday I am attending a seminar in Oakland.  I’ve decided that I am not going to drive.  Partly because sitting in traffic triggers some major bad attitude on my part, partly because my anxiety lately is such that if I have a way out (like a personal automobile) I will take it instead of attending said seminar, and partly because I really need the time I would spend on the road to do other things – like write my lit review, sleep, stare out the window in pseudo meditation, etc.  Tonight, before I left campus (I’ve been going to campus to do my writing because the lack of distractions (dog, kitchen, sunshine) keeps me focused) I printed out a few hours worth of reading in anticipation of said train trips.  Tonight I spent half an hour figuring out the schedules and the transfers (Richmond BART, yeah!) and the parking and all the other bits that can ruin a commute.  It’s been a long time since I rode the train.  I’m kind of excited.  Except for one thing.

My train leaves at 6:20 am.  That means getting to the station before 6.  That means leaving my house at 5:40.  That means getting up at 4:30.  I do not like that part at all.  Not that I don’t usually get up at 5.  I do.  But for the last couple of weeks I’ve had a pinched nerve in my right shoulder that makes sleep fitful at best.

TANGENT

Why is it that everything that goes wrong with my body happens on the right side?  I almost never have left side pain – despite the fact that it was my left foot that was crushed by the truck and my left leg that was smooshed by the motorcycle.  But those things healed right up and no longer give me any trouble.  My right ankle though?  A pain.  Right knee = pain.  Right wrist… pain.  Right elbow is pain.  Right shoulder muy pain.  The hives are on the left side, but really, they itch more than hurt so I have a hard time counting them.  And I know I’m right side dominant, but come on!  Everything at once?  I have a friend who is a woo woo doctor and she says that the right side is the “other people” side.  But I’m not having any problems with other people.  I’m having serious social anxiety, but that is general.  Anyway, if I’m dragging my right side around like a lopsided Igor next time you see me, now you know.

END TANGENT

So tomorrow is going to start at 4:30.  And it is going to end around 9:00.  In the PM.  Then I do it again on Tuesday.  I’m looking forward to this seminar, but I’m so tired.  So tired.  I left campus tonight at 8.  Went grocery shopping after that.  And ate dinner in front of the computer.  Again.  Just like last night.  Only then I left campus at 9.

I’m making thesis progress.  I tend to write in near finished draft, and so when I turn something in, I’m generally confident that it will need minimal futzing.  This thesis process disrupts my natural style.  I have to turn bits in as I go.  I don’t like that at all, and I find myself struggling to maintain my narrative while I write knowing that I’m only turning one chunk in at a time.  Whatever.  I’ll do this one their way.  And it will be the last one I do “their” way.

It will be good to be on a train again though.  And if I can figure this out, I’ll have to schedule a trip to SF MOMA this summer.  I haven’t been there in a couple of years – which is saying something since I was a member for quite a while – going to every new exhibit.  One of my favorite paintings of all time is there.  Jackson Pollock’s Guardian of the Secret.

I know the secret.  Because it’s my secret.  🙂

Alright, bedtime.  Since I’ve gotta be up at 4:30 and all.  Two more days of no exercise.  This is going to be an interesting week.

How to tell if you’re an Alchoholic

Well, first off, it took me three tries to get the title right.  That’s a pretty good sign.  Or not.  It is strange.  When my overall stress load is less – as in not causing spontaneous hives and mysterious flu like symptoms, my dependence on alcohol lessens considerably.  But when things are like they are now… I have a very hard time fighting the urge to drink myself into unconsciousness.  That is a really difficult word to spell.  Seriously, try it.  Without looking here.  Unconsciousness.  The total absence of conscious thought.

Tonight I talked with my best friend’s wife for a bit.  She is a good friend in her own right, but I classify her such as she is the only person who is in regular contact with the person who knows who I used to be.  That is a very vulnerable situation.  People who know who I used to be are not to be trusted.  Nor are they to be given any sort of influence over the future.  Except for this one person.  He is good.  And his wife is good.

