terse

My anxieties about the fall are starting to encroach on my current placidness and routine of unscheduled luxury. Yesterday I was reading a really instructive and not too-too-depressing set of blogs about graduate school, professionalization, and the market.

http://delightandinstruct.blogspot.com/2007/06/required-reading-compendium-of-links.html

As if to confirm some of its wisdom on trying to retain your serenity through the job marketing process, I received an email from a good friend suggesting that if I'm already feeling ugly about the uncomfortable closeness of my peers and our competition (not in terms of vying for the same actual jobs because we all do very different things, but in terms of who gets more interviews-visits-a job, you know, the petty shit), then is there any way I can escape?

Geographically, no.

My funding ties me ever so firmly to LA. Which is fine, my partner and friends and support and library are all here. But it also demands that I come into campus 5 days a week.

But mentally, perhaps. I realize that the reason I've been considering Paxil so seriously is because it might help me create a more clear, distanced, thoroughly personal world. A way to disappear into a non-anxious mind, tamping down my own inclinations towards paranoia and overanalytical hysteria, and lifting up the capacity for serene perspective. Doesn't it sound beautiful?

The other possibility is to be just terse. To walk about with my ipod buds in my ear (possibly even disconnected from the actual ipod to elevate the snark of the earbuds statement) and refuse conversation with all and sundry. And doesn't that sound fun?

But actually, I think, without projecting snobbitude, I can probably use some more terseness in my modes of communication. If you recall my bemoaning my difficulties in making myself understood to customer service employees, I think my problem may lie in an over-chatty tmi factor. Giving the appropriate amount of information is something I can certainly afford to work on.

THE LISTS

to do work: Write the two last sections, 1) masks 2) circularity. organize files.
done! Nope, I've decided not to write those last sections: they're redundant. But I did write a good last paragraph to the performatic writing section that I think can serve as a last paragraph of the chapter.

to do life: Pay down debt (currently $1,328.09). Procure dog. Redo taxes. Do fafsa. Send siff letter. Repot ginko tree and cactus. Call kombucha makers re bottle recyclying. Read Theri's paper. Fix beddinge with new screw. Prep fac club fellowship app. Purchase external hard drive to back up my computer files.
done: still not a lot.

to do blitz: sarah, marilyn, giulia, irmary, mariana, dar, nv, ek, sf, marzena, thérèse, hen.


Netflixed: Millions. It was a good movie, I enjoyed it, although I don't understand why the best person who is a naive kid who is seemingly good because he hasn't yet understood how the world works. That always annoys me, why I'm supposed to find what comes off as an uninformed and frankly stupid set of decisions as saintly and admirable. That being said, the humor is snappy, the tension between the brothers works great. NB: This comes from the director of Trainspotting. Crazy.