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Thursday, November 26th, 2009
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5:19 am - Sex
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The more I think about sex, the more important I think it is that we're all able to be respectful of each others' sexual desires. We're socialized to treat our sexual desires as something to be ashamed of, almost regardless of what they are. What this means to me is that because people don't generally have confidence in their sexual desires, they need a lot of support from their community. Furthermore, they need to chill out when it comes to criticizing others for things they don't have any control over. What people can control is how they act on their desires. This makes it really god damn unfortunate for people who have desires that are unattainable, but punishing people for their fantasies seems absolutely twisted.
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| Saturday, November 7th, 2009
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11:59 pm
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I'm critical because I need to feel smarter than everyone all the time. I think it's a defense mechanism because I was raised being taught that I was smarter than everyone else, and I didn't want the rest of the world to figure out that it might not be true.
I hate myself.
I need drugs to make me feel like not a critical asshole, which makes me feel at peace with the world. So that I can give up this dumb identity of the lording academic hater in favor of one that is dumb and tripping. Otherwise it's too hard, and it makes me think I'd rather just die.
I was also raised that you're an asshole to want to be smarter than everyone else. And I feel like a super asshole. I hate this about myself.
And how can you not hate me, world? How can you tolerate one so arrogant and negatory? I should spend more time being quiet.
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| Tuesday, September 8th, 2009
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7:10 pm
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I never have time to write in my livejournal, which is mysterious, given that this morning I had time to oversleep, and yesterday, I had time to walk halfway across Boston and make a picnic in the park. Unsurprisingly, both of these things are objectively superior to writing in livejournal. Thus, you can imagine what I'm doing which is NOT objectively superior to livejournal, which is being at work. I am not good at mustering focus when I don't feel like focusing. The work I do is really pretty brain-numbing - it's like all of the worst aspects of programming rolled up into one, where you aren't ever really thinking and all of your time is making little adjustments and figuring out why things went wrong. A lot of computational work is like that. Oh, I'm off by 2%. What formula did I mistype? Bo-ring!
Anyway, now it's time for the gym and watching baseball, but since my bike got stolen, it means that I have to take the bus to get there. It's a 10 minute bike ride. Sometimes the bus can take like 40 minutes. I am not enthusiastic, especially given that there is a baseball game. Riding the bus gives me time to sharpen my zen skills, but since I get nauseous doing anything else, it makes for a pretty challenging way to spend my time. It feels a little bit like a marathon trying to work at this job that is not very much fun, while working on my thesis which is not very much fun. Hopefully when I'm done, people will wrap me in that post-marathon shiny silver blanket that you see, and I'll just start vomiting all over downtown Boston with joy.
Aside from feeling like most of my time is spent being guilty about not spending more time doing work, my mood has been pretty good. If I were working on something fun and inspiring, I think I'd be downright happy. Hopefully I can hold on to this mood and use it later when I'm really desperate. And away we go!
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| Sunday, August 2nd, 2009
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3:42 am
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Somewhere in the shuffle, I lost sight of who I was, who I am. I am not a programmer. I am not a scientist. Those things all used to play second fiddle to me mostly just being a dude who listens to music. I realize this because I am now listening to the music that's been sitting on my hard drive, disconnected from a functioning computer. I'm not entirely sure why I made this idiotic decision, but man, what a mistake. Being awake at 3am, listening to music, sitting in my underwear in front of a computer, this is basically me at my purest, at my most essential.
I had a good day today, almost too good. One of those days where I can't help ponder depression, because it is so the opposite of how I feel right now. I'm almost jittery at listening to music and being in front of my working desktop. I want to give the whole world a big hug. See? Something is wrong.
My visit with Jim was good - we're such radically different people, but that's OK. Somebody was asking me about his taste in music, which I liken to my taste in pots. And they're both kind of irrelevant when it comes to something like our relationship. The things that we have going for us are stronger than a love for anagama fired pottery or late sixties soul harmonies. We both care a lot about each other, and we both like spending time with each other, and we both want to do each other. And we're both committed to communicating as much as possible. It's good. Now the life questions on my agenda are how do I graduate, what do I do after I graduate, and how do I get to live in the same town as my man?
