So a look at my last post tells me it's been nearly three full months since I've written anything. It's not that I haven't tried. I had one post half-written around the end of June, but then life got in the way and I ended up canning it before it was done. Two months later, I had a second post that covered pretty much the whole summer, and have now thrown that one in the shitter, too. Why? Because it wasn't saying what I wanted it to. I realized recently that the reason it wasn't saying what I wanted was because I was writing it for you, not me. That's not the way it should be.
So here's what's gonna happen: There's only gonna be a short summer recap, and here it is:
Went to South Lake Tahoe as soon as school was over. Worked. It was alright. If I'd stayed longer, I might have gotten more out of it. Not sure it's the type of thing I wanna do full-time. Snowed a lot. MADDENING, because I wanna do outside mountain warm-weather stuff, not outside mountain cold-weather stuff. Especially not in May and June.
Flew to England. Volunteered at World Forum for Enterprise and the Environment (WFEE) at Oxford. It was neat. Got to hear lots of interesting views and talk to some very knowledageable people.
Very early on July 4, flew to the desert because Dad was dying. On July 9, at approximately 3:47 a.m., he died. Very sad. I dealt with it. I think. Maybe not. Very hard to say, honestly.
Flew back to England. Immediately got to work on two classes (comparative environmental policy and global governance of climate change). Worked a lot. Read A LOT. Wrote a lot. Stressed a lot. In between, did some fun stuff. Oxford is very pretty and historic. Saw Parliament, Buckingham Palace & Changing of the Guard, Stonehenge, Cambridge, etc., etc. Saw the Bouncing Souls in London. Sweet. Saw "Wicked" in London. Very cool. Rewarding experience overall.
Flew back to the desert. Said goodbye to Dad. Hung out for a bit in the heat.
Flew back to Bloomington. Got ready to start school. Started school.
END OF SUMMER
So there ya have it. Clearly I have more thoughts about all of these things than just this. However, those are my thoughts, and I've decided to keep them that way.
Well, most of them, anyway. There is this: I spent a lot of time alone this summer. Some of this was by design, some was just because I was busy studying/working. Some of it was being alone in a crowd. I hate that. I don't like going to bars or clubs or other crowded places with huge groups of people. It's usually too crowded, too loud, and just too MUCH for me to actually enjoy myself. I can only take those types of situations in small doses before I just have to get out of there. I would rather spend time on my own, or with small groups of people in places where you can actually hold conversations without yelling and there aren't a hundred other things going on that can distract my attention. Either that, or at least have something else to hold my attention, a reason to go out: a band to see, a game to watch, a pool table, whatever. Because sitting around and drinking and pretending to enjoy myself just isn't enough.
Alas, I keep getting hit in the face with the truth that the rest of the world seems to be the exact opposite. Whether it was in South Lake, or England, or back here where it feels like I've been too a zillion "yay, we're all back together!" celebrations in the last couple of weeks, everywhere I go, I feel like there are dozens of people there with me, some of whom I know, but mostly not well, and thus I can't fully by myself. It feels like forced socializing, socializing for the sake of socializing, and I can't take much of that. I've never really defined myself by the people surrounding me. I'm normally perfectly happy kickin' it on my own, which is probably why I choose to undertake activities that can be done just as well alone as they can with others. So it frustrates me when I start trying to fit in more by going and hanging out with oodles of other people. It's those times that I very quickly start feeling like a square peg desperately trying to pound myself into a round hole. It's never worked before, so why should it now?
This summer I feel like I reached some sort of epiphany, a turning point of sorts. I have no idea where I am turning to. What I do know is that it's time to decide who and what I wanna be, and then embrace that. I need to strip away some of the bullshit in my life and see what's left, then do the things that make me happy.
Here's what I will and will not do:
*I WILL NOT put myself in situations where I might kinda sorta have a little bit of fun, but more likely just feel very awkward standing around like a waste of space. It's just not worth it anymore, and makes me more frustrated than I need to be.
*I WILL go to the social events that I want to go to, but I WILL NOT stay longer than I want to. When I get bored, restless, or just feel like I need a break from the crowd (usually at about the two hour mark), I'm just gonna go. Nothing personal; it's just time for me to go and do something else for a while. Also, nothing personal (probably) if I don't show up at all. Feel free to invite me to your function, and if I don't go, it probably just means I don't feel up to it that day. Try me again next time.
*I WILL buckle down and work hard. Not that that will be difficult to do for me.
*I WILL stop wasting time thinking about what-ifs and coming up with reasons for not doing things that need to be done. If there is a task to be completed or a conversation that needs to be had that might be a bit unpleasant, I'm just gonna breathe deep and do it. Sooner begun, sooner done.
*I WILL stop procrastinating with lots of piddly little shit, like fartin' around on the Internet instead of getting things done. The quicker I get my work done, the bigger blocks of time I will have available to actually go out and do something enjoyable and meaningful.
*I WILL NOT work myself to death, and I WILL use those blocks of time to explore and find new diversions. This should enrich my life and make me happier.
*I WILL NOT concern myself any longer with what other people are doing and whether they are leading more interesting, exciting lives than me. All I can do is what I can do, and that will have to be enough. On a related note, I WILL NOT try and act like my life is some rich and fulfilling journey and I'm having the time of my life, because I'm not. I get by. Could be better, could be worse. I'm sure I could be happier, so maybe I should stop worrying about what other people think and go out and make myself happier.
*I WILL NOT keep chasing after women who don't want to be caught. Not that I will stop chasing, period. But if you're not interested, I'm just going to accept that and move on. I will leave the door open for your change of heart later, but I'm going to continue an active pursuit, or obsess over how things went wrong. Nothing personal. I just don't have time to waste on you if you don't want the same things I do. If you do change your mind, you'll have to come to me, because I'm not going to come to you again.
So there's the gameplan. Check back in a few weeks and we'll see how things're going. Kay?
That's it, I'm going to bed.
Friday, September 9, 2011
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
How I'm Spending My Summer Vacation
And by "here" I mean South Lake Tahoe, California. I am sitting here inside because it has been snowing for four days. In May. Supposedly this is unusual, even for up here. Oh, and it's 9:30 at night, so I wouldn't be outside anyway. I was watching "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World," which is cute (yes, I just called a movie "cute"), but the people I'm staying with are home and have turned on the A's game. Which is fine. Better than watching that pitiful Sharks game. We shall not talk about that.
So WTF is going on? Why am I here and not Bloomington? Funny you should ask. I am here doing an internship with an environmental non-profit (which I will decline to name to protect the innocent). I'm doing an internship on climate change here in the Sierras. I'm helping organize a conference going on in a month, putting out some newsletters, and working on land and water use plans that hopefully will lead to some better development here in the area. More on the details later.
First we should discuss how I got here. It's not a terribly interesting story. I know I haven't written in two months (since I was in Nashville over spring break), so I guess I won't re-hash the last two months of my life. Much. I made it through the semester, which is always good. I got my first grade that was not an A since high school. It was tough getting through, though. All the papers and everything that I was working on just came down on me at once. Not that that's any different from anyone else, but of course I always think I'm special and that my problems are so much worse than anyone else's. Not much of particular interest went on as we were wrapping up the semester, at least not in my personal life. It was workworkwork as usual. I did enjoy the Little 500, even though it was rainy and cold the whole time. Oh, and I have a few things go on in my relationships with the opposite sex that I won't go into. Some bad, some good. Hopefully the good will outweigh the bad when I get back into town in August.
So anyway, the internship. As you may or may not know, I'm spending July and August in Oxford, England, taking classe on climate change management and comparative international environmental policy. My original goal was to get an internship over in Oxford or London, so I could just spend the whole summer over there. So I tried and tried to find open positions that I was interested in and which could fit into my schedule, which was difficult. I also spent a lot of time sending e-mails and making phone calls to companies trying to make my own internship. It didn't work. Mostly I got no response at all, which was pretty frustrating. I didn't realize it was going to be this hard to get someone to exploit me for a couple months. But apparently I was wrong. Of course, this was also on top of school, work, etc., which of course always seemed to get in the way of looking for an internship. Anyway, after wasting a lot of my time on this shit, I finally gave up and tossed in the towel.
So I resigned myself to spending the first half of the summer in Bloomington. I was making some arrangements to do some volunteering and things like that, when I decided to hit Idealist.org to see if there was anything interesting. That's where I found this position. I figured they'd be like all the rest and say they didn't want take someone for less than the full summer, but when I sent an e-mail inquiring about it, they said they'd consider it and asked me to send in my resume, which I did. Then I did a phone interview, and two days later I had accepted the offer. Just like that. I find it ironic that after all of the stress and shit that I put myself through over the past few months trying to find an internship, as soon as I give up, something like this just kinda falls into my lap. And the most ironic part is that I didn't even need to do it. Right after I got this, I found out that I'd gotten a waiver for SPEA's internship requirement. So basically, all that amounts to is that I don't have to put in the paperwork and pay for the one credit hour or whatever I would have had to register for. Whatever.
So here I am. I got in last Monday. It started snowing Saturday night, and has been going off and on since. Fortunately, tonight appears to be it. This is good, because I want to take advantage of the time I'm here to do some fun stuff. I need to get in some hiking, biking, hanging out by the lake, maybe see if anyone's got a boat to go out on...things like that. Without a car, though, it gets a little more difficult. Which is where things get a little more complicated. See, if I want to get to know what there is around here to do, and find ways to get to them, I gotta make some friends. Not exactly my strong suit, right? Well, I guess I need to make it one, for my own sake. If I don't, I'm gonna feel like I wasted a lot of my time here. Ditto with England. If I don't find people to hang out with in either place, I'm just gonna sit on my ass the whole time, and these opportunities are too good to pass up or waste feeling sorry for myself. So I guess this summer I get a chance to see if I can't make some new friends by actually going out of my way to try.