She is also depressed.  So we talked about depression.  The thing I should have said – the thing I meant to say but never did actually say was “don’t put the whole pressure of your future on the decisions you make now.  Do things that please you and intrigue you and challenge you and worry about the next phase when it enters your sphere of influence.  You’ll know it when it happens.”  That is what I should have said.  That is not what I actually said.

I feel weak.  If there was ever an emotion that I would never want to experience again, it is weakness.  Weakness, vulnerability and pain are so tightly tied together in my experience that I cannot experience the one without the others triggering.  On top of that I am exhausted.  The push to finish what I have started… it will take me to my very limits.  I know that.  I can feel it starting to happen.  The escalation.  I will finish this.  But I’m not sure what kind of person I’ll be when I do.  And that scares me.

I told my best friend’s wife to chase the things that fascinate her – that only by sticking to the things that mean something will she be able to stick to the path she has chosen.  Yet I feel poorly even saying that.  I chose my path and I’ve fought every step of the way to get here.  There has to be an easier way.

I am not the right person to be encouraging someone who is depressed.  My co-workers have been in a veritable frenzy about their retirement plans and their benefits and how much they have saved and it takes every ounce of strength in my body to hold my tongue when they ask me about my future.  You know the movie Harold and Maude?  Maude is my plan – only without the cougar sex in the middle.  There will be no retirement for me.  First, I’ve waited too long to get my shit together.  Second, I could not be happy sitting around.  It is not my nature.  My grandfather died from the job.  His father would have died from the job too, if he hadn’t been beaten to death first.  And my father?  He too will be chasing the job to his death bed.  Not for the money or the fame, or the authority.  But for the fascination.  The “what could be” hidden in the pile of “what is”.

I’m familiar.

I’m tired.  I’ve been tired for a long time.  Four years – which is how long I’ve been chasing this degree.  I’ve had one vacation in that time – a four day trip to Bishop with friends.   I need a break.  And soon.  I can feel myself becoming more and more misanthropic as time goes on.  Today I almost smashed into a person on the freeway because he tried to cut me off.  And at the stop light, while he ranted at me and hung his arm out the window and swore and screamed, I pretended like he didn’t exist.

That is horrible.  For him, but more, for me.  I know better.  I’ve been a whole lot closer to death.  I had no right.  Except that I’m so very tired.

Once this is over I shall have to assess whether or not I have a legitimate problem.  For now, though, I take pleasure in the moments where I don’t actually consciously feel the cortisol pumping through my body – even if it is an artificial delay.  It keeps me going.  Kind of.

When this is over I’m throwing a big party.  There will be drinking.  Ya’ll are invited.  But until then, please forgive me if I am a horrid , self centered bitch.  I don’t mean it to be personal.  Right now, it’s all about survival.

Poverty

Poverty is interesting.  As someone who used to be less poor (2010 was the fourth year in a row where my total income was less than $10,000) I find that the longer I spend trying to live on nothing the more of a strain it is on my resources.  There’s the part where I take extra good care of my clothes (almost nothing goes in the dryer) because I cannot afford to replace them.  Then there’s the part where, when I do go out, I choose my food and beverages according to price.  And there’s the part where I’m constantly anxious about my laptop breaking or my car breaking or something else expensive and necessary.

I seldom let anyone know exactly how tight things are.  I will pick up the tab sometimes when I go out with friends because it makes me feel awful when they are always paying for things.  I do not want to be the “broke friend” who uses people.  And if there is something that I feel I absolutely must have, I’ll do a side job or tap into my “emergency money” (which is just about gone) to pay for it.  This is why I was so devastated when my car was broken into.  I am out of side jobs and I am out of emergency money.

Today, though, things hit a new low.  Back when I still had health insurance at my old job, I had a couple of long-term medical problems handled.  Even though the insurance paid a good deal of the cost, a significant portion, say 18% of my annual income ended up charged to me.  I set up payment plans with the collections department, and was assured that it would not reflect negatively on my credit report.  Liars.  I should have known.

