In honor (or perhaps dishonor) of Salinger, I am posting an essay I wrote a number of years ago. 2004 to be exact. It’s a bit lengthy for a blog post, so it’s behind the cut. Yikes it is PAINFUL to read things you wrote 6 years ago, and actually SUBMITTED for a grade.
I have posted a VERY rough draft of “The Problem of Replacing Pamie” , the not-so-sordid tale of my experiences at The-Job-That-Wasn’t, is posted over on my Essays page.
The ending in particular just trails off, but if you are so inclined to read, any comments/suggestions would be welcome. I am posting it long before it is finished, because if I don’t, I will never work on it.
Today was insane. However, I think my shopping bug has finally passed, thank god.
My room is already a mess. I’m tired. I’m not happy with any of my interview outfits. I think I’m burned out. I have not been reading up on foreign policy and my justification for this is that cramming for the interview isn’t going to be helpful.
But mostly it’s that I can’t concentrate. That’s why it’s almost 9:00 and I’m just now writing the last blog entry of the month. Which also means I haven’t read any of your blogs. I’m sorry. This is also why I stay up late for no reason, because I keep putting off doing things that I want to do, because of an inability to concentrate on, say, the entire series of the Alice books by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor that I just got. I didn’t know most of them existed! I read about 5 of these when I was maybe 14ish, and I always liked them well enough, but they were not among books I saved.
(Example of my lack of concentration: I just had to get up and clean a few things off my nightstand/shove stuff in a drawer because I could not stand to look at the disarray for one more second)
Ok, I think I’m done. Because while i theoretically have a bunch of stuff going on what with the interview/trip to DC, and work being busy, and the fact that I can drive again, I still DON’T have anything going on in terms of social life/boys/drama or any of the other stuff that I used to fill blog entries about.
Happy Almost December!
November needs to end, so I can stop writing about the first thing that comes into my head, and actually have a chance to write something decent.
I’ve been up for almost two hours, but I’m still groggy from the Benadryll, probably, even though I only took one. I don’t know how my body can handle a super powerful anti-anxiety drug that knocks me the hell out (I don’t take it every night) but can’t recover from Benadryll.
Writing about work on a blog that could be discovered is a surefire way to get yourself in trouble, so I will just say that it was a trying week and yesterday was a bad afternoon. I know where its coming from – everyone is dealing with unreasonable demands and ridiculous deadlines. It’s not going to get any better anytime soon though, so it doesn’t seem worth delving into.
I’ve given myself an assignment to get caught up on general foreign policy news this weekend, because my knowledge is general and out dated. On one hand – I work full time, and while I don’t have much else going on right now, the Libertarian Fellowship people don’t know that, so I think it should be understandable that I don’t have the same level of knowledge about current events as someone who works in the think tank field. On the other, logic is hardly ever a factor in these things, so I better study up.
I really hate having to say “the war on terror” when I talk about my interests, because everyone is sick of the war on terror. People were sick of the war on terror two and a half years ago when I was writing my thesis. I didn’t even want to GO there, but Carl Schmitt, that rapscallion, he made it impossible not to. And I think that my work, and the work that I want to do is valid, and relevant, and hell, even important, but using the phrase “war on terror” seems to cheapen it. It seems dated. But I don’t know what other name to give to the general, overall U.S. strategy/foreign policy stance(s) in the post-September 11th era (another reference that I am loathe to make. I don’t think the event should have changed out policies like it did, but that’s another rant altogether.)
My cat is curled up at the end of my bed, fast asleep. He seems to have the right idea.
Since fall always feels like a New Beginning to me, moreso than January 1st, it is appropriate that my New Year and Day of Atonement fall in September/October.
I am technically Jewish. When I tell people that I am a Jewish Atheist they usually don’t get it. I don’t believe in God, but I still consider myself a member of the tribe. I don’t have the name and the nose for nothing.
Taking the year from September to September, there are plenty of things for which I owe atonement. This I know. This year is the sum of its mistakes, including one so big that I’m sure David would yell at me for merely giving it the label of ‘mistake.’ So far, I have atoned for it the only way I know how – by one days at a time and by the next right thing, by actions and attitudes I was trying to take at this time last year, and failing miserably.
I’m being purposefully vague. Moving on.
I tried out blogging “for like, the world,” at this time last year, but the idea didn’t quite work in practice. Lack of discipline was one of the reasons, my inability to decide what the space was for was another. I’d written in Livejournal so long, directed those words at audiences that no longer existed, and now with a space where I could create my own audience, I was at a loss for how and what to write in it.
People talk about how blogging has changed their life, the real honest to goodness friends they have made through blogging, and that’s something I’d like to do too. The internet has been a source of friendships to me for nearly a decade now. But, just like I stumble socially in real life, I immediately come up with a half a dozen reasons why blogging won’t do for me what it has for dozens if not hundreds of other people. I’m too late to the party with nothing interesting to say and trying too hard.