So far, so good, sort of. The people I'm working with now all seem really friendly and have not minded me tagging along to things thus far. I'm hoping I can parlay that into something meaningful. It seems like a very tightknit organization, which creates quite a different atmosphere from my last job. I kinda like it.
I'm planning on sticking around Europe for a few days after the Oxford program ends. Not sure exactly what I'm going to do. I've thought about London, Paris, Scotland, Ireland, the Low Countries...don't know yet. I guess maybe I need to start making up my mind on some of those things and start getting some arrangements made. I'll do that around working, playing, doing the nearly 2,000 pages of reading I have to do for the program. Yes, you read that right. No way all of this is getting done, but I'll do the best I can.
Bleh. I don't feel like writing anymore. Not exactly a masterpiece, is it? I guess I'm just tired. And I need to work in the morning. So...night.
So WTF is going on? Why am I here and not Bloomington? Funny you should ask. I am here doing an internship with an environmental non-profit (which I will decline to name to protect the innocent). I'm doing an internship on climate change here in the Sierras. I'm helping organize a conference going on in a month, putting out some newsletters, and working on land and water use plans that hopefully will lead to some better development here in the area. More on the details later.
First we should discuss how I got here. It's not a terribly interesting story. I know I haven't written in two months (since I was in Nashville over spring break), so I guess I won't re-hash the last two months of my life. Much. I made it through the semester, which is always good. I got my first grade that was not an A since high school. It was tough getting through, though. All the papers and everything that I was working on just came down on me at once. Not that that's any different from anyone else, but of course I always think I'm special and that my problems are so much worse than anyone else's. Not much of particular interest went on as we were wrapping up the semester, at least not in my personal life. It was workworkwork as usual. I did enjoy the Little 500, even though it was rainy and cold the whole time. Oh, and I have a few things go on in my relationships with the opposite sex that I won't go into. Some bad, some good. Hopefully the good will outweigh the bad when I get back into town in August.
So anyway, the internship. As you may or may not know, I'm spending July and August in Oxford, England, taking classe on climate change management and comparative international environmental policy. My original goal was to get an internship over in Oxford or London, so I could just spend the whole summer over there. So I tried and tried to find open positions that I was interested in and which could fit into my schedule, which was difficult. I also spent a lot of time sending e-mails and making phone calls to companies trying to make my own internship. It didn't work. Mostly I got no response at all, which was pretty frustrating. I didn't realize it was going to be this hard to get someone to exploit me for a couple months. But apparently I was wrong. Of course, this was also on top of school, work, etc., which of course always seemed to get in the way of looking for an internship. Anyway, after wasting a lot of my time on this shit, I finally gave up and tossed in the towel.
So I resigned myself to spending the first half of the summer in Bloomington. I was making some arrangements to do some volunteering and things like that, when I decided to hit Idealist.org to see if there was anything interesting. That's where I found this position. I figured they'd be like all the rest and say they didn't want take someone for less than the full summer, but when I sent an e-mail inquiring about it, they said they'd consider it and asked me to send in my resume, which I did. Then I did a phone interview, and two days later I had accepted the offer. Just like that. I find it ironic that after all of the stress and shit that I put myself through over the past few months trying to find an internship, as soon as I give up, something like this just kinda falls into my lap. And the most ironic part is that I didn't even need to do it. Right after I got this, I found out that I'd gotten a waiver for SPEA's internship requirement. So basically, all that amounts to is that I don't have to put in the paperwork and pay for the one credit hour or whatever I would have had to register for. Whatever.
So here I am. I got in last Monday. It started snowing Saturday night, and has been going off and on since. Fortunately, tonight appears to be it. This is good, because I want to take advantage of the time I'm here to do some fun stuff. I need to get in some hiking, biking, hanging out by the lake, maybe see if anyone's got a boat to go out on...things like that. Without a car, though, it gets a little more difficult. Which is where things get a little more complicated. See, if I want to get to know what there is around here to do, and find ways to get to them, I gotta make some friends. Not exactly my strong suit, right? Well, I guess I need to make it one, for my own sake. If I don't, I'm gonna feel like I wasted a lot of my time here. Ditto with England. If I don't find people to hang out with in either place, I'm just gonna sit on my ass the whole time, and these opportunities are too good to pass up or waste feeling sorry for myself. So I guess this summer I get a chance to see if I can't make some new friends by actually going out of my way to try.
So far, so good, sort of. The people I'm working with now all seem really friendly and have not minded me tagging along to things thus far. I'm hoping I can parlay that into something meaningful. It seems like a very tightknit organization, which creates quite a different atmosphere from my last job. I kinda like it.
I'm planning on sticking around Europe for a few days after the Oxford program ends. Not sure exactly what I'm going to do. I've thought about London, Paris, Scotland, Ireland, the Low Countries...don't know yet. I guess maybe I need to start making up my mind on some of those things and start getting some arrangements made. I'll do that around working, playing, doing the nearly 2,000 pages of reading I have to do for the program. Yes, you read that right. No way all of this is getting done, but I'll do the best I can.
Bleh. I don't feel like writing anymore. Not exactly a masterpiece, is it? I guess I'm just tired. And I need to work in the morning. So...night.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Spring Break, and Why Being a Loner Is Not Conducive to Succeeding at Grad School (Or Anything Else)
So it's spring break. As I write this, I am sitting in a brewery in downtown Nashville (the one in Tennessee, not the one in Indiana...because that would be a pretty pathetic spring break vacation, if you ask me). Fortunately, they have this thing called "Wi-Fi" that can be accessed via my (relatively) new "laptop computer." I am getting grease on my keyboard, but that's okay. The beer is all right. There is college basketball on the TV; so far, my brackets are doing okay, but I could have used a comeback by Belmont (which I did not know until yesterday is located here in Nashville; boy, with Vanderbilt also losing, it's a bad day for local college hoops) against Wisconsin. A few blocks away from here, there is a hockey game going on between the Bruins and Predators. I guess that explains why I've been seeing so many Boston fans around today. I did not realize this was happening, or if I did realize it at one point, I forgot about it. It's been kinda weird, with so many Preds & B's fans walking around, that today I decided to wear to wear my Sharks shirt. There was a woman on a corner selling hot dogs for $2 to Preds fans and $4 to Bruins fans. I didn't think to ask her what she what sell them to me for.
Did I mention that it's St. Paddy's Day? It seems somehow wrong to make the Bruins play a road game on this day, but at least they're playing in a city with a rich Irish tradition like...Nashville. Wait, I take that back. This holiday is stupid. At least in America. For us it's just a reason to drink beer that's been dyed green (I am not drinking green beer, BTW) and wear T-shirts that say "Kiss me, I'm Irish," even if you're not...though the more ballsy of people will wear shirts that substitute "Fuck" for "Kiss". I think I saw a "Fuck me, I'm Irish" button on the video for House of Pain's "Jump Around" back in the day, but of course the "Fuck" was overlaid with one of those annoying black bars. Anyway, my point is, this is supposed to be a holiday in Ireland...I think. It celebrates St. Patrick ridding the island of snakes, or something like that. And yet we cheapen it by turning it into a drinking day. Just like Cinco de Mayo, only with different beer. Same thing we do with every holiday, like, say, Christmas, which these days is just an excuse to patriotically stimulate the economy with shitloads of money on crap we don't need.
I'm not at all cynical, BTW. In case you were wondering. And, oh yeah, it's my grandpa's birthday, too. Gotta call him at some point tonight. Do shout-outs in blogs count as birthday calls?
Did I mention I'm in Nashville? I may have. I got blessed with some beautiful weather for my trip, for which I am thankful. Nothing brings down a vacation like buckets of rain. I drove down yesterday. Damn near got a speeding ticket on the way. Thanks to the Indiana state trooper who was nice enough to let me off with a warning, even though I didn't beg for it and he had every reason to ticket me. I stopped in beautiful downtown Owensboro, KY, on the way. Saw their bluegrass museum there, which was interesting. The theme continued today, where I spent all day at the Ryman, which is a live music venue that hosted the Grand Ol' Opry for thirty years and continues to host many nationall-known acts of all genres (Social D plays there in May, and wouldn't I love to see that), and the Country Music Hall of Fame. I spent a while there. Bought a Hank Williams greatest hits disc on my way out, and also picked up the new Lucinda Williams (no relation that I'm aware of) disc that I failed to acquire before I left. Will listen to both at some point this weekend. The only bummer about the day is that I forgot my damn camera at the hotel. Tomorrow...not quite sure. I may hang around the Vanderbilt area for a bit Or I may go to Andrew Jackson's home. Or I may go to an old, historic plantation nearby. Or some combination of all of the above. On Saturday, I am getting up early and heading back home through Mammoth Cave National Park, where I will take a long tour through the longest cave system in the known world. Should be fun. I will be back in Bloomington sometime Saturday night.
