Saturday, January 22, 2011

i'll show you a place high on a desert plain

I shall start by giving you fair warning that there will be no links in my post tonight; I should have gone to bed ages ago, and finding appropriate links typically doubles the amount of time it takes me to craft this drivel. I had a very odd, frustrating, surreal kind of day, nearly flinging myself headfirst into an anxiety-laced local minima* before pulling myself out by brute force at the last second (a feat I rarely accomplish). (*For those of you unfamiliar with Adit and mathematics, "local minima" are a mathematical term that Adit has used to describe my occasional depressions, as local minima are the lowest points in the general vicinity. Yes, we are dorks, carry on.)

As a result of last night's smashing headache, I didn't get out of bed until after ten; by the time I ate some Cheerios, messed around on the internet, and threw myself into my makeup and clothes, I was approximately five minutes late for lunch with Gyre. He seemed to be in good form, and I enjoyed catching up with him since we had missed one of our usual lunches while I spent the holidays in Iowa. Then, I went up to the fourth floor and said hello to Meital (Alan's admin), and we caught up on life, since I had not seen her since my going-away party in October.

I stayed just a fraction too long, getting caught by Alan and the big boss; the big boss happened to be over in that building instead of the one she normally inhabits, and so she saw me on campus twice in one week. It was nice to see them both, even if it looked suspicious that I was apparently hanging around so much (which is why I try to sneak in and out for lunch, choosing cafes that are far removed from the normal areas where the people I know usually eat).

And then I left, driving directly into a maelstrom of self-doubt and fear and anxiety and all those other negative emotions that I thought I had killed when I decided to leave my job for good. As happened on Tuesday, seeing the big boss reminded me of all the good things I have left behind -- and the fact that they still haven't replaced me means that there is an obvious open door available to me that would not be open if someone had already filled my role. Even in the darkest moment, feeling that I should email the big boss immediately and express interest in returning, I knew that I would not even be considering looking for a job right now if it weren't the job I left -- which means this is more fear-based than driven by any other needs.

Luckily, while I may not be getting any better at preventing myself from freaking out in the first place, I stumbled upon a solution -- I sat around the house for twenty minutes or so, and then went to the gym and worked out for an hour. Then, I got my eyebrows waxed (and the white hairs removed from my left eyebrow; there are four of them now, and I'm going to look like Andy Rooney before I'm thirty, which may be driving some of my anxiety), took a shower, and came home, my mind beginning to slow down from its endless processing over my fate. I then made some dinner; the cookbook my parents got me continues to produce winners. Tonight it was a pasta dish with hot Italian turkey sausage, tomatoes, spinach and parmesan, which took twenty minutes and was quite delicious.

I had intended to write tonight, but my thoughts were still too much of a mess, and I knew that if I failed at writing tonight, I would just berate myself even more about what I have left behind. So, I picked up one of the books I got for Christmas -- Patricia McKillip's THE BARDS OF BONE PLAIN, which is fantasy written with all the skill and lyricism of a gifted literary author. I of course finished it in one go, even though I had originally intended to put it down by eleven p.m.; the storylines were set in ancient times and in the 'present day' of the story (what felt like the 1920s, although it was never said), and alternated between each other at every chapter, very similar to Murakami's HARD BOILED WONDERLAND AND THE END OF THE WORLD. I find that kind of story impossible to put down, since you're always wanting to get back to the other storyline regardless of which one you're currently reading. The book was lovely -- not quite perfect, since I wanted to know a bit more about the v. ambiguous villain, but certainly good enough to release me from the spell of corporate America and pull me back into the spell of writing.

I won't ramble on much longer, but I will leave you with an observation (if only to remind myself of it when I inevitably read this post again someday). The observation is this: I realized the other day that writing is perhaps the first thing I have ever encountered (besides reading) that I do not think I could ever grow bored of. My heart is fickle and my mind too restless to stay with any one place for long (which perhaps partially explains my tragic performance in relationships), so any job, no matter how good, has always managed to make me bored within the year. But writing...there is something intoxicating about the words, about weaving together something out of absolutely nothing at all, about trying to capture a scent or a gesture or a glint in someone's eye with a few markings on a page -- about finding a character and being delighted when they surprise you.

So if nothing else, that's as good a reason as any to keep at this and stop thinking about my old job; I thought that I had stopped thinking about it, but apparently the big boss is like a sip of the bad stuff for a recovering workaholic, and I was ready to throw myself off the wagon and straight into a death-inducing amount of work when I saw her today. The thought of getting paid well and being secure and beging recognized for things which I am good at is v. seductive, v. rational, and exactly why I stayed so long; but there are other things in life that I need to do, and I'll just have to trust that the rest of it will work itself out.

Okay, I have brooded far too long, and likely lost every reader except my mother, who will now be worried about me. That means it's time for bed; I'm taking tomorrow off, since I had told myself I would take it off all week and must hold true to that promise, even though I have no plans; perhaps I'll go to the beach, or finally see THE KING'S SPEECH. Goodnight!

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