I don’t carry a balance on my credit card.  I pay it off every month.  If I don’t think I’ll be able to pay it off, I don’t use it.  I’ve done this for two years now.  So you’d think that my credit would be ok.  Sure I’m poor, but I pay my damn bills.  No.  That is not enough.  The credit card company has reduced my credit limit to almost nothing – without telling me why or giving me any sort of opportunity to argue their decision.  Not only did they not tell me that this is what they were going to do, but the last piece of mail I got from them was a new credit offer – for being a “good customer”.

So imagine my surprise when I went to pay my student fees today – which I have to pay up-front because my student loan has been delayed… again.  Happens every semester – and had my credit card declined for insufficient funds.  Sure, there’s 0 balance, but my student fees exceed my credit limit.  If I use everything in my checking account, close out my savings, and max out the card, I’ll make my fees, but I won’t be making my rent.  So I have to choose.  Student fees?  Rent?  Ask for help from family or friends?  The last makes my throat close.  I will get my loan money and I will be able to pay everything back, but the act of asking makes me ill.  But I can’t not pay rent, and I can’t not pay my fees – I’ll get dropped from the classes I had such a hard time getting, and my student loans will no longer qualify for deferrals.

It’s a rock and a hard place – and my resources are so thin that if I make it, it will be by the very skin of my teeth.  And I wonder why I’m depressed and anxious and so stressed out that I have hives on my hips and don’t sleep at night.

I was thinking this morning about getting my teeth checked up.  The last time I did this – put off dental care until I had insurance to afford it, it cost me $3,000 in extra dental work.  Very bad dental work, mind you.  In fact, at one point I had a broken molar on one side, a broken crown on the other, and a broke filling next to that.  One root canal, two fillings and two crowns were necessary to fix all the damage.  I was making payments to the dentist for a year.  There will be no dental check-ups.  No more toys, no more picking up the tab, which means no more going out.  No more gear, no more extra expenses.  And most of all, no days off.  Not that I was taking a lot of days off before.  But now… Ugh.

I’ll figure this out.  I always figure it out.  But as time goes on, I can’t help but wonder if I’m headed for another total collapse.  It seems that the time in-between hitting bottom is getting shorter and shorter, and the high points are lower and lower.  What happens when bottom is the high point?  Convergence.  I can see it coming.

Cost Benefit Analysis

The thing that they don’t tell you when you are filling out the grad school applications is that if you are accepted into a program and if you intend to complete that program in a timely manner, your relationship with time will change completely.  This happens gradually with different phases, but with the same result – all those things that you used to do for the simple pleasure of doing them – those things that did not render up a finished product or did not immediately and meaningfully contribute to a current project – those things become unsustainable.  Suddenly there is no time for them.  No time at all.  Even when there is time, it is not linear time that can be used as one would like, but time that is connected to the time necessary to complete each and every unfinished assignment.  A web of time and first and second and final drafts and incomplete research and unprepared lectures and piles of reading and more piles of writing all interconnected until it is impossible to know where one stops and the other starts and no matter what, there is not enough time for it all.

I spent years of my life just wishing for each day to come to an end so I could be done with it – never looking forward to the next, but simply satisfied that the time was passing.  Those days time couldn’t pass fast enough.  In my foolish 20 year old heart I assumed that it would never change – that I would be passing time for the rest of my life.  I was so wrong and yet right that I am sometimes amazed at my own path.