I cannot, in the strictest sense of the word, afford this trip, at least not entirely, on my student loans. Well, maybe, but it'd be close. Whatever. Can't take it with you, right? That's why I have money saved up. Although the $11 I've already paid for parking today is $11 I won't have for my England trip this summer. Good thing that parking attendant who was about to ticket me took it back when I told him I was about to pay. Something tells me I won't be able to escape my next brush with the law on this trip. Despite this fact, I am enjoying myself so far, and the break is certainly good for me.
You know what isn't getting done? Work. I had grand plans for getting a bunch of work done this week, and so far...yeah. Reading about willingness to pay and looking for data sources on state government budget deficits will just have to wait I guess. Whatever. Spring break is for slacking off, not working all the time. One way or another, it'll get done.
So what's been happening? In a nutshell, this has been a very difficult semester from a lot of standpoints. There's been too damn much work. This, as you well know, is bad for me. I tend to work too much and self-isolate, which I will whine about more below. It is not a healthy way to live. I swear, I came into this with the best of intentions: that I wasn't going to get overwhelmed by the whole ordeal. Well, that has gone out the window. Between school, looking for an internship, school, helping with the H2H sale, school, work, and school...I've been driving myself pretty hard. I don't think this is necessarily any different from what most other people are doing, but somehow, I feel like I handle it worse. Even though I think I'm giving myself enough breaks and doing my best not to work myself to death...it doesn't work. I don't sleep; six hours a night is about the best I manage these days. Once again, I've failed to prioritize fun. This was one of my New Year's resolutions, and so far it has not panned out.
What exactly have I gotten for busting my ass? I failed my finance mid-term. And by "fail" I do mean FAIL. Everyone I talk to about it starts off by saying, "Oh, it can't be that bad," but by the time I'm done telling them about it, they have this sad look on their face and can only say, "Oh," in an "Okay, I guess it IS that bad..." manner. Suffice it to say that I need a really generous curve to salvage this one. The internship search is languishing. I had three interviews locally, and all three cancelled at the last minute because they had second thoughts about my availability. This is not necessarily unexpected, but it is disappointing. My attempts to find something in England have likewise failed so far. It would help if I could just get someone on the phone or get a response via e-mail. I also does not help that I'm too much of a pussy to pick up the phone and make more calls. At this point, my confidence in getting a position for the first half of the summer is low enough that I've gotten a waiver application from the MPO that I need to fill out and turn in. More on this below, too.
So I turned 31 on Saturday. It turned out to be a GORGEOUS day out, so I took advantage of it to go out into the woods and walk for twelve miles. Us city slickers call it "hiking." Then I went out for the evening to Upland. Kind of a small crowd: me, Alexi, the Reeves', and Venkat. Everyone else was already gone for spring break. Did I mention it's spring break? Alexi made me this really neat handmade card that I appreciated a lot; it was one of the more thoughtful things that anyone has done for me in a long time, maybe ever. Sara asked if she could start calling me "PeePaw," which is apparently what she used to call her grandfather. I granted this request, so everyone who was there that night is free to refer to me by whatever name they call their respective grandfathers. It's kind of embarassing to know that, of my little group of friends, I am the oldest. But, hey, I guess that distinction has to go to someone, right?
Even before my birthday, I started off spring break on the right foot by driving up to Indy last Thursday to see Flogging Molly. Hadn't seen them for a couple of years. I finished my V507 final by 7:00 p.m., and immediately jammed up there for the show. The last couple of times I saw them, I felt like they were getting a little more mature but less fun. This show seemed like a bit of a throwback to their earlier, more raucous days. Shit, they even played "Black Friday Rule"...not quite the same way as they used to, but close. I liked the whole show. Made me excited for their new album, which comes out sometime in May.
Okay, so, before I commence with whining about shit, I'm gonna head back to my hotel. Been a long day, and I've been at this bar for over three hours now. Time to start winding down for the day. BRB...
Okay, I'm back. Still there? Good. I'm back in my hotel room now. It is across the street from an adult video store and around the corner from another. You get what you pay for, and I didn't pay much for this. I also passed a Hustler store on the way out of downtown, in case you wanted to know. It feels good to lay down. Been a long day.
So where was I? Oh yeah...
TODAY'S TOPIC: Why Being A Loner Is Not Conducive to Succeeding at Graduate School (Or Anything Else)
So I'm a loner. And an introvert. Those qualities seem like they go hand-in-hand with most people. With me, these qualities seem to be pretty strong. Give you some examples. A couple of times in the last few weeks I've gotten together with some friends at other people's houses/apartments. This is enjoyable, in large part because I do it so infrequently. Or at least, it's enjoyable for a while. But before long, it inevitably happens: I start thinking to myself, "I'm done." I have fun for a while, but eventually I just realize that I've been around people for too long, and it's time to go be alone. That's when I start looking for a way out. Usually it doesn't present itself quickly, so I sit around smiling and laughing in the appropriate places, but not really paying a great deal of attention. I guess at these points, the healthiest thing to do would be to just go for a walk or go outside for a bit to try and rejuvenate myself, but I don't do it. Instead, I just wait for my opportunity, and it'll eventually present itself.
I've been this way pretty much my whole life. There's just so much group fun I can take before I need to go be by myself for a while. I can do all right with one or two people for quite some time, but the bigger the group, the less I want to be around. Tonight, as I was walking back to my car, I passed all the crowds waiting to get into the bars in downtown Nashville, and I thought to myself about how little that type of scene appealed to me these days.
So what does this have to do with grad school? The way I see it, there are three areas that it adversely impacts things:
--My social life: Clearly this is a problem. I've done okay with creating a little niche for myself. The thing is, I don't think I use it to its full extent. I know I get stressed out by school and life in general, and I think that if I stopped to take time out and talk to people about it, I would feel better a lot more quickly than I do. As it is now, I pretty much just keep my feelings to myself until I can't take it anymore, then realize after talking to someone that all along they were experiencing the same types of things. Getting that validation is very helpful to me because I so often feel alone in all of these struggles. So why I don't seek it out earlier is a puzzle to me.
--Getting to know my professors: I feel like, in grad school, one should get to know one's professors and establish a strong working relationship to them. I came here hoping I'd be able to work with a professor on their research projects, but so far it has not turned out that way, and I think part of that has to do with not making much of an effort to get to know the professors. Although a lot of this may not be my fault. Not only are classes much bigger than I imagined, but so far I don't feel like I've taken enough classes in my specialties that might bring me into contact with professors who share more of my interests. I'm hoping that changes this summer, though.
--Networking for an internship: This is where I feel like I'm in the most trouble. In part, I've been trying to craft my own internship because I've only got half the summer. This has required lots of e-mails and calls to companies, many of which are not returned. That's not my fault. What is problem is that it's so hard to pick up the phone or write an e-mail that I end up wasting a lot of time thinking and planning how I'm going to approach someone and not much time actually doing it. That's increased the pressure on me while at the same time reducing the amount of effective time I have to make contacts and do other things that would help in the internship search.
So the reason I'm complaining about this is because I'm afraid these things are all putting me at a disadvantage. I'm concerned that not making connections here makes surviving grad school more difficult, and could make finding a real job a year from now -- and sustaining a career after that -- that much harder. Building a network seems to be pretty key at succeeding professionally these days, and I don't know that I'm doing that well right now.
Then there's this: There are two types of being alone. One is good, and one is bad. Right now I'm experiencing the good kind of alone. This is the kind where I'm traveling on my own but still doing things I enjoy and not thinking too much about my to-do list or what's waiting for me when I get back. I'm just going with the flow and seeing where things take me. Then there's the bad kind. That's where I end up in my room studying or doing other work for hours on end. That makes me miserable. Trouble is, I don't know what else to do. The reading and writing and everything else has to get done at some point, and it's not exactly work that can be done as a team. So I end up closing myself off from the rest of the world while I work the day away. I know it's probably not healthy, but like I said, what can be done about it?
Sometimes it seems like people who aren't shy and introverted like me have it so much easier. The world is not always kind to people like me, not when so many things depend on who you know, not what you know. So we have to work extra hard to succeed, professionally and personally. And that's just what I need: more work.
But not now. Now it's time for bed. As people keep reminding me, I am very old now, and PeePaw needs his rest.
Did I mention that it's St. Paddy's Day? It seems somehow wrong to make the Bruins play a road game on this day, but at least they're playing in a city with a rich Irish tradition like...Nashville. Wait, I take that back. This holiday is stupid. At least in America. For us it's just a reason to drink beer that's been dyed green (I am not drinking green beer, BTW) and wear T-shirts that say "Kiss me, I'm Irish," even if you're not...though the more ballsy of people will wear shirts that substitute "Fuck" for "Kiss". I think I saw a "Fuck me, I'm Irish" button on the video for House of Pain's "Jump Around" back in the day, but of course the "Fuck" was overlaid with one of those annoying black bars. Anyway, my point is, this is supposed to be a holiday in Ireland...I think. It celebrates St. Patrick ridding the island of snakes, or something like that. And yet we cheapen it by turning it into a drinking day. Just like Cinco de Mayo, only with different beer. Same thing we do with every holiday, like, say, Christmas, which these days is just an excuse to patriotically stimulate the economy with shitloads of money on crap we don't need.
I'm not at all cynical, BTW. In case you were wondering. And, oh yeah, it's my grandpa's birthday, too. Gotta call him at some point tonight. Do shout-outs in blogs count as birthday calls?
