I like Thanksgiving time, because it has generally good memories surrounding it. And also, good Thanksgiving episodes of TV – including an episode of House. I did not think it was possible for me to love Hugh-Laurie-as-House more than I already do, and yet he continues to impress.
I started a post last night about how I really didn’t want to go back to work and how I was having this Pavlonian-esque response to Labor Day. My stomach was in knots and I was filled with just this dread that one feels the night before school starts. And I liked school, for the most part!
But anyway, I didn’t finish it, because whining is unattractive and to save myself from future cringing and deleting, I stopped writing. Also, laziness.
Actually, it should surprise actually no one that work is slow. Many companies have this week off. Nothing happens in the business world this week.
Unless, of course, you work for an Israeli-affiliated non-profit.
The end of the year puts me in even more of a reflective mood than usual (who? Me? Never!) Last week, I was thinking how indifferent I was to Christmas, and how I kind of miss liking the season. I don’t mean in the little kid excitement way, I mean in the genuinely good, warm feelings that followed me around during Christmas when I was a teenager. I don’t know why. (Quote Marianne’s ‘carolgram’ to me in 11th grade: “You can’t say no to love.”)
It wound up being a nice Christmas. I ran into Jon on the train back to Jersey on Saturday. My brother gave him a ride home and Jon called me into the house for a minute. Being inside his house brings back far too many memories. Anyway, he got me a Christmas gift (?) and was telling me the whole ride over not to be excited, because it was really small and dumb. He got me “Cheaters” on DVD, which of course caused me to throw my arms around him and shriek “Oh my god, I love it! It’s perfect!” about 30 times.
Sunday, the sibling and I started and finished our shopping in record time, because we are awesome like that. Monday was pseudo-intellectual-Neo-Victorian coffee with the sibling and then Christmas Eve with my aunt’s house, aka the side of the family that I can actually stand. Tuesday morning, I did gift exchange with the family and then my brother drove me back to Astoria.
It was a boring weekend, mostly, with enough restlessness to cause my mind to wander a lot, but it could have been worse. Tuesday night, I did some rearranging of furniture (I still have tons of unpacking and cleaning to do) ordered Indian food and, because my roommate was still gone, listened to my Carrie Underwood CD at top volume.
I’ve traditionally called March-April “this time of year,” and in doing so may have missed the fact that it’s actually October that finds me in a funk. I don’t know if “Seasonal depression” is an accurate description, (or if there is a danger of seasonal depression becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.) but man, what the fuck, self? Have you not you usually spend October all cranky and on edge and meh for usually no good reason?
Sure there’s been a lot of good in my life lately, enough to cause lots of moments of giddiness and self-affirmation bullshit.
But finding myself wanting to crawl out of my own skin for the fourth morning in a row, and remembering I felt this way last October, and the October before that. And hm. Because I’m self-absorbed, I’m reading over the Octobers, in my archive, and I found this written one year ago today.
It’s incredibly frustrating to me to just not feel like doing anything. I’m back in Astoria, back where I belong, have a great job, great apartment, etc, etc and all I want to do is curl up and watch Saved! For the millionth time.
I want to force myself to be social to see if I snap out of this. but on the other hand, the absolute last thing I want to do is be social after work. I think about the little things I have to go home and do like clean up and pick up all the change on my floor and thinking about how I have to do little things like that makes me squirm and want to scream.
This is also frustrating, because NaNo is coming up, and I really want to participate full-on this year, and actually go to the meet-ups and write-ins. I want to write the story that’s been following me around for so many years, even though it may be ridden with cliches and horribly maudlin. Basically, I want to tell the story of not wanting to get out of bed in the morning, and what happens when you get out of bed. But it would help me out a lot if lately, I wanted to get out of bed in the morning. Not that I’m horribly depressed or anything, because I’m not. I don’t know what I am.
So maybe it’s time to do what I did after I wrote that entry. Get back into therapy. I have good health insurance starting November 1st. And past experiences with therapy prove that I am indeed one of those schmucks for whom therapy works. Part of me hates that I “need” therapy to stay at an even keel, but…if it helps, I’m going to do it. I like myself too damn much when I’m happy, and healthy, and productive, and peaceful to deny it to myself just because I’m a little hung up on the stigma of therapy.
The $12 a week a pay for it is way cheaper than alcohol as self-medication. That G-d for my amazing benefits package
It’s this-time-of-year, and although the past three years I have celebrated on May 1st in a variety of lovely ways, this year I will celebrate on May 4th, because that is when the final draft of my thesis is due. And quite frankly, this year I’m getting off easy; for the most part, I’m too wrapped up in Carl Schmitt to wait for the other shoe to drop, and then really, there IS no other shoe to drop, if that makes sense. Jill and I talked about this last May, when she was essentially waiting for the other shoe to drop with her girlfriend. It seemed to come out of nowhere, but suddenly things were off; listening Jill describe the torture of waiting for a phone call, of trying to talk to her, of how she got off the phone without saying ‘I love you’ I could only empathize. I’ve been there, and knowing something was coming was torture. Of course in hindsight you can go back and see all the signs and the things that no, it didn’t just come out of nowhere, but when you’re walking around feeling sick to your stomach with the anticipation of a broken heart, you have blinders on.
And while I know there have been times in my life when I have felt like that, it’s far enough away that I don’t remember what that feels like. So I’m getting off easy this year.
I haven’t been writing, because I have nothing to say. My life is boring. I work on my thesis. I go to work. I work on my thesis. I watch Law & Order while trying to read Nomos just one more time, to make sure I’ve got it down. I am basically incapable of talking about anything except my thesis. Today, some things clicked, and so my rough draft SHOULD be in good shape, I just have to put the re-writes together. The only thing nagging on me right now is some issues with “approval” and I won’t go into that in public entries because I don’t want to mention anything too specific to my program, because I am paranoid. Suffice to say, its very…amusing…looking back at some of my self-righteous behavior and rolling my eyes at how overly defensive I was being. At least, despite the fact that I can’t give up my habit of quoting scary-relevant-lyrics, I”ve matured. Or at least, I’m more honest.
I’m going to graduate in June. It’s not even going to kill me.
I wrote a long entry on all the things I missed about New York, specifically about this summer there yesterday, but then deleted it, because I was being unneccesarily maudlin. I realized that “this-time-of-year” is quickly approaching. I don’t know how I feel about that; I don’t see any ‘other shoes’ that are in danger of dropping, but one never knows.
I’m in the middle of writing final papers. I have a lot of words down on the page, but still need to do a lot of editing. In my Machiavelli paper, I think I quote Schmitt and Agamben almost as much as Machiavelli. My liberalism paper is kind of silly, but again, words are on the page, its just a matter of ordering them. I talk about sex a lot. And I’m meeting my goal of turning in 15-20 pages of my thesis next week, because I will graduate in June if it kills me.
As I very crudely put it “An MA in less than nine months, this is way more productive than getting knocked up.”
Dear April 30-May 1,
You rock my world.
Love,
Rachel