Yesterday I took a day for myself to spend some time with a friend doing something that I love – playing in the snow.  I had an unorthodox childhood – my introduction to the suburbs was late and lacked any of the sense of “safety” that originally drove families out into the hinterlands.  Instead I spent my childhood living on the edge of some of the last truly wild land left.  Winter was serious business in the little town I called home.  The town itself was nestled in a shallow but expansive valley up in the mountains.  The horizon was framed by mountain peaks on all sides, and the foothills to the next range were within walking distance of the one traffic light in town.  They would close school on snow days, and on days when the temperature dropped so low that it was dangerous for kids to walk the few blocks to school. The town was mostly poor, and many kids didn’t have good cold weather clothes.  I remember girls walking to middle school wearing light jackets on below 0 days, their hands and faces numb and pale from the cold.

And I remember the times I got so cold that I was sure I would never be warm again – the times I got ice in my boots – that never melted even though it spent hours against my skin – the times I lost all feeling in my hands from the elbows down, the times I would come home with strange patches of white on my nose and cheeks and ears.  I remember the times it ached to stand next to the wood stove.

There are also parts that I have tried to forget.  Like the mornings I put on a dress over my tights and winter boots and long coat and went and stood in the cold on a neighbor’s porch to explain the bible to them.  The mornings that the car holding the missionary group would get stuck in the snow and I would be out with the women in their nylons and the men in their pressed slacks trying to push it until the tires could get traction on the dirty brown ice.  I remember feeling almost naked in my JC Penny dress and white nylons as the cold wind blew right through me – chilling to the bone.

Yet when we left, the thing that I missed most – more than the mountains or the people or the town or the home was the weather – the seasons – the snow.  I missed that unambiguous cold.  I could not get used to days of 40 degrees that felt so much colder than the below 0 I knew.  I desperately missed the wood stove with its obvious heat source – its “stand here and be warm simplicity”.  I missed standing out under the huge pine trees – the ones so old and sturdy that the first heavy snow would create surprisingly warm caves around the trunks.  I missed the frozen ground and the clean whiteness of the cold.  I was not prepared for green grass in winter and mud mud mud everywhere.  It felt unnatural.  Wrong.

It has been over 20 years since I left the snow country.  Yet every time I get a chance to return to the snow I feel like I have reconnected to that child who used to dig snow tunnels from the front door of her house to the mailbox on the street.  This year I have decided to make an effort to allow myself some of that time.  Yet the expense…  Oye the expense.   The monetary expense is one thing.  Nothing is free.  Nothing should be free.  And I accept that.  But the time expense?  The time that is so intrinsically intertwined with my every waking moment that I can never forget what I “should” be doing?  That expense is usurious.

I’ve come to realize that a major part of my current malaise regarding my studies has nothing to do with the topic or the teachers or anything so simple and accessible.  It is because I am tired of living without creativity and intrigue and fascination and curiosity and danger.  I need change and risk and time to squander figuring out how stuff works and how to make the things I find interesting.  I hate feeling guilty for reading literature or studying 19th century costumes or sliding down the mountain as the falling snow absorbs every unnatural sound into a kind of natural white noise.

There is irony in this guilt.  My intellectual stores are empty.  Creativity and fascination and adventures are my intellectual nourishment, and the less I have given over to these pursuits, the less I have had to spend on long-winded papers and in-depth studies.  I feel like I’ve been regurgitating the same things over and over – a sort of superficial moral outrage cloaked in academic language that I pass off as analysis.  It goes nowhere.  Yet I have nothing to supplement it with – no art, no music, no emotion.

Only memories.  And those are… tainted.

One winter, when I was 12 I was riding one of our horses in the far pasture near the marsh.  She was not my favorite horse – but I was one of the few people who could exact obedience out of her when she was feeling obstinate.  That afternoon she was unusually nervous – a storm was coming, and the temperature had dropped remarkably fast in a very short time.  I was ready to turn back to the barn when she started bucking on the ice.  We both went down hard, my leg under her side, and my head hitting the solid ice with a crack that echoed in my ears.  I was lucky that I did not get tangled in the saddle, and that she did not crush me in her struggle to stand.  She was the largest horse we had at the time.  She was long gone when I came to – the second time I had been knocked unconscious (adventure and I are close companions) and I remember lying there on the ice, very aware that I needed to move, that I was so very cold, that my head hurt and my ears were ringing and that nobody would know where I was or would come looking for me for hours and that it was getting dark and that stupid horse was still wearing my saddle.  But I so wanted to sleep.  For just a little while.  Just a nap really.