Did I mention I'm in Nashville? I may have. I got blessed with some beautiful weather for my trip, for which I am thankful. Nothing brings down a vacation like buckets of rain. I drove down yesterday. Damn near got a speeding ticket on the way. Thanks to the Indiana state trooper who was nice enough to let me off with a warning, even though I didn't beg for it and he had every reason to ticket me. I stopped in beautiful downtown Owensboro, KY, on the way. Saw their bluegrass museum there, which was interesting. The theme continued today, where I spent all day at the Ryman, which is a live music venue that hosted the Grand Ol' Opry for thirty years and continues to host many nationall-known acts of all genres (Social D plays there in May, and wouldn't I love to see that), and the Country Music Hall of Fame. I spent a while there. Bought a Hank Williams greatest hits disc on my way out, and also picked up the new Lucinda Williams (no relation that I'm aware of) disc that I failed to acquire before I left. Will listen to both at some point this weekend. The only bummer about the day is that I forgot my damn camera at the hotel. Tomorrow...not quite sure. I may hang around the Vanderbilt area for a bit Or I may go to Andrew Jackson's home. Or I may go to an old, historic plantation nearby. Or some combination of all of the above. On Saturday, I am getting up early and heading back home through Mammoth Cave National Park, where I will take a long tour through the longest cave system in the known world. Should be fun. I will be back in Bloomington sometime Saturday night.
I cannot, in the strictest sense of the word, afford this trip, at least not entirely, on my student loans. Well, maybe, but it'd be close. Whatever. Can't take it with you, right? That's why I have money saved up. Although the $11 I've already paid for parking today is $11 I won't have for my England trip this summer. Good thing that parking attendant who was about to ticket me took it back when I told him I was about to pay. Something tells me I won't be able to escape my next brush with the law on this trip. Despite this fact, I am enjoying myself so far, and the break is certainly good for me.
You know what isn't getting done? Work. I had grand plans for getting a bunch of work done this week, and so far...yeah. Reading about willingness to pay and looking for data sources on state government budget deficits will just have to wait I guess. Whatever. Spring break is for slacking off, not working all the time. One way or another, it'll get done.
So what's been happening? In a nutshell, this has been a very difficult semester from a lot of standpoints. There's been too damn much work. This, as you well know, is bad for me. I tend to work too much and self-isolate, which I will whine about more below. It is not a healthy way to live. I swear, I came into this with the best of intentions: that I wasn't going to get overwhelmed by the whole ordeal. Well, that has gone out the window. Between school, looking for an internship, school, helping with the H2H sale, school, work, and school...I've been driving myself pretty hard. I don't think this is necessarily any different from what most other people are doing, but somehow, I feel like I handle it worse. Even though I think I'm giving myself enough breaks and doing my best not to work myself to death...it doesn't work. I don't sleep; six hours a night is about the best I manage these days. Once again, I've failed to prioritize fun. This was one of my New Year's resolutions, and so far it has not panned out.
What exactly have I gotten for busting my ass? I failed my finance mid-term. And by "fail" I do mean FAIL. Everyone I talk to about it starts off by saying, "Oh, it can't be that bad," but by the time I'm done telling them about it, they have this sad look on their face and can only say, "Oh," in an "Okay, I guess it IS that bad..." manner. Suffice it to say that I need a really generous curve to salvage this one. The internship search is languishing. I had three interviews locally, and all three cancelled at the last minute because they had second thoughts about my availability. This is not necessarily unexpected, but it is disappointing. My attempts to find something in England have likewise failed so far. It would help if I could just get someone on the phone or get a response via e-mail. I also does not help that I'm too much of a pussy to pick up the phone and make more calls. At this point, my confidence in getting a position for the first half of the summer is low enough that I've gotten a waiver application from the MPO that I need to fill out and turn in. More on this below, too.
So I turned 31 on Saturday. It turned out to be a GORGEOUS day out, so I took advantage of it to go out into the woods and walk for twelve miles. Us city slickers call it "hiking." Then I went out for the evening to Upland. Kind of a small crowd: me, Alexi, the Reeves', and Venkat. Everyone else was already gone for spring break. Did I mention it's spring break? Alexi made me this really neat handmade card that I appreciated a lot; it was one of the more thoughtful things that anyone has done for me in a long time, maybe ever. Sara asked if she could start calling me "PeePaw," which is apparently what she used to call her grandfather. I granted this request, so everyone who was there that night is free to refer to me by whatever name they call their respective grandfathers. It's kind of embarassing to know that, of my little group of friends, I am the oldest. But, hey, I guess that distinction has to go to someone, right?
Even before my birthday, I started off spring break on the right foot by driving up to Indy last Thursday to see Flogging Molly. Hadn't seen them for a couple of years. I finished my V507 final by 7:00 p.m., and immediately jammed up there for the show. The last couple of times I saw them, I felt like they were getting a little more mature but less fun. This show seemed like a bit of a throwback to their earlier, more raucous days. Shit, they even played "Black Friday Rule"...not quite the same way as they used to, but close. I liked the whole show. Made me excited for their new album, which comes out sometime in May.
Okay, so, before I commence with whining about shit, I'm gonna head back to my hotel. Been a long day, and I've been at this bar for over three hours now. Time to start winding down for the day. BRB...
Okay, I'm back. Still there? Good. I'm back in my hotel room now. It is across the street from an adult video store and around the corner from another. You get what you pay for, and I didn't pay much for this. I also passed a Hustler store on the way out of downtown, in case you wanted to know. It feels good to lay down. Been a long day.
So where was I? Oh yeah...
TODAY'S TOPIC: Why Being A Loner Is Not Conducive to Succeeding at Graduate School (Or Anything Else)
So I'm a loner. And an introvert. Those qualities seem like they go hand-in-hand with most people. With me, these qualities seem to be pretty strong. Give you some examples. A couple of times in the last few weeks I've gotten together with some friends at other people's houses/apartments. This is enjoyable, in large part because I do it so infrequently. Or at least, it's enjoyable for a while. But before long, it inevitably happens: I start thinking to myself, "I'm done." I have fun for a while, but eventually I just realize that I've been around people for too long, and it's time to go be alone. That's when I start looking for a way out. Usually it doesn't present itself quickly, so I sit around smiling and laughing in the appropriate places, but not really paying a great deal of attention. I guess at these points, the healthiest thing to do would be to just go for a walk or go outside for a bit to try and rejuvenate myself, but I don't do it. Instead, I just wait for my opportunity, and it'll eventually present itself.
I've been this way pretty much my whole life. There's just so much group fun I can take before I need to go be by myself for a while. I can do all right with one or two people for quite some time, but the bigger the group, the less I want to be around. Tonight, as I was walking back to my car, I passed all the crowds waiting to get into the bars in downtown Nashville, and I thought to myself about how little that type of scene appealed to me these days.
So what does this have to do with grad school? The way I see it, there are three areas that it adversely impacts things:
--My social life: Clearly this is a problem. I've done okay with creating a little niche for myself. The thing is, I don't think I use it to its full extent. I know I get stressed out by school and life in general, and I think that if I stopped to take time out and talk to people about it, I would feel better a lot more quickly than I do. As it is now, I pretty much just keep my feelings to myself until I can't take it anymore, then realize after talking to someone that all along they were experiencing the same types of things. Getting that validation is very helpful to me because I so often feel alone in all of these struggles. So why I don't seek it out earlier is a puzzle to me.
--Getting to know my professors: I feel like, in grad school, one should get to know one's professors and establish a strong working relationship to them. I came here hoping I'd be able to work with a professor on their research projects, but so far it has not turned out that way, and I think part of that has to do with not making much of an effort to get to know the professors. Although a lot of this may not be my fault. Not only are classes much bigger than I imagined, but so far I don't feel like I've taken enough classes in my specialties that might bring me into contact with professors who share more of my interests. I'm hoping that changes this summer, though.
--Networking for an internship: This is where I feel like I'm in the most trouble. In part, I've been trying to craft my own internship because I've only got half the summer. This has required lots of e-mails and calls to companies, many of which are not returned. That's not my fault. What is problem is that it's so hard to pick up the phone or write an e-mail that I end up wasting a lot of time thinking and planning how I'm going to approach someone and not much time actually doing it. That's increased the pressure on me while at the same time reducing the amount of effective time I have to make contacts and do other things that would help in the internship search.
So the reason I'm complaining about this is because I'm afraid these things are all putting me at a disadvantage. I'm concerned that not making connections here makes surviving grad school more difficult, and could make finding a real job a year from now -- and sustaining a career after that -- that much harder. Building a network seems to be pretty key at succeeding professionally these days, and I don't know that I'm doing that well right now.
Then there's this: There are two types of being alone. One is good, and one is bad. Right now I'm experiencing the good kind of alone. This is the kind where I'm traveling on my own but still doing things I enjoy and not thinking too much about my to-do list or what's waiting for me when I get back. I'm just going with the flow and seeing where things take me. Then there's the bad kind. That's where I end up in my room studying or doing other work for hours on end. That makes me miserable. Trouble is, I don't know what else to do. The reading and writing and everything else has to get done at some point, and it's not exactly work that can be done as a team. So I end up closing myself off from the rest of the world while I work the day away. I know it's probably not healthy, but like I said, what can be done about it?
Sometimes it seems like people who aren't shy and introverted like me have it so much easier. The world is not always kind to people like me, not when so many things depend on who you know, not what you know. So we have to work extra hard to succeed, professionally and personally. And that's just what I need: more work.
But not now. Now it's time for bed. As people keep reminding me, I am very old now, and PeePaw needs his rest.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Happy $@!&ing Valentine's Day
PLEASE NOTE: This is not an anti-Valentine's Day screed. If anything, it's actually a pro-Valentine's Day message.