And then there are the little questions, like...what am I doing tomorrow? And, am I going to be up until 4 am listening to music every night now? Would that even be a problem?
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| Monday, July 20th, 2009
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10:55 pm
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I'm so pooped. My mom just left town, and then I cooked dinner for my co-op, for the sixth time in three weeks.
Cooking can be a stressful experience, and it's always a lot of work. Most of this is because I insist on making ridiculously complicated meals at every opportunity. Today, I tried to make Asian risotto out of sushi rice, left-over miso soup and peas from the garden. Yesterday, I tried to make pizza out of artisan bread, homemade pesto, homemade red sauce, roasted vegetables, goat cheese and parmesan.
Of course, today the risotto curse struck, and half of my rice was overcooked and half was undercooked. Epic fail! And the flavor was good, but lacking some zing. As it turns out, East Asian cuisine eludes me still.
My mom was in town from Saturday until today, which was good, but overstimulating, and on Wednesday, I go to Texas to see Jim. My mom is good natured, but doesn't get my outlook on life sometimes. Like how when Chandra said she had a vision of a horror movie taking place in an office, the most horrible thing I could think of was people working there 8 hours a day, 7 days a week for 20 years. She'd actually just been thinking about a haunted office building where the telephone eats you, but my version terrifies me a little more. If a telephone ate me, I'd be freaking out for a little while, but I'd probably come to peace with it. There's something repulsive about the perpetuity of work, in particular when I'm not super enthusiastic about the perks of having money.
Then again, I'm flying to Houston on Wednesday, and typing on my laptop, so I should probably swish with some reality before I go to bed. Which hopefully won't be too far from now. Because I'm so pooped.
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| Friday, July 17th, 2009
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5:10 pm
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Oh man, Friday afternoon is the hardest time to work EVER. I'm at the gym, trying to work in the expansive lobby with free wifi, but it is not happening. Well, now I'm debugging things for my paying job, but I quite doing research earlier today. I need someone to say something like "you need to finish your thesis by Monday!" so that I freak my shit out and don't do anything else but work on it. Except that I want to do other things. Ugh.
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| Monday, July 13th, 2009
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10:49 pm
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Today, I strolled through the Barnes & Noble with my officemates, bathing in the warm glow of procrastination, and indulging in my toddler-like attention span. I read poetry, truly awful poetry, and poetry not generally considered to be truly awful, but not appealing to me nonetheless. Poetry requires a slow, careful manner, taking time to absorb each word in full and consider how it plays out against its neighbors. Still, there's something ludicrous about formatting your words in some goofy way and insisting that people read them carefully.
as if by
formatting things in another way
you
will find some
inherent meaning that would be
otherwise lost
Most of what I love about books and bookstores is the covers, and the obvious care that goes into making everything in them look so good. Every aspect, from the font, to the spacing, to the cover, to the finish - the whole gestalt of a given book is immensely pleasing to me.
current mood:  melancholy
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| Monday, June 15th, 2009
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3:30 am
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I'm waiting for my poster to compile, frustrated because, well, it's frustrating having to wait five minutes for your gigantic figures to get moved into a super gigantic file. I've spent the last three hours trying to make the tiny changes that my homies requested, and now I'm kind of over it.
I read on wikipedia that sleep deprivation can provide temporary respite from depression because it screws up your serotinergic system, just like most antidepressants. I certainly get goofy as fuck when I stay up all night, but I also get kind of...um...tired? And cranky? Unclear.
What is clear is that I'm listening to a shitload of T-Pain for some reason, and feel like he's way more talented than your average hip-hop flavor of the month. His production is trashy, but his lyrics are asinine, but when he goes nuts with the auto-tune and starts harmonizing like mad, it's kind of amazing. Sometimes his cadence is spot on too, "Talk to me / I'll talk back / Let's talk money / I talk that" just sounds good. And even though auto-tune is stupid, at least it's playing to my weakness, which is melody. It's why chiptune is so good, it's got a million notes that sound really good together, and it's always, well, in tune.
I'm not saying T-Pain is magical or all that special, but if hip-hop has sunk to mean Soulja Boy and R. Kelly, then it's a big win. I also just think the word "shawty" is really funny, which I think makes T-Pain a lot more palatable. Actually, I kind of only like the one about the drank. And the one about Shawty. The one where he's drinking with the bartender is kind of shitty.