I didn’t sleep there on the ice.  In the end, it was the saddle that made me get up and walk back to the barn.  I broke a cardinal rule that day.  I did not get back on the horse that had thrown me – and I was never confident on that animal again.  But I did unsaddle her, water the rest of the horses and walk home just as the wind picked up and the temperature dropped well past freezing.  I fell asleep on the sofa in front of the wood stove.  I didn’t tell my mother until later what had happened.  I’d likely had a concussion.  Not the first or the last.  Still, not something to take lightly.

These days I feel like I am still lying on the ice.  I know that I cannot stay where I am.  The list of concerns running through my mind are long and serious and paralyzing.  I just want to rest.  Just a quick nap.  But the time to move is coming.  I just hope that this time, when the time comes to finish what I need to finish, I’ll have the motivation to get up off the ice, and walk through the frozen pastures to the barn and finish my chores.

And hopefully, when my time is mine again, it will all have been worth it.

Vacancy and the New Social State

I promised myself when I started this that two things wouldn’t happen.  First, I wouldn’t devolve into a state of constant self-pity and “woe-is-me”ism.  Because that just sucks.  Unless you are Faulkner or Wilde or someone else much cleverer than I.  Second, I wasn’t going to just let it be – ignore it for months on end for the random post.  It was going to be regular.  Yeah…  We see how that turned out.

I went to see a film about city revitalization tonight.  It was supposed to be an inspirational film about what is possible – if you can wrangle up a series of public/private partnerships worth $1.2 billion – with a “b”.  Having spent my summer chasing $3.6 million – with a “m” in federal and state grants, and recognizing a fraction of the effort and need and sheer luck involved, the financial obstacle of revitalizing an abandoned city core is overwhelming.  I can see what needs to happen.  I can see how and when it needs to happen.  I just can’t see who will pay for it.  Even if it is more cost-effective in the long run, even if it saves fuck-loads of trees and frogs and owls, even if it means that our grandchildren can actually drink their water without boiling it first, even if it means not spending our senior years wearing masks to protect us from the air particulate, even if it means making our cities and our neighborhoods and our homes more livable and sustainable and enjoyable – I cannot see who will pay for it.  Or more correctly, who can pay for it.  I will pay.  I do pay.  And so do you.  But our money does not go to solving the problem – to the wholesale re-connection to the urban fabric necessary to start the healing process.  Instead our money goes toward keeping the terminal status-quo on life-support.

And it is bankrupting us.  Or at least it is bankrupting me.  How’s your bank account looking these days?  Yeah…

I walked out of the film conflicted.  They had a lot of good points, about walkable neighborhoods and mixed use and using existing infrastructure – and my heart raced a bit when the rest of the audience cheered at the clip of the bulldozer taking down a section of elevated freeway.  By default the film drew people who “get” it – who understand the problem, at least superficially (though I know that many of them had a much deeper grasp than that) and who are at least willing to consider different options.  That part gave me hope.

Then there was the part based in reality – the reality of a bankrupt (morally and financially) state, of local governments saddled with an unsustainable infrastructure that they must maintain, of the short-sighted NIMBYism of the groups (“A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.” MIB) of people too self-centered to call themselves a neighborhood, but coincidently aligned in their dislike for whatever it is they think will do them (or more accurately, their property values) (as-if) harm, the reality of a growing class of people disenfranchised and impoverished and lacking any of the skills, benefactors, or luck necessary to get them out of their situation  – the reality that shapes our relationship with our cities.

How do you promote a solution when you can’t even get people to recognize the problem?  How bad do things have to get before they are obvious enough for action?  How much has to be wasted?

I can’t abide waste.