So Valentine's Day is tomorrow. To me, this seems like one of the more polarizing holidays that we have. How we feel about this particular holiday so often depends upon our relationship status. Since this is supposed to be a holiday for lovers, it so often feels like those of us not in a relationship are left out in the cold. Or at least that is the expectation. I think it's kind of a stereotype, though. You don't always have to be miserable in being single on a day like this, but I think society expects those of us who are single to be miserable on Valentine's Day.
Let's get this out of the way: Sure, as a modern holiday it's a construct made up by the evil greeting card and heart-shaped chocolate industries. Which means that, just like every holiday we have these days (I'm looking at you, Christmas), it's way too commercialized. However, maybe that's still better than it's pagan origins: Back in the day, Valentine's Day celebrations consisted of slaughtering animals and whipping young women, which somehow was supposed to guarantee fertility. Nowadays, you whip a young woman, and you're either on your way to jail, or getting ready for a really, really wild night. Depends upon whether she's a willing participant in the whipping, I guess.
This year, I'm choosing not to be bitter over not having someone to shower affections on. Since moving here, I have increased my efforts at finding someone by a factor of ten, which is a pretty impressive increase over the last few years. The fact that I have basically nothing to show for it is certainly disheartening, but it is what it is. I'm not going to begrudge the people who do have someone from celebrating that fact. I think it's sweet.
And I think we need a day like Valentine's Day. Our lives are so busy, between work/school, family, hobbies, etc., etc., that Valentine's Day may be the one day of the year that you stop to appreciate your wife/girlfriend/husband/boyfriend/whatever. It kinda sucks that it comes down to that, but again, it is what it is, and you just have to roll with it.
And yet there's always that expectation that single people should loathe this day. It's like we're looked down upon for being solitary, at least for one day of the year, if not the other 364. I would ask you kindly to please not do that. There's so much pressure on us already to find a mate, settle down with her/him, start a family, and live the rest of our lives in wedded bliss, and we don't need more of it, even if it's only for one day.
At the same time, single people need to not begrudge couples their happiness on this day. Being bitter won't help anything. If being single bothers you, do what you can to fix the situation, or just be happy in your current situation. That's our choice to make.
So I won't be angry about tomorrow. I will look upon you with some envy, true, but in the end, I will just smile a little to myself, wish you luck, and let you enjoy your happiness together. Hell, I might even be happy for you. Just don't try to set me up with your best friend from high school, because that would just be awkward. Okay?
So Valentine's Day is tomorrow. To me, this seems like one of the more polarizing holidays that we have. How we feel about this particular holiday so often depends upon our relationship status. Since this is supposed to be a holiday for lovers, it so often feels like those of us not in a relationship are left out in the cold. Or at least that is the expectation. I think it's kind of a stereotype, though. You don't always have to be miserable in being single on a day like this, but I think society expects those of us who are single to be miserable on Valentine's Day.
Let's get this out of the way: Sure, as a modern holiday it's a construct made up by the evil greeting card and heart-shaped chocolate industries. Which means that, just like every holiday we have these days (I'm looking at you, Christmas), it's way too commercialized. However, maybe that's still better than it's pagan origins: Back in the day, Valentine's Day celebrations consisted of slaughtering animals and whipping young women, which somehow was supposed to guarantee fertility. Nowadays, you whip a young woman, and you're either on your way to jail, or getting ready for a really, really wild night. Depends upon whether she's a willing participant in the whipping, I guess.
This year, I'm choosing not to be bitter over not having someone to shower affections on. Since moving here, I have increased my efforts at finding someone by a factor of ten, which is a pretty impressive increase over the last few years. The fact that I have basically nothing to show for it is certainly disheartening, but it is what it is. I'm not going to begrudge the people who do have someone from celebrating that fact. I think it's sweet.
And I think we need a day like Valentine's Day. Our lives are so busy, between work/school, family, hobbies, etc., etc., that Valentine's Day may be the one day of the year that you stop to appreciate your wife/girlfriend/husband/boyfriend/whatever. It kinda sucks that it comes down to that, but again, it is what it is, and you just have to roll with it.
And yet there's always that expectation that single people should loathe this day. It's like we're looked down upon for being solitary, at least for one day of the year, if not the other 364. I would ask you kindly to please not do that. There's so much pressure on us already to find a mate, settle down with her/him, start a family, and live the rest of our lives in wedded bliss, and we don't need more of it, even if it's only for one day.
At the same time, single people need to not begrudge couples their happiness on this day. Being bitter won't help anything. If being single bothers you, do what you can to fix the situation, or just be happy in your current situation. That's our choice to make.
So I won't be angry about tomorrow. I will look upon you with some envy, true, but in the end, I will just smile a little to myself, wish you luck, and let you enjoy your happiness together. Hell, I might even be happy for you. Just don't try to set me up with your best friend from high school, because that would just be awkward. Okay?
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Doing It Anyway
So it's Super Bowl Sunday. I have marked off several hours of my day from this evening on to celebrate. It's not that I care all that much about the outcome (although I would prefer to see the Steelers, since I like the city of Pittsburgh), but c'mon, it's the Super Bowl. I HAVE to watch. It's required viewing, especially since I so rarely take a break nowadays to watch football or hockey or anything at all on my television. I never really thought I'd say this, but I hardly watch TV at all anymore. I just don't have time. Not that I necessarily have the time right now, but still, I will take the time out of my day to watch anyway.
I also don't particularly have time to write this post, but I'm gonna do it anyway. Which kind of segues right into today's topic:
Doing It Anyway
So as you may or may not know, I am constantly looking for some source of inspiration, something that causes me to pick my ass up and go out and do something. Anything. Right now I have two books sitting next to my bed. I read them periodically, by which I mean when I am just going to bed or have just come home from a long day at school and need a bit of a break. One of them is the Bible. There is no religious reason for reading this. It is mostly for personal edification. I can't remember the last time I picked up a Bible and thumbed through it when someone didn't tell me to do it. I probably never have. So at one point I got it into my head that I would just go buy a Bible and read it cover to cover. I even bought one that has this daily reading schedule that will take you through the whole thing in the span of one calendar year. My goal was to stick to that schedule. A month and change into the year and...yeah, that ain't happenin'. I'm already pretty far behind. This might take me two or three years, at the rate I'm going.
The other is something I picked up while I was Christmas shopping. It's called "Do It Anyway: The New Generation of Activists." The book examines how people can create some sort of meaning in their lives despite all of the obstacles put in their way, from the mundanity (yes, dictionary.com says that's a word) of every day life to the social, legal, and economic institutions that are practically designed to thwart any efforts to change the status quo. It follows eight people in different parts of the country who are working on various causes of their choosing. You've never heard of most of them (or at least I haven't); it's not like Bono or George Clooney are profiled. The only one you may (or may not) have heard of is Rosario Dawson, who is an actress of moderate fame ("Sin City," "Death Proof," and "25th Hour" are among her credits that immediately spring to my mind).
So far I have not really had time to actually start reading this book. However, a few nights ago, for some reason, I decided to read the conclusion. Why I read the conclusion before the rest of the book I am not sure. But I did. And it's a good thing, too, because it served as grist for my mind mill. There are a lot of themes contained within the conclusion that I can relate back to my own life. One of them deals with the idea of a successful failure (or, learning from your mistakes and not repeating them). Another is the search for community. A third is finding the energy to go out and do something despite the obstacles. In the end, it's all about trying.
There's lots of things I've been trying to do lately. This is important, because there are lots of things I haven't been trying to do for quite a while now. Much of this has to do with leaving a job I had increasingly grown sick of and giving up the routine that it entailed. In it's place I now have this slightly frantic, somewhat unpredictable graduate school experience. It has meant once again picking up stakes and moving to a new place that I had absolutely no connection to before arriving here. These things tend to make one reflect on life: what's good about it and what's missing. It's the parts that have been missing that I am slowly trying to fill up, with varying degrees of success.
One of those things is a sense of reason or purpose. I got stuck for years doing nothing particularly important or interesting, and often being miserable because of it. Now that I'm at grad school and feel like I'm surrounded by (mostly younger) people with activist spirits, I feel like I need to be out doing something more important than what I need to do to make it through this experience. So far I am not sure I have succeeded at this. By that I mean that I haven't really found anything that I feel like I can sink my teeth into and actually be a part of. To some extent, this just reflects the fact that I'm not the activist type, and I'm not sure that the opportunities exist here for me to really involve myself in things that mean a lot to me.
Part of this is also not my fault. For years I've thought about helping out at a soup kitchen on Thanksgiving. This past year, I actually planned to do that. I contacted a place that was serving the needy a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving. At first it looked like everything was good. Then the day before Thanksgiving I suddenly get an e-mail that says, "Oh, nevermind, we have all the help we need, thanks anyway." So there went the only plans I had for Thanksgiving (and naturally it poured all day, so I couldn't even go outside. Yeah, my day sucked.) Then there's the organizations that don't respond when I send them e-mails through the city volunteer network offering to help out. These things make it really difficult to get motivated enough to try again, and it makes me mad because I know it's not my fault, but I can't help being angry about it.
But I have been trying. Mostly little things here and there. I helped at a children's event on Martin Luther King Day. Yesterday I helped collect recyclables at the basketball game (and watched our team squander yet another lead at the last second). I'm helping find volunteers for a big community sale at the end of the summer that will take a whole lot of furniture, clothes, and appliances that would have ended up in dumpsters and re-sell them to incoming students. So I try and find things here and there that make me feel like I'm helping out.
