My meeting with potential advisor went horribly. After not being worried about my thesis I am now thoroughly convinced I’m not capable of this, and the only reason my idea sounded plausible to anyone else is because they aren’t Schmitt experts, and really I am just not smart enough to do MA level work at U Chicago, which is another fun insecurity. But the only reason I want to do MA level work at U Chicago is so I can be done with it. Now I’m scared of never finishing; my heart’s not into it and I haven’t been able to make myself care about it.

I feel completely lost. I haven’t felt this foundering in years. I’m frustrated with my sudden inability to just deal with it and go on with my day. I hate that my work is suffering because of my ennui – my work used to be the one thing that never suffered.

A conversation from over two years ago, right in the middle of Rock Bottom, comes back to me. I’d been talking to Brent about how it wasn’t that bad, really, it was just…lonely and empty. It was hard, because even with impending graduation, I couldn’t see a light. “Sometimes…,” I said tentatively, “I really wish I could just let go. Just give in to this, and not get out of bed in the morning. To give up and say ‘I need help’ or “I can’t do this” and just disappear for awhile.” Other people do that, and the world doesn’t end.”

“You’d never do that,” Brent said. “You’re far too willful for that.”

And he was right, because the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that, I got out of bed, and I went to my classes, and I fulfilled my responsibilities, because that was all I knew how to do. It was just that when I came home in the evenings, all the good feelings that I had built up throughout the day just drained out of me.

I feel like that now, except without the fulfilling of responsibilities part. I HATE that I’m evading my responsibilities; I have absolutely no excuse and I know I’m making the conscious choice to do so. Brent even suggested “If you’re that disenchanted, maybe you should just withdraw from school.”

And I basically burst into tears because you have no idea how appealing that sounds right now. Come to think of it, quitting would be the very non-Hobbesian thing to do. I’d have to stand up and tell my parents, my friends, everyone back in New York that I failed and that I couldn’t cut it at graduate school. And for a minute, the thought of being free of this sounded so appealing that admitting defeat didn’t sound so bad. Because its not that its too hard or I’m too stressed or I’m lonely…I just don’t care. And trying to do this when I don’t care has proved near impossible.

But I can’t do that. I’m far too willful for that.

So now the problem is crawling out of this hole I managed to dig myself into. I’m hearing “Pressure” in my head, instead of Vienna.