All T-Pain songs seem to include the following elements:
* T-Pain saying "T-Pain"
* T-Pain referencing how much money he has
* T-Pain finding a sexy babe
* T-Pain including product placement for Patron (tm)
* T-Pain hoping that his money impresses the sexy babe
* T-Pain saying shawty (thank god)
For this and potentially his appearance as Frylock on the Aqua Teen Hunger Force, T-Pain has been recognized as the 34th most influential individual on the planet. Shawty!
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| Saturday, June 13th, 2009
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3:22 pm
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Where am I in life? I have a boyfriend, I live in a house full of pretty awesome people, I ride my bicycle around the city, I study at cafes, I do programming for autism researchers, and I'm working on my PhD thesis. And yet, and yet.
I'm thinking of things all wrong. I think I need to work out a Life Goal so that I can Make Progress towards it. That's kind of a scary thought, especially since I never have any goals anyway, but the alternative seems to be shuffling kind of aimlessly and watching the world change. I'm also convinced that there are people in the world who are really fulfilled by what they do. I think it has to do with being satisfied with making little changes, and not getting overwhelmed by the huge stuff.
I don't know. I think I need to spend more time working on things that I believe in, things that are bigger than myself. Something's not right.
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| Sunday, June 7th, 2009
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10:41 am - Depression
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Jim says my depression is on a cycle. The last time I was super depressed was May 13, when I interviewed at Kaplan. I wrote that I was super depressed before I got into my bike accident, on February 8. And I'm super depressed now, which is June 7.
Full Moon
| Logged Depression | LJ Entry
| 01/11/2009
| 01/08/2009 | "I wish I were inspired by somebody, or something, instead of feeling kind of sleepy and jaded.", | | 02/09/2009 | 02/08/2009 | "The tumult really began last Sunday, a day in which I was incredibly depressed." | | 03/11/2009 | 03/15/2009 | The last day I was visiting with Jim, I had a breakdown. I didn't write about it, but it sure was memorable. | | 04/09/2009 | 04/07/2009 | "And now, it looks like I'm getting rabidly emo, spinning yarns of self-pity. But I am not! And I can see such protestations to the contrary are useless in the wake of "did you pay attention because you pitied me", and sentences in that vein." | | 05/09/2009 | | Not depressed! | | 06/07/2009 | 06/07/2009 | Last night I told Jim that I wanted to kill myself. |
Ok. It seems at the very least like full moons are a danger zone for depression for me. Let's look at a few random full moons from the past few years and see how they measure up.
Full Moon
| Logged Depression | LJ Entry
| | 09/18/2005 | 09/20/2005 | "I have absolutely nothing to look forward to." | | 08/09/2006 | Not depressed! | Deb: hee hee, you are in a good mood. :) me: we just filled our spots in the house with cool people, it's a nice day, i got low-energy lightbulbs for the bathroom. i feel accomplished, even if graduate school is a disaster! Deb: haha, avoid the big picture, that's my motto. the big picture is never pretty 7:27 PM me: i know. :( | | 11/24/2007 | 11/28/2007 | "It's been a really rough couple of days. I've been depressed before, obviously, but this was deeper and fuller than anything I've experienced before. I reached a point where I truly did not care what happened to anything." | | 07/07/2003 | 07/07/2003 | "It's been a little while since my last post, and I've been kind of steady losing interest in everything." |
Oh man. Full moon = danger zone. Big time. Although it seems like generally, lunar cycles don't seem to play a big role, for me, it would seem that the evidence dictates otherwise. I should make an appointment with my psychiatrist and see what she has to say.
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| Saturday, June 6th, 2009
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3:24 am
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I had a harrowing conversation with Jim in which he told me about how he wants to figure out his hourly wage for making certain types of pots, and I tried to impress upon him that I wouldn't focus on that just yet until that number's, you know, positive. And he told me, as nicely as possible, to not be such a downer, that he has it under control, and that he doesn't need me to critique his business sense.
Can you guess what my response to this is?