These experiences illustrate whole "learning through failure" idea. Right now I'm mostly having to deal with this in regards to my search for a summer internship, a search that usually hovers somewhere between "barely breathing" and "hopelessly moribund," depending upon the week. I feel like it's going so poorly because I'm having a real hard time dedicating the time to it that I feel like I should be. The one good thing about a full-time job is that it was less work than grad school. Now I'm spending full days reading boring passages, meeting with groups, working on assignments, etc., etc., all day every day. On top of that, I'm trying to carve out a social life for myself, create some meaning in my life by doing things for other people, and doing the other things that keep me from completely going insane.
I find that this leaves very little time for the internship search. It's probably also complicated by the fact that I have no concept of time and thus poor time management skills. I spend lots of time on things that do not need to have lots of time spent on them (such as writing blog posts) when I feel like I should be spending it looking for an internship that I technically probably don't need to obtain my degree. It is also probably harmed by a lack of focus: I'm trying to follow many different tracks in my internship search, and from day to day, I never know what I should really be focusing on at any given moment.
Let's face it: All of these things stress me out. I'm being pulled in so many different directions that I frequently just go into survival mode, hunkering down and doing what I need to survive and praying it'll all be over soon so I can rest. This is really horrible for my overall health. I would love to say that there are things I can give up and get by just fine, but I'm having a hard time figuring out what those things are. Which just increases my stress level. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Where was I going with this? Oh yeah. Perfection. This is what I'm striving for, and I'm sure I will ultimately fail at it. I can't say exactly which aspect of my life I will fail at, but I'm betting there will be something. How I respond to it will be instructive. I'm already trying to be more forgiving of myself and taking time out to do things that ease my mind (like writing extremely long blog posts). I'm hoping that will allow me to react well if/when I don't get an internship, or my grades take a hit. I guess we just have to wait and see.
To bring this whole discussion full circle, I will return to the idea of doing it anyway. How do we find the inspiration to make changes, whether they are lifestyle changes or changes that just might be for the good of all humanity? I guess we just have to look around and see what really matters to us, how badly we want to create change, then survey the obstacles in our paths (many of which we construct ourselves)...then do it anyway. Get rich or die trying, so to speak. We take inspiration from wherever we can, whether it's from a piece of art or from the people around us. Finding the inspiration is probably the main thing, and that's different for everyone. But it's also the most fundamental part of "doing it anyway." So find it wherever you can, and act upon it, and realize that it's not always gonna work out...then just keep doing it anyway.
To close, because I can't resist, I will quote Ian MacKaye from Minor Threat's "In My Eyes":
You tell me that I make no difference
Well at least I'm fuckin' tryin'
What the fuck have you done?
Just fuckin' tryin', I guess.
I also don't particularly have time to write this post, but I'm gonna do it anyway. Which kind of segues right into today's topic:
Doing It Anyway
So as you may or may not know, I am constantly looking for some source of inspiration, something that causes me to pick my ass up and go out and do something. Anything. Right now I have two books sitting next to my bed. I read them periodically, by which I mean when I am just going to bed or have just come home from a long day at school and need a bit of a break. One of them is the Bible. There is no religious reason for reading this. It is mostly for personal edification. I can't remember the last time I picked up a Bible and thumbed through it when someone didn't tell me to do it. I probably never have. So at one point I got it into my head that I would just go buy a Bible and read it cover to cover. I even bought one that has this daily reading schedule that will take you through the whole thing in the span of one calendar year. My goal was to stick to that schedule. A month and change into the year and...yeah, that ain't happenin'. I'm already pretty far behind. This might take me two or three years, at the rate I'm going.
The other is something I picked up while I was Christmas shopping. It's called "Do It Anyway: The New Generation of Activists." The book examines how people can create some sort of meaning in their lives despite all of the obstacles put in their way, from the mundanity (yes, dictionary.com says that's a word) of every day life to the social, legal, and economic institutions that are practically designed to thwart any efforts to change the status quo. It follows eight people in different parts of the country who are working on various causes of their choosing. You've never heard of most of them (or at least I haven't); it's not like Bono or George Clooney are profiled. The only one you may (or may not) have heard of is Rosario Dawson, who is an actress of moderate fame ("Sin City," "Death Proof," and "25th Hour" are among her credits that immediately spring to my mind).
So far I have not really had time to actually start reading this book. However, a few nights ago, for some reason, I decided to read the conclusion. Why I read the conclusion before the rest of the book I am not sure. But I did. And it's a good thing, too, because it served as grist for my mind mill. There are a lot of themes contained within the conclusion that I can relate back to my own life. One of them deals with the idea of a successful failure (or, learning from your mistakes and not repeating them). Another is the search for community. A third is finding the energy to go out and do something despite the obstacles. In the end, it's all about trying.
There's lots of things I've been trying to do lately. This is important, because there are lots of things I haven't been trying to do for quite a while now. Much of this has to do with leaving a job I had increasingly grown sick of and giving up the routine that it entailed. In it's place I now have this slightly frantic, somewhat unpredictable graduate school experience. It has meant once again picking up stakes and moving to a new place that I had absolutely no connection to before arriving here. These things tend to make one reflect on life: what's good about it and what's missing. It's the parts that have been missing that I am slowly trying to fill up, with varying degrees of success.
One of those things is a sense of reason or purpose. I got stuck for years doing nothing particularly important or interesting, and often being miserable because of it. Now that I'm at grad school and feel like I'm surrounded by (mostly younger) people with activist spirits, I feel like I need to be out doing something more important than what I need to do to make it through this experience. So far I am not sure I have succeeded at this. By that I mean that I haven't really found anything that I feel like I can sink my teeth into and actually be a part of. To some extent, this just reflects the fact that I'm not the activist type, and I'm not sure that the opportunities exist here for me to really involve myself in things that mean a lot to me.
Part of this is also not my fault. For years I've thought about helping out at a soup kitchen on Thanksgiving. This past year, I actually planned to do that. I contacted a place that was serving the needy a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving. At first it looked like everything was good. Then the day before Thanksgiving I suddenly get an e-mail that says, "Oh, nevermind, we have all the help we need, thanks anyway." So there went the only plans I had for Thanksgiving (and naturally it poured all day, so I couldn't even go outside. Yeah, my day sucked.) Then there's the organizations that don't respond when I send them e-mails through the city volunteer network offering to help out. These things make it really difficult to get motivated enough to try again, and it makes me mad because I know it's not my fault, but I can't help being angry about it.
But I have been trying. Mostly little things here and there. I helped at a children's event on Martin Luther King Day. Yesterday I helped collect recyclables at the basketball game (and watched our team squander yet another lead at the last second). I'm helping find volunteers for a big community sale at the end of the summer that will take a whole lot of furniture, clothes, and appliances that would have ended up in dumpsters and re-sell them to incoming students. So I try and find things here and there that make me feel like I'm helping out.
These experiences illustrate whole "learning through failure" idea. Right now I'm mostly having to deal with this in regards to my search for a summer internship, a search that usually hovers somewhere between "barely breathing" and "hopelessly moribund," depending upon the week. I feel like it's going so poorly because I'm having a real hard time dedicating the time to it that I feel like I should be. The one good thing about a full-time job is that it was less work than grad school. Now I'm spending full days reading boring passages, meeting with groups, working on assignments, etc., etc., all day every day. On top of that, I'm trying to carve out a social life for myself, create some meaning in my life by doing things for other people, and doing the other things that keep me from completely going insane.
I find that this leaves very little time for the internship search. It's probably also complicated by the fact that I have no concept of time and thus poor time management skills. I spend lots of time on things that do not need to have lots of time spent on them (such as writing blog posts) when I feel like I should be spending it looking for an internship that I technically probably don't need to obtain my degree. It is also probably harmed by a lack of focus: I'm trying to follow many different tracks in my internship search, and from day to day, I never know what I should really be focusing on at any given moment.
Let's face it: All of these things stress me out. I'm being pulled in so many different directions that I frequently just go into survival mode, hunkering down and doing what I need to survive and praying it'll all be over soon so I can rest. This is really horrible for my overall health. I would love to say that there are things I can give up and get by just fine, but I'm having a hard time figuring out what those things are. Which just increases my stress level. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Where was I going with this? Oh yeah. Perfection. This is what I'm striving for, and I'm sure I will ultimately fail at it. I can't say exactly which aspect of my life I will fail at, but I'm betting there will be something. How I respond to it will be instructive. I'm already trying to be more forgiving of myself and taking time out to do things that ease my mind (like writing extremely long blog posts). I'm hoping that will allow me to react well if/when I don't get an internship, or my grades take a hit. I guess we just have to wait and see.
To bring this whole discussion full circle, I will return to the idea of doing it anyway. How do we find the inspiration to make changes, whether they are lifestyle changes or changes that just might be for the good of all humanity? I guess we just have to look around and see what really matters to us, how badly we want to create change, then survey the obstacles in our paths (many of which we construct ourselves)...then do it anyway. Get rich or die trying, so to speak. We take inspiration from wherever we can, whether it's from a piece of art or from the people around us. Finding the inspiration is probably the main thing, and that's different for everyone. But it's also the most fundamental part of "doing it anyway." So find it wherever you can, and act upon it, and realize that it's not always gonna work out...then just keep doing it anyway.
