I have to find the words for all of this. After nearly six months of hiatus from writing, I am striving to attain some sort of assessment of this current state of things. Perhaps if I start with the bare essentials, if I set some the stage, the rest will fall in place. I live at home, with my parents. I live in my once-bedroom-converted-to-guest-room-reconverted-bedroom. Most of the time, I sleep here. Sometimes I don't. Now my room has two bookcases, one I hauled in when I moved back in April. It has furniture that's vastly too big for the space. A new addition, two whiteboards are screwed into my walls, providing a canvas for graduate school plans / meanderings / random thoughts / strategies.
The other night, I cycled through all of the movie trailers that are currently posted on the iTunes website; I made of list of the ones I want to see. I just saw It Might Get Loud, which I enjoyed immensely, even though it is Sunday. It made me feel good, at least for the time that I was there. I spend a lot of my spare time reading, too. I peruse Digg for interesting stories, building up ten or twenty tabs in my browser to cycle through. I'm reading this series of very long novels that prominently features time travel. I'm on the second on in the series. I update my Twitter, sometimes frequently, sometimes not, and I worry a lot about my internet presence, because I was recently advised that I must be. I drink a lot of tea, a function of my job, and I try to turn others onto it as well. I troll the internet for tea supplies. I read books for work, some for pleasure, buy what seems like hundreds of test prep books. I have been preparing for the GRE for what actually boils down to 14 or so months at this point. I am taking it in two weeks. It seems nominal, at this point, but I know it shouldn't.
I have two jobs. By day (and weekend nights), I am a sales lead at Teavana. By night (and weekend day), I have another job, which I can't talk about. I don't work for the CIA. Otherwise, it's off limits. I spend a majority of my time thinking about each of these jobs, scheduling, remembering to eat between, driving. I commute a lot, but I like the morning commutes to Teavana, and I like opening the store there. Between these two things, I am busy, tired at the end of the day, and happy to get my paychecks. They go to bills, mostly from Brown or field work expenses from years ago, if not gas, tea, food, books, music, media.
I spend a lot of times learning words like lugubrious, lachrymose, apotheosis, inculcate, canard. More, I worry about time. I look at the clock, I look at the calendar, I feel the changing weather, and I watch the leaves turn toward autumn. I worry that I'll not apply to graduate programs again this year, that I'll waste another year procrastinating. I am worried that I have nothing to say in my personal statement because I have too much to say. I worry that I will come across as unfocused. In truth, I am unfocused. I want to study all things (okay, not medicine, law, business, accounting, dance, nursing, banjo-playing, etc.); I want communicate that I want to think through all my ideas about information, images, visual learning, education, public humanities, outreach, public history, storytelling, and so on at a university or college with other like-minded folks, that I can't think about things on that level here because I'm thinking about my work or my future in the abstract sense.
I see the application process unfold in front of me, (and I would like to note, matter-of-factly and with all acceptance that this has had very little practical application in my life, that I was very, very good at school). Some mornings, I look at my schedule and I know with certainty that I will not be able to complete anything in the process on that day. I know that I won't do any self-improving that day. As you may see, I have planned this poorly.
That's the basis of my dilemma. I see things unfold on all of these different levels. I see the daily tasks, the practicalities of every day life. I see my bills, my daily commute, my first cup of tea, my on-the-run lunch, my books for work, my emails, my schedule, timesheets, paychecks. I see the month in pay periods, then in days off (also newly rare), then in occasional 13-hour days.
Then, I see my friends, nights when I can stay out late watching movies, talking about things, making long-distance calls to stay in contact, weekly at least. I see my weeks in terms of trips out of state (rare outside the summertime), my family commitments, movies, opportunities to go out dancing, plans to spend the night here or there. I see everyone's trajectory, and I see my own.
Another level entirely: companionship, love, romance, commitment, dating, marriage. I have always loved these things. Now, they lose their pull for me, as if that part of me is scar tissue, and I see it but can't perceive it, can't feel it, and certainly don't act on its behalf. I once believed that the obvious path for all who desired it included some sort of partner, that unless you intentionally avoided it, love would come, and it would eventually fit, be right, work out, and move through the various stages of whatever. Now, I don't know that I'll ever really, romantically love anyone. It seems an absurd thought to me, but also entirely plausible. I have had relationships, and they have not worked out in the end, and perhaps there are no more in the future to be had, because I don't want to do the things that I did previously again.
All of these levels. Work, friends, education / occupation / life plans, love (or lack thereof), all swirling around. And on top of that, time ticks, disappears, is never retrieved or rebuilt. Never pauses. Each day, each week, each month marches forward. How does anyone ever do anything? I want to be satisfied, and I now I have been before. But I can't get no satisfaction. And it weighs on me.
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