Obviously, it's not good. I'm just thinking, you're right, I'm a dickhead, I shouldn't say anything else. And I've been thinking about how I wish I were never born ever since. Obviously, this is me overreacting, it just pisses me off because it's such a dipshit problem to have to deal with. I'd rather I just never dealt with it ever, or anything else.
So, of course, I texted Jeff to confirm that other people wish they'd never been born, but, ironically, I sent it to the wrong Jeff, and felt more strongly than the moment just before that I wished I'd never been born.
It's hard for me to take criticism like that. It's one thing if you hate me and everything I stand for, but if you want me to stop doing something that comes naturally for me, it makes me question my validity as a person. I feel like shit for bringing my boyfriend into this maelstrom of nonsense that is my psychoses. I deserve to get broken up with hardcore.
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| Sunday, May 31st, 2009
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10:39 pm - Music
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If you like music, you need to be using blip. It's a streaming playlist that you create using youtube, imeem, and anything else on the internet. It is superb. You can listen not only to yours, but to those of others as well.
If you're asking, what would ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) discojesus be listening to, the answer is blip.fm/discojesus. Or, quite possibly, my thusfar favorite blipper, blip.fm/cargoculte. You should all make blip accounts and I will listen to them.
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| Saturday, May 30th, 2009
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3:16 am - life-size
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One of the reasons I've been posting far less frequently on livejournal is that I've had other outlets for my musings and yarn-spinnings, namely my boyfriend Jim (hi, baby!) and my therapist. I also don't have the patience to tell stories or amusing anectodes online, or sometimes at all - I'd rather think about stuff than rewrite the things that have already happened.
As far as life updates are concerned, things are going as well as one might expect at this stage. I finished my fourth year of my PhD program, and want the end to come soon, but know that's an optimistic outlook. I'm presenting a poster in San Francisco in June, but have a lot more research to take care of before I can graduate, and I haven't written anything up yet. This is complicated by the fact that I don't have any money, and found a job doing grunt Matlab coding for 10 hours a week to compensate. I never did hear back from the tutoring job I applied for, but now I don't have time for it, so I guess it's all for the best.
The co-op is going well, but is in a state of flux. The newest housemate is cool as shit, but it was a struggle to convince the house to let her move in because she's young and might move out. In a move to find people who are not young and easily move-out-able, we've been trying to alter our process, which has been troubling at best. We now have a detailed online application, which we vote on, and then we pick the top person to interview. If there are no serious objections to them living with us, then we invite them in. It sounds low stress, but sometimes you get a real dud through to the interview, and you feel bad rejecting them just because they're a dud. I guess the hope is that once you know them for long enough, you discover that they are in fact a MILK DUD as opposed to just a regular dud, and that they are sweet and substantial and worth your time and energy.
We have two people moving in tomorrow-Monday-ish, and are still looking to fill one more spot. One of the applicants to that spot is a self-professed geek and furry who, like all furries in the universe, keeps a livejournal (toranin ). Reading his journal reminded me of my complex relationship with the furry fandom, and in particular how I'm basically way down in the closet when it comes to that stuff in the co-op, so I was a little excited to force the conversation with someone more confident about the matter. Somehow, people think that bashing furries is always acceptable, and I'm too insecure about it to speak up and name my furriness. But then, I feel atypical in that respect, as my activity in the fandom does seem to be mostly sexual, and certainly not spiritual or lifestyle-ish. I own no plushies, no furry art, no furry comics and so on and so forth. Furry smut, on the other hand...
I haven't talked to my therapist about things like furrydom, but my hunch is that I see this very warm and welcoming community and think that I want it, but when I get up close realize that it's not what I want at all. I'm nerdy, but not aggressively so. I have good filters in place for things like art that is Not Good, and don't know how to reconcile things like welcoming communities and honest critique. There's a lot of bear and puppy play community stuff that seems like it could be awesome, too, and maybe more up my alley, but I wonder if I'm really the type of person to befriend a group of people based on shared interests. After all, I like people who are deep and thoughtful, but also funny and kind, and really, really smart. Then again, things like Mensa seem like a terrible idea to me also. It's complicated.
