Getting back to who I've become

[maradydd]

Yesterday I got to have a nice long talk with czarina69, with whom I really should get in touch more often, seeing as how pretty much every conversation I have with her turns out to be a learning experience. The good kind, I mean. She got to regale me with all kinds of great news about how she and sclerotic_rings are doing, stuff she's been doing with jewelry lately, plans for setting up a store and buying a house at some point ... all the sorts of life-plan things which, at some point, make you sit back and say "Hold on a second, what am I doing again?"

To which I pointed out: "Not to sound like a bitter ex-wife here, but you and I were basically in the same situation for quite some time -- we were each involved with people who claimed they wanted stability, and it turned out they wanted stagnation, and we never picked up on the difference. And now that we have the opportunity to not live from crisis to crisis, we take a look around and say, 'Huh. Is this stability, then? I think I could deal with that.'"

(Parenthetical aside #1: Perhaps, Gentle Reader, you are noticing a disconnect between the idea of stagnation and living from crisis to crisis. Does it help to point out that czarina69's ex is someone for whom staying in one place was generally achieved by digging holes as fast as or faster than the other people around him could lay down firm foundations? Thought so.)

(Parenthetical aside #2: Just the other day, at dinner, I was reminded of one of my old objections to any sort of utopian philosophy -- I think it's foolish to be a utopian, because once you reach the spot which right now you think is the apex, you'll see some new summit that you haven't yet tackled. It put me in mind of the Singularity, more than anything else. Sure, we'll hit a point where the world, technology, &c. would no longer be recognisable to people of today's mindset. And those Singularity-future humans will eventually hit a corresponding point themselves. I'm sure you see the connexion.)

Last semester was a bad time to be me. Fresh out of a stagnation-by-way-of-excavation crisis-by-crisis lifestyle -- I'm not trying to start an argument with shrike6, but honestly, that's what it was, and albeit from a distance, I still see a lot of that same crap going on in his life now that we're not together anymore -- I found a new department, made new friends and strengthened old friendships, got started on some new and exciting research, and then the ceiling caved in. Disasters compounded until I was farther down than where I'd begun, and at least one Seriously Good Thing was strained to the breaking point and quite probably farther.

This semester has been, at the same time, a whole lot of building and a whole lot of damage control. At times, it's been difficult to tell which was which. I've also noticed in myself some personality changes which I don't entirely like: in particular, a sort of slavish devotion which had a way of turning to crushing disappointment at any perceived slight or snub. I mean, yes, I've always been the Ass-Kicker With a Heart of Chewing Gum, carefully guarding a nest of insecurities under layers of leather and sarcasm, but this was different; it's never hung on just one person before. It wasn't working. It was downright crippling. I had to change it.

(martian_bob, you were wondering last Friday what was wrong. The best answer I can give you is that I was rewriting a whole lot of system software on the fly, and everything else was running at a vastly reduced capacity. I hope that makes sense.)

At first I thought, fine, let's reset things to how they were before I gave a damn. But on the one hand, I don't see where it gets me anything other than a whole lot of lost time and effort ... and on the other hand, the clock doesn't go back. That's not the answer. The trick is not to come back to myself by learning not to care. The trick is to care, and still be myself. That's hard.

But the stupid irony is that life actually is pretty damn stable right now. I have the World's Coolest Job. After this summer, I'll have one year of coursework left. I have my bills under control and I almost own my car outright. I have a 401(k). I have all this army crap pretty well straightened out. I have internship prospects for next summer. I have a quals paper topic and I know when (and probably where) I'll do my literature survey for my comps. I don't have a lot of thoughts on where I'll go when I'm done with my coursework, but I don't have to know that now; that's a bridge I can burn when I get to it. I have a place to live and I'll know sometime today whether prysmicdork will still be sharing it with me or going off to Edinburgh. I have a trip to Michigan to get ready for. I have a lot of work to do, but this has never been news.

So I guess there are a lot worse times than now to work on something like this.

Finally: now that I've seen the Buddha on the road, I have to kill him. So it goes.

Comments

[mycroftxxx.livejournal.com]

Good luck, don't regress so far that you lose any empathy you might have.

[czarina69.livejournal.com]

And it was great talking to you, too. :)

BTW, I sent pics and descriptions to the email address in your LJ description. My Angelfire account is almost dead, and that's the only one I have for you. Let me know if you need it sent to another address.