To close, because I can't resist, I will quote Ian MacKaye from Minor Threat's "In My Eyes":
You tell me that I make no difference
Well at least I'm fuckin' tryin'
What the fuck have you done?
Just fuckin' tryin', I guess.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
"Just How Bored Were You Last Year?" "I Watched 'Passions' with Spike. Let Us Never Speak of It Again."
Big points if you know what TV show gave me the quote in the title. Bigger points if you can even name the episode without Googling it.
No introduction or anything tonight. I guess I don't have much to say before I get to...
Today's Topic: Passion
What is passion? "Passion" can be defined a lot of different ways. The first thing that pops into one's mind when you think about passion is probably passion for a person. It's why we fall in love, get married, make babies, grow old together, yadda yadda. That's the easy part. It gets a bit harder, but not impossible, when you're talking about passion for a thing: think about passion for cars or your favorite sports team. Then you get to the point where you're talking about passion for an idea or a cause or an abstract principle, and this, I think, can be the hardest type of passion to really understand.
Here's why I started thinking about this: On Thursday, I attended a recruiting event for a local business that has put together a web tool allowing businesses to track their resource usage across time. It's an interesting idea. Unfortunately, there were two things that may have killed my opportunity to get an internship with them (aside from the fact that it turns out they're looking for someone for the spring and not the summer like I expected):
1) I showed up late. This is because a) I'm always late, and b) I was expecting something different. I was expecting this to just be an informal meet 'n' greet session where you could come in, meet the business owner, ask some questions, do some networking, etc. To me, that meant "drop by when you get a chance." Instead, what I got was an actual formal presentation. So under my mistaken impression, I started wandering towards the event just as it was supposed to start. Then I ran into Sara and talked to her for a few minutes. At the end of that conversation, I mentioned where I was going, and she says, "Oh, then you better get in there, because the guy running it just lectured everyone about being on time." Shit.
2) I left early. This is not my fault. I looked at my phone and realized it was 12:56, and that I needed to be in my TA class in a mere four minutes. So I asked a quick question, told the guy I had to get to class, and ran off. What else was I supposed to do? I had to work. If it were just one of my own classes I wouldn't have cared about showing up late, but I kind of have responsibilities here. Hopefully he realized that.
But what was more concerning to me was his comment early on about passion. This guy encouraged us to ask questions about the company and the web tool, because, he said, "asking good questions shows you have passion, and I'll remember that, because we're only looking for people with a lot of passion for what we're doing."
Hmmm.
This poses two problems: First, I don't come up with questions very readily. You give me a presentation like this and I'll go, "Huh, that's neat." Then I'll come up with ten questions over the next two days and send them to you in an e-mail. But when I'm in the midst of things, I just don't think of questions very easily.
More importantly, though, is the idea that I have to find a way to show passion. This I don't know how to do. Or at least I don't think I do. Especially when it comes to abstract concepts that might underlie a project such as this. Look: I am not by nature a passionate person. Or at least I'm not an outwardly passionate person. It takes a lot to get me riled up about something, either in a good or a bad way. Most of the time I just sit there stoically and observe what's going on around me. I have a hard time getting passionate about something unless I make it personal.
Therein may lie the problem. I envy people who seem to have discovered their calling early in life. I feel like I'm surrounded by people who have found causes (the aforementioned abstract principlese) and are energized to go out and change the world because of this. Me? I've had to work at it. Hard. And I'm still not 100% sure that I've found it. Even if I have, my problem is that, not being a passionate person by nature, I have a hard time being "passionate" about the abstract principles I support. I put that in quotes because passion is relative, and the way that each person shows that passion is very different. Mine is an intellectual passion. I care more about affecting the underlying structures that have put us on an unsustainable path than I do about the "sexy" things that I (and by extension, everyone else) take as more visible signs of passion. Composting? Yeah. Sure. You go out and you do that. Meanwhile, I'm going to work on the big things, like finding the mix of regulations and economic incentives that effect worldwide structures and will lead to the end of pollution, smarter urban growth, and better energy systems so that living sustainably just becomes automatic because it just doesn't make sense to do anything differently.
So my problem, then, is that I care about the background, the things going on behind the scenes, the intersection between power, policy, politics, and economics that conspire to put us on a road to destruction. This is inherently un-sexy, and I find it difficult how to show passion about regulations and global climate treaties, at least in the way that the activist-types can show passion.
So how exactly do I show this "passion" to prospective employers? I have this gonzo image of imitating John Cusack in "Say Anything" by standing outside some company's office holding an iPod over my head while playing "An Inconvenient Truth." Otherwise, I'm at a bit of a loss. Tonight I spent two hours trying to tell the IU Office of Sustainability why I want an internship with them, and then threw what I wrote in the garbage because it sucked. That has a lot to do with having trouble putting my thoughts into words, but it also gets to a basic inability to express what I care about in a way I think would be interesting to others. But the bottom line is that I feel like my personality and my particular intellectual interests are difficult to express in a passionate way, and I'm afraid that's putting me at a disadvantage.
Or it could be that I'm overthinking the whole thing again. Yeah, that may be it.
No introduction or anything tonight. I guess I don't have much to say before I get to...
Today's Topic: Passion
What is passion? "Passion" can be defined a lot of different ways. The first thing that pops into one's mind when you think about passion is probably passion for a person. It's why we fall in love, get married, make babies, grow old together, yadda yadda. That's the easy part. It gets a bit harder, but not impossible, when you're talking about passion for a thing: think about passion for cars or your favorite sports team. Then you get to the point where you're talking about passion for an idea or a cause or an abstract principle, and this, I think, can be the hardest type of passion to really understand.
Here's why I started thinking about this: On Thursday, I attended a recruiting event for a local business that has put together a web tool allowing businesses to track their resource usage across time. It's an interesting idea. Unfortunately, there were two things that may have killed my opportunity to get an internship with them (aside from the fact that it turns out they're looking for someone for the spring and not the summer like I expected):
1) I showed up late. This is because a) I'm always late, and b) I was expecting something different. I was expecting this to just be an informal meet 'n' greet session where you could come in, meet the business owner, ask some questions, do some networking, etc. To me, that meant "drop by when you get a chance." Instead, what I got was an actual formal presentation. So under my mistaken impression, I started wandering towards the event just as it was supposed to start. Then I ran into Sara and talked to her for a few minutes. At the end of that conversation, I mentioned where I was going, and she says, "Oh, then you better get in there, because the guy running it just lectured everyone about being on time." Shit.
2) I left early. This is not my fault. I looked at my phone and realized it was 12:56, and that I needed to be in my TA class in a mere four minutes. So I asked a quick question, told the guy I had to get to class, and ran off. What else was I supposed to do? I had to work. If it were just one of my own classes I wouldn't have cared about showing up late, but I kind of have responsibilities here. Hopefully he realized that.
But what was more concerning to me was his comment early on about passion. This guy encouraged us to ask questions about the company and the web tool, because, he said, "asking good questions shows you have passion, and I'll remember that, because we're only looking for people with a lot of passion for what we're doing."
Hmmm.
This poses two problems: First, I don't come up with questions very readily. You give me a presentation like this and I'll go, "Huh, that's neat." Then I'll come up with ten questions over the next two days and send them to you in an e-mail. But when I'm in the midst of things, I just don't think of questions very easily.
More importantly, though, is the idea that I have to find a way to show passion. This I don't know how to do. Or at least I don't think I do. Especially when it comes to abstract concepts that might underlie a project such as this. Look: I am not by nature a passionate person. Or at least I'm not an outwardly passionate person. It takes a lot to get me riled up about something, either in a good or a bad way. Most of the time I just sit there stoically and observe what's going on around me. I have a hard time getting passionate about something unless I make it personal.
Therein may lie the problem. I envy people who seem to have discovered their calling early in life. I feel like I'm surrounded by people who have found causes (the aforementioned abstract principlese) and are energized to go out and change the world because of this. Me? I've had to work at it. Hard. And I'm still not 100% sure that I've found it. Even if I have, my problem is that, not being a passionate person by nature, I have a hard time being "passionate" about the abstract principles I support. I put that in quotes because passion is relative, and the way that each person shows that passion is very different. Mine is an intellectual passion. I care more about affecting the underlying structures that have put us on an unsustainable path than I do about the "sexy" things that I (and by extension, everyone else) take as more visible signs of passion. Composting? Yeah. Sure. You go out and you do that. Meanwhile, I'm going to work on the big things, like finding the mix of regulations and economic incentives that effect worldwide structures and will lead to the end of pollution, smarter urban growth, and better energy systems so that living sustainably just becomes automatic because it just doesn't make sense to do anything differently.
So my problem, then, is that I care about the background, the things going on behind the scenes, the intersection between power, policy, politics, and economics that conspire to put us on a road to destruction. This is inherently un-sexy, and I find it difficult how to show passion about regulations and global climate treaties, at least in the way that the activist-types can show passion.
So how exactly do I show this "passion" to prospective employers? I have this gonzo image of imitating John Cusack in "Say Anything" by standing outside some company's office holding an iPod over my head while playing "An Inconvenient Truth." Otherwise, I'm at a bit of a loss. Tonight I spent two hours trying to tell the IU Office of Sustainability why I want an internship with them, and then threw what I wrote in the garbage because it sucked. That has a lot to do with having trouble putting my thoughts into words, but it also gets to a basic inability to express what I care about in a way I think would be interesting to others. But the bottom line is that I feel like my personality and my particular intellectual interests are difficult to express in a passionate way, and I'm afraid that's putting me at a disadvantage.