The film didn’t talk much about the affordability issue – or even the housing issue of rebuilding cities.  It is great and all to put in stadiums and arenas and bars and restaurants and offices and whatnot.  But if your main housing component is high-end “lofts” (god, where did the traditional “loft” go?  I see one more condo advertised as a “loft” and I’m gonna puke up my brandy all over my keyboard.  Seriously.  Call a dog a dog, you dogs.) and fancy townhouses then you are not meeting the housing needs of your demographic – that being the total people necessary to run a city – from janitors to waitresses to clerks to CEOs.  If your waitresses still have to live out in the suburbs (which, mark my words, are well on their way to becoming the new ghettos) and drive into the city to work, then the revitalization of the core is not long-term sustainable.

Yay that people are starting to understand that there is a problem.  Boo to the fact that they are approaching the solution to the problem the same way that they approached the situation that caused the problem.  Technology will not absolve us of our sins.  Nor will it fix our colossal Boo-Boos.  It might, just might, back us up as we readjust our understanding of our relationship with our homes and our cities and our regions and our environment.  Maybe.

Really?  Thinking about this makes chasing those $3 million with a “m” grants so much more attainable.  I’m pretty sure the govt just draws straws anyway.  How else would you be able to decide which poorly planned, under served, impoverished neighborhood should get the money to pull itself together?  Let alone the fact that reviving one neighborhood alone is a lot like digging a moat around your sand castle in the illusion that it will keep the sea from leveling it the second you turn your back.  Whoooosh.

I don’t know if it was the film that left me feeling frustrated and nihilistic (almost a contradiction there!) or if it was the social context of the showing.  I’ve been struggling with social contexts lately.  I’ve realized a few very critical aspects of my personality that need some acclimatization before I resume any sort of social interaction.  I have spent an inordinate amount of time feeling awkward and unattractive and unintelligent and just plain “wrong” this summer.  It is a sign of change, I know that.  But I’m getting tired of feeling like an adolescent every time I run across some change.  Let’s grow up already!

God knows we need some maturity in figuring out what to do next.

Pending…

It seems like my life tends to ebb and flow at a remarkable rate.  Maybe this is true for everyone.  But, I haven’t been anyone else, so all I know is what happens to me.  And lately?  That’s been a lot.  If this is more of a rundown than a thoughtful interpretation, well, I’ve spent more time this last week sitting in front of a computer than anything else – including sleeping.  Especially sleeping.  If this thing was anywhere else, I’d be there instead of here.  But here it is, so here I am.

First of all, I have a new job.  An internship really.  No benefits.  A slight cut in pay.  And a set of tasks that are truly challenging.  Yes, there is a lot of mundane.  But there is more that is interesting and important and just plain challenging.  Best of all, what I’m doing is what I’ve been learning to do.  It’s helping – albeit helping from a municipal position.  Which is a bureaucratic position.  Which is its own problem.  But that’s the system as it exists.  It is entrenched.  So entrenched that any change is going to come from within.  And I’m within a pretty good place.

I will say that I’m not used to working with so many people.  I’m at this workstation that is mostly open to the room, and there is constant traffic.  The first couple of days I found that I was having a ridiculously hard time keeping any sort of focus.  It’s gotten better, but I’m still astounded by the amount of walking and talking people do – while at the same time getting a pretty impressive amount of work done – or at least that is my impression.  The overall vibe is amazingly positive.  People are there because they want to be there – it is their career.  I think once I settle in, I’ll do well.  As it is, I’m still finding my stride.  Which has been more difficult than usual.

This is finals week.  I never thought that getting a Master’s degree would be easy.  However, even I’m impressed with the quantity and quality of information I’ve absorbed so far.  I keep running across people who are also pursuing post-graduate degrees.  I’ve started judging their programs by the number of bags under their eyes.  The darker the circles, the more sincere the education.  I’ve yet to rigorously test this theory, but I imagine I will.  I seem to be in that mode lately.