But I have to write right now. My life is boring and stuck right now, and for the umpteenth time there is nothing I can do about it at this particular moment, but it’s not always going to be that way. I have to believe that, even when I look back on last September, when I was saying such similar things, even though a year later I’m still stuck, I have to believe that this year I’m going to find a way to change that.
Two years ago today I started The-Job-That-Wasn’t. The casual observer probably finds it ridiculous that I mention The-Job-That-Wasn’t so often. Everyone has had a bad job or a bad boss – usually more than one. What is it about my experience that is any different?
That is, in part, what I have been trying to write about for the better part of the year – because I never wrote about it when it was actually happening.
The working title of the essay is “The Problem of Replacing [Pamie]” (not her real name) and I’m trying to capture what it was like to try and replace someone, who was, in everyone else’s estimation, perfect. Every single day when I would walk into Important-Boss’s office with the morning report, he would glance up, with withering disappointment that it was me, not her standing there. As if she had disappeared instead of been promoted.
I didn’t stop for coffee this morning and therefore did not realize that I did not have my wallet until I got to work. Grrr. Not only do I desperately need caffeine, but it’s also annoying to not have my wallet – I’m going to have to borrow a couple dollars for lunch, because I don’t have food here.
I think I am buying my car this weekend. I will be glad to get it over with. Initially, I wasn’t going to buy until early May, but my hand was sort of forced to do so early. I am okay with that now – I think I am okay money wise, even with needed a new laptop. I think, anyway. I am not very good at budgeting.
I talked to Sarah, a girl I went to grad school with, briefly yesterday afternoon. I was telling her about my essay and bashing our preceptor. She still works at UChicago, so she is literally right down the hall from him, which is weird. The year at UChicago still feels like a dream to me at times.
Anyway, this is yet another entry that I’m writing, where I really have nothing to say, but I hope that by forcing myself into regular blogging, the brilliance will come back to me. If I ever had it to begin with.
In continuing my trend of only being able to make friends via the internet, for the past month or so, I have been meeting up with this guy, lets call him The Writer, to collaborate/trade ideas about writing projects. We don’t get much writing done when we hang out; we just chat, and talk a lot about career options. I think he does most of the talking.
And I’m not sure what to make of the situation. Not because I’m interested in him (I’m not) or because I think he’s interested in me (he’s not. In between casual meet-ups we don’t even exchange emails) but it’s just odd. It’s not quite a professional relationship, especially because we’re not producing anything of professional quality, but it’s only a step above it. I can’t decide if I’d like to hang out with him more as friends, and do something other than go to Starbucks to type away on our laptops and babble about fairly “professional” topics. He seems fairly anti-social, and so I’m inclined to get psyched into thinking “awesome! someone just as bored as me! We should be bored in Jersey, together” When, really, it’s more likely that he doesn’t really need anything to do on Saturday night, thank you very much.
As I feared, I suck as blogging, or keeping a blog, or whatever. How the hell did I manage to keep journals in high school? What the HELL did I write about everyday. (Actually, these are readily accesible in the attic on my parents house. The sad thing is that reading them would make me want to be 15, because I would probably be envious of my innocence. Uck. I am shutting up about that now!)
I was just thinking today that I have become a very bad blogger. It also the case that everything I write seems to be a bit too angsty or TMI-y or emo for public consumption. How I wish blogging had been around when I was 16…
Actually, given what I know about me at 16, that would not end well.
Shudder.
Anyway, I actually logged into my email and found a comment from an “Anonymous” asking me about what made me go to Hampshire, and bad college experiences in general. This could be a joke from one of my friends who has stumbled upon my blog and wants to roll their eyes at my spiel on the subject.
Even if that’s the case, I could still probably write something up here, and probably should on the whole subject of “How College Was Not The Best Four Years of My Life, Because If Those Were The Best Four Years of My Life, I Should Just Die Now” especially now that I have survived a few years in grown-up world (And grad school) I was painfully, horribly shy in college.
But this is where I offer another lousy excuse about being all distracted and not in good blogging mode.
So Anonymous Commenter, e-mail me!
And I’ll try to write something worthwhile on the subject soon. Or any subject.
When I sat down to write this morning of nattering about “waiting for the other shoe to drop.” I deleted it around 9 AM because I wasn’t pleased with it. Plus, there’s a couple things going on that I’m still not ready to write about and have the world read.
I signed up for NaNoWriMo, even though I don’t enjoy writing fiction. But I figured I would give the story I’ve been trying to write for four years now another go. Plus there is the social aspect. My social life is woefully lacking. Four years ago, my last semester in college, the four walls were closing in on me, and NaNo was what got me out of my room. I’m not expecting miracles, but I did organize a kick-off dinner for 10 strangers on Saturday, which is way more socializing than I usually do on my weekend.
I have a lot of my mind, but nothing definite enough to put down on paper.