Or it could be that I'm overthinking the whole thing again. Yeah, that may be it.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Welcome to My Blog. Today's Topic: On Getting Older
Yeah, so...here is my blog. I have decided to join the early 21st century and let other people know the thoughts running through my head, even if they don't really want to. I don't know what's going to go in here. I imagine you'll hear lots about my grad school experience here at Indiana University and ramblings about anything else that happens to be going on in my life at any given moment. Or just completely random thoughts about what I see going on around me.
Unfortunately today my mind is trying to get the better of me, and it's been winning most of the day. I hate it when that happens. I'm probably just tired. We're 1.5 weeks into the new semester and I'm already playing catch-up. This is because I agonized all of last week on an assignment for my Environmental Economics class, ignoring first-week readings, etc....only to give up at the last minute and drop the class. Oy. I still don't know for sure if I made the right decision. I think I did, for now, but I wonder if I hadn't gotten so stressed over it, maybe I could have made it through and I'd be okay. I'm disappointed because I put so much effort into it, and was really excited about the class, and it turned out I just couldn't cut it. But it's too late now; now I just have to accept it and move on. It's going to play havoc with my schedule all semester, but whatever. I'll deal.
There are other things on my mind that I don't particularly feel like discussing. Instead, I will get to the topic that's been bouncing around my head the last couple of days:
On Getting Older
In a mere two months I will be 31 years old. I believe it was '60s counterculture icon Abbie Hoffman who said, "Never trust anyone over 30." I guess that means you have roughly sixty days left until I become completely untrustworthy. As if I wasn't already.
Every once in a while I get what I consider reminders that I'm not quite as young as I used to be. A couple of months ago, I found out I was actually older than one and possibly two of my professors. What's more, one of those claimed she was in the midst of a mid-life crisis. That didn't leave me much hope. A lot of the time it comes when I look at my hairline. I always promised that when my male pattern baldness became too noticeable, I would take the dignified way out and just shave it all off (again). I feel that day may not be too far off. It comes to me when I look around and see a bunch of 20-somethings (and younger) walking around, making googly eyes at each other, and it reminds me again that I'm in my early 30s and have not settled down yet. That's probably when I feel the worst. Let's not go there. And did I mention I quit a secure, well-enough-paying job with great benefits and traded it in for a career change to I don't know what and many thousands of dollars of debt?
A very close second is when some physical activity that used to be easy becomes just a bit more difficult. Sunday was a good case in point. I play basketball a lot. I don't know that I'm very good, but I enjoy it. I make my shots, make a few good passes, and try to play good defense. Sunday I don't know that I did any of those particularly well. This may or may not be partially attributable to injuring my ankle fairly early on. I went up for a shot and came down on someone's foot. I still don't know the extent of the damage, but will try to find out in the morning. I'm thinking it may just be sprained, but the swelling and lingering pain makes me think it would be a good idea to get it checked out.
(Tanget: I guess the best course of action would have been to quit then. But like any good male eager to prove his worth, I kept going, which was probably stupid. Hey, I didn't think it was that bad. It's like that seen in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" where King Arthur runs up against that angry knight who keeps fighting despite Arthur chopping off his limbs one by one, and when he has no more limbs, finally declares the fight a draw. "Dude, you all right? Your ankle looks pretty bad." "Nah, I'm fine, let's keep going." "Seriously, dude, you're foot should not be bent that way." "It's just a flesh wound, c'mon, let's keep playing." "Okay, whatever.")
Regardless of the reason, I felt like I got winded before anyone else, all but perhaps one of whom were younger than me. This seems to happen more and more lately. Back in the day, even a couple years ago, I would play in my rec league at work, and we'd all have to play a full forty minutes since we were short-handed. We'd play the whole game, and at the end, I'd look around at everyone with their hands on their knees, sucking wind, and go, "C'mon, you're not tired already, are you?" I don't think I could do that anymore. Nowadays, I'm the one sucking wind, going, "Give me a minute here." It's not like I'm out of shape or anything; it's just that doing what I used to do has gotten that much harder. What used to be easy at 28 is no longer so easy at almost-31. I could hike to the top of a tall hill now and feel more out-of-breath than I would have a couple of years ago. That mile run that used to take 7.5 minutes now takes more like eight. Little things.
This bothers me in a vague way. It tells me that age is starting to creep up on me; it's a portent to the days when perhaps I won't be able to get physical at all, and that's the scary part. Part of me believes my body will eventually betray me, and if it does, I hope it does in one fell swoop, where I can lay there looking up at the sky and think to myself, "Well, at least I didn't fall apart piece by piece." Maybe that's what I'm really afraid of: getting old slowly and realizing that the things I used to do in my youth are impossible now. It could also be that I'm coming back to the pack, regressing towards the mean. Despite being rail-thin, I've always been active and had great endurance. Maybe now that I'm slipping a bit in that regard, I'm just becoming more like everyone else. Who knows.
One thing I do know: I could still take you. All of you. So don't mess with me. 'Kay?
Unfortunately today my mind is trying to get the better of me, and it's been winning most of the day. I hate it when that happens. I'm probably just tired. We're 1.5 weeks into the new semester and I'm already playing catch-up. This is because I agonized all of last week on an assignment for my Environmental Economics class, ignoring first-week readings, etc....only to give up at the last minute and drop the class. Oy. I still don't know for sure if I made the right decision. I think I did, for now, but I wonder if I hadn't gotten so stressed over it, maybe I could have made it through and I'd be okay. I'm disappointed because I put so much effort into it, and was really excited about the class, and it turned out I just couldn't cut it. But it's too late now; now I just have to accept it and move on. It's going to play havoc with my schedule all semester, but whatever. I'll deal.
There are other things on my mind that I don't particularly feel like discussing. Instead, I will get to the topic that's been bouncing around my head the last couple of days:
On Getting Older
In a mere two months I will be 31 years old. I believe it was '60s counterculture icon Abbie Hoffman who said, "Never trust anyone over 30." I guess that means you have roughly sixty days left until I become completely untrustworthy. As if I wasn't already.
Every once in a while I get what I consider reminders that I'm not quite as young as I used to be. A couple of months ago, I found out I was actually older than one and possibly two of my professors. What's more, one of those claimed she was in the midst of a mid-life crisis. That didn't leave me much hope. A lot of the time it comes when I look at my hairline. I always promised that when my male pattern baldness became too noticeable, I would take the dignified way out and just shave it all off (again). I feel that day may not be too far off. It comes to me when I look around and see a bunch of 20-somethings (and younger) walking around, making googly eyes at each other, and it reminds me again that I'm in my early 30s and have not settled down yet. That's probably when I feel the worst. Let's not go there. And did I mention I quit a secure, well-enough-paying job with great benefits and traded it in for a career change to I don't know what and many thousands of dollars of debt?
A very close second is when some physical activity that used to be easy becomes just a bit more difficult. Sunday was a good case in point. I play basketball a lot. I don't know that I'm very good, but I enjoy it. I make my shots, make a few good passes, and try to play good defense. Sunday I don't know that I did any of those particularly well. This may or may not be partially attributable to injuring my ankle fairly early on. I went up for a shot and came down on someone's foot. I still don't know the extent of the damage, but will try to find out in the morning. I'm thinking it may just be sprained, but the swelling and lingering pain makes me think it would be a good idea to get it checked out.
(Tanget: I guess the best course of action would have been to quit then. But like any good male eager to prove his worth, I kept going, which was probably stupid. Hey, I didn't think it was that bad. It's like that seen in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" where King Arthur runs up against that angry knight who keeps fighting despite Arthur chopping off his limbs one by one, and when he has no more limbs, finally declares the fight a draw. "Dude, you all right? Your ankle looks pretty bad." "Nah, I'm fine, let's keep going." "Seriously, dude, you're foot should not be bent that way." "It's just a flesh wound, c'mon, let's keep playing." "Okay, whatever.")
Regardless of the reason, I felt like I got winded before anyone else, all but perhaps one of whom were younger than me. This seems to happen more and more lately. Back in the day, even a couple years ago, I would play in my rec league at work, and we'd all have to play a full forty minutes since we were short-handed. We'd play the whole game, and at the end, I'd look around at everyone with their hands on their knees, sucking wind, and go, "C'mon, you're not tired already, are you?" I don't think I could do that anymore. Nowadays, I'm the one sucking wind, going, "Give me a minute here." It's not like I'm out of shape or anything; it's just that doing what I used to do has gotten that much harder. What used to be easy at 28 is no longer so easy at almost-31. I could hike to the top of a tall hill now and feel more out-of-breath than I would have a couple of years ago. That mile run that used to take 7.5 minutes now takes more like eight. Little things.
This bothers me in a vague way. It tells me that age is starting to creep up on me; it's a portent to the days when perhaps I won't be able to get physical at all, and that's the scary part. Part of me believes my body will eventually betray me, and if it does, I hope it does in one fell swoop, where I can lay there looking up at the sky and think to myself, "Well, at least I didn't fall apart piece by piece." Maybe that's what I'm really afraid of: getting old slowly and realizing that the things I used to do in my youth are impossible now. It could also be that I'm coming back to the pack, regressing towards the mean. Despite being rail-thin, I've always been active and had great endurance. Maybe now that I'm slipping a bit in that regard, I'm just becoming more like everyone else. Who knows.
One thing I do know: I could still take you. All of you. So don't mess with me. 'Kay?
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