Anyway, this week has been one of the most intense I remember.  I mean, I can remember weeks where I had more homework, but then I was already stable in my job.  And I remember being new to my job, but it was the start of the semester and easy-going.  Both at the same time should be sending me right over the edge.  On top of that I haven’t had the time to get into the gym like I usually do.  Nor have I been exercising in the mornings like I’d planned.  I get up at the crack of dawn, work until dusk, go to class, go home, and then crash.  And the day’s I don’t work are the same, only I study.  Yet I’ve been surprisingly stable.

I think part of it is the new job.  It feels like I’m finally on the right path.  Even the hives have started to clear up.  And I know that part of it is that I’m simply getting used to this.  And I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.  I’ll be able to breathe come Tuesday.  Four days.  I can stand most anything for four days.

But I think the biggest change has been my new housemate.  Her name is Ryder and she’s an 80 lb Akita that belongs to my brother.  There are a lot of reasons that she ended up living here with me.  I mean, my house is not that big, and that is a lot of dog.  Plus, she’s 5 years old, which is middle age for Akitas.  Beyond that, she’s never really been a house dog – or even a suburban dog for that matter – let alone an urban critter.  She’s lived most of her life in a kennel out on a large piece of property in the country.  She was in the kennel not because she is aggressive or unstable, but because she is a natural hunter, and for prey is anything smaller than she is – and some things considerably larger.  After killing quite a few chickens, harassing enough cats, and playing with a goat until it could no longer walk, my brother had to keep her locked up.

So when somebody jumped my fence one night a few weeks ago while I wasn’t home, and after repeated eggings, and now that I’ve started noticing a lot of new people wandering around my neighborhood and a growing stream of obviously drugged out folks loitering around the abandoned duplex across the way, I finally started seriously thinking about getting a dog.  I had only to mention this to my brother and he offered to bring her here on a trial basis.  Here there are no chickens to kill (at least not anymore) or goats to play with, and I’m totally ok if she wants to chase the cats out of the yard.  It’s a small yard.  And she’s already filled it full of holes hiding buried tennis balls and rawhide bones.  But I’m ok with all of that.  I’m ok with the amazing quantities of hair.  I’m even ok with the lingering scent of dog that follows here everywhere she goes.  I don’t mind picking up poop.  And so far, I’ve been amazingly consistent with feeding times and water checking.  And I’m calm.  Even though I can feel the need to get to the gym growing, even though I’m under an incredible amount of pressure with new job and finals and papers and healthcare and money problems and far too much social isolation, I’m calm.

I talk to her constantly, which makes sense because she follows me around the house like a paranoid sycophant.  Actually she looks more intelligent than that.  She watches everything I do, as though she’s taking notes.  And she’s curious about everything.  The best part about a mature dog is that when she encounters something new, she doesn’t need to be taught over and over what the allowed behaviors are.  I had to tell her twice not to put her paws on the counter (she’d never been in a house before, so she didn’t know) and now she doesn’t even think about it.  She walks away from food when I tell her to.  She stops the seconds I say “no”, or even “nuh uh” which is more my style.  I save the “no” for the serious stuff, like paws on the counter, or the white chair.

It took a few days but I’m getting used to having another critter in the house.  I still wake up when she moves around, but I’ve noticed that my overall anxiety about sleeping has reduced.  There’s something about having another set of ears on that lets me drop my guard a bit.  It’s a relief, really.  Because lately I’d been jumping every time the fridge switched on.

There is another component to this experiment with the dog.  Beyond the security and the company, I’m testing the waters of attachment.  I’ve decided to let myself learn to really care about this animal.  I have become a master of detachment.  It is a long story, but with the exception of a very few people who have either been grandfathered in, or who, by some cosmic fluctuation managed to find me at the right time, I’ve learned to meet people, associate with them, and then leave when the leaving time came – all without the emotional turmoil and grief usually associated with such activities.  And I haven’t been emotionally engaged with an animal since I was 16.  It’s occurred to me that if I intend to ever actually use my heart, I’d best break it out of the safe it’s been hibernating in.  This is me cracking the combination.

So my life has been in high turmoil.

I’m so ready for this summer.  I have plans.  Grand plans, because really, should there be any other kind?

Putting the Train Back on the Track

I had a long list of things that I needed to get done this weekend.  Most of it didn’t happen.  It’s my own fault.  Two nights in a row of drinking and staying up way too late makes it difficult to fix the tax problem and debate the wrong charges with the cell phone company and get my finances in order and do the research for the new health plan that I’m going to have to find when my current one runs out at the end of the month, and still get my exercise and my housework and my studying done. In fact, I only got the housework and the exercise and a handful of errands completed.  Everything else got skipped.

It’s dangerous, letting so much stuff go by the wayside like that.  I know better.  But I really wanted to be social and spend time with my friends too.  One of the biggest sacrifices I’ve made during my efforts in this master’s program is the time spent with friends and family.  I go months without seeing people that I used to see every other week or so.  And it is not unusual for my friends to be doing something fun, something interesting or beneficial or difficult or important, while I am stuck studying or attending class or trying to catch up on all of the stuff that I should be doing otherwise.

So this weekend I shot myself in the foot.  It’s done.  Time to pick up the pieces and try to get back on track.

I’ve decided that I’m done drinking for the next three weeks – even on weekends – with one exception.  If I am able to go out (I don’t foresee that happening anytime soon – I’ve maxed my going out quota the last couple of weeks) then I might have one or two.  But no more drinking at home alone when I should be studying or working on a project or dealing with one of the dozens of problems I’ve got hovering right now.  It’s going to be difficult, especially at first, but I know I won’t miss the hangovers.

I’m going to get back to my twice a day training schedule.  First, it will make me be more regimented with my time.  Second, it will eliminate the 10 lbs I’ve packed on since the last half-marathon.  Third, it will make it easier to not drink.  Fourth, I’ll be more productive all around.  It’s the getting up in the morning part that kills me.  But I’ve been slacking for two months now.  Time to get myself in gear.  Besides, once I start the new job, I’ll have to totally rearrange my workout schedule.  Best take advantage of what I have while I have it.

Third, I’m going to really work at this sleep problem.  If I can just get 7 hours a night, I’ll be totally functional.  This 4 and 5 hour nonsense has got to stop.  Hopefully the not drinking will help it.  But the other thing I’m hoping will help is a fixed bedtime.  10:30.  No exceptions.  Which means I have about five minutes to finish this before I have to call it a night.

Fourth, I’m going to get serious about my classes.  I’ve been slacking off this semester – to the point that I’m even making myself nervous, and I never get nervous about academics.  If I don’t pull it together and soon, I’m going to have a difficult time getting the necessary grade in my difficult class.  I’m frustrated and angry about the amount of work involved, and I’m being passive aggressive by not doing it in a timely manner, but the only person I’m hurting is myself.  I just need to pull my head loose and start working harder.  My biggest problem with this class is that it isn’t the kind of work that can be done in little chunks.  If I don’t have three or four or six hours to work on stuff for this class, it almost isn’t even worth getting started.  It takes so long to get in the groove and then it takes so long to make any progress and then it takes so long to get to a point where I can stop without having to redo a bunch of work the next time I get started that it is difficult to schedule it in.  That’s one thing I’m hoping the new job will help.  It looks like I have a couple of totally free days – instead of working part time every day – so I should be able to actually make the time commitment necessary.

I’m so looking forward to this new position – for so many reasons.  It was a long time coming and I am approaching it as an opportunity to set the foundation for the next kind of person I will be.  Every five years I change profoundly.  I’ll be 34 this summer.  35 is going to be a pivotal year, and I can already tell that this year will be all about gearing up for the next phase.  I’m ready.  Mostly.

At least, I have the wardrobe for it.  Finally.

Oops.  Time!  Off to bed for me.