So after the house rejected toranin in my absence, I decided to send him an e-mail and ask if he wants to hang out, because he seems to be an interesting dude. I think I could learn a lot from him, or at the very least, try to and learn a lot from my failures.
I also realized during therapy recently that maybe a lot of my behaviors are a defense mechanism to account for things that I suck at. Like recognizing people. Oh boy, do I suck at that. So instead of going to big group events, I convince myself (and others) that I just don't like them, which is kind of true anyways, and lean on that as a way to paint myself as a cynic and social critic rather than just a sensitive guy who never remembers people and feels guilty as shit every time he forgets somebody. It really stresses my shit out, and my therapist seemed to find this far from normal. I'm always a little surprised by the things that she thinks are relevant. I'm also learning to figure out what my emotional triggers are - some things really hearken back to childhood in uncomfortable ways, ways that remind me of all the temper tantrums I had, of all the times I lost control of my emotions. From a problem solving standpoint, it's kind of awesome. You have to get close enough to the fire to know that it's hot, but not so close that you're burning up. As far as putting out the fire, I'm still not sure. But being able to pinpoint it seems like a good start.
I'm still lost when it comes to The Dream. Jim suggested that I start playing the guitar every day, and that's been lovely. It's good to remember what I used to do all the time, and why. I want to work on stuff that's important, but I also want to be really good at it. It seems disingenuous to work on something important if you suck at it - why not get somebody else to do it? It all depends on what you value, I guess, and my happiness isn't as important as things like, oh, the planet not getting warmed to shit. I think I'm really good at managing people and motivating, but I'm not entirely sure. Being in a PhD program hasn't given me a lot of insight on that front, as opposed ot me learning that I suck at doing hard math by myself, which I could have told you years ago.
I miss Jim. I want to cuddle, and watch him finally finish making the batch of pots he's been working on since we met. And I want to figure out where we're going to live after I graduate, and what I'm going to do, and how it's going to be AWESOME, and how we're going to shun mediocrity and find happiness. Stick it on the to do list.
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| Friday, April 17th, 2009
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8:22 pm
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From wikipedia :
"The National Child Victim Identification Program (NCVIP) is the world's largest database of child pornography"
Ooooooooook. Leave it to the government to amass the world's largest database of child pornography.
Let me see if I understand the logic here. We have made possessing child pornography illegal because, ostensibly, it gives money to the people who make kiddie porn.
Allow me to propose an alternative.
The US government hosts the WORLD'S LARGEST DATABASE of kiddie porn, and shares it with kiddie sex fiends. Problem solved! It all kiddie porn is free, then nobody will pay to make it.
From the child pornography page:
according to Flint Waters, an investigator with the federal Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, "These guys are raping infants and toddlers. You can hear the child crying, pleading for help in the video. It is horrendous."
I'm sorry, the US government is paying someone to watch toddler rape videos? Really? Wait, is that person a pedophile?
And here's another zinger:
U.S Attorney Bob Balfe stated that 85 percent of those we prosecuted for child pornography are also child molesters.
Wow! What an amazing correlation you found, Mr. Balfe! It's almost like you could arrest people for JUST molesting the children, and leave the whole porn thing out of it!
Oh, but that's right, it's illegal in the first world to depict children having sex. Oh, but that's because it might fuel demand for raping children.
Surely, in the 21st Century, we have a better way of protecting children from molesters than arresting people with Simpsons porn. Ideas, anyone? How can we avoid being the thought police, while keeping children from getting raped?
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6:53 pm
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Never quite made it into the work zone today, although I did make a to-do list. Somehow, this is not a satisfactory consolation prize.
Instead, learning about lulz, and the insane world that trolls live in. Also, baby rapists and their livejournals. Sometimes the world feels very far away, and it's hard to motivate being involved in it.
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| Wednesday, April 8th, 2009
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1:01 pm - the study of
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Today I am studying at the BU student union. It's full of underaged people wearing college sweatshirts, hammering away on their macbooks, and undoubtedly feeling like very important members of society. It all makes me feel a bit small, a bit stuck in college limbo, but I guess I should appreciate it while I can. Who knows when I'll be in a windowless office with data-entry drones sipping coffee and chatting about Lost.
I rode my bike here today, which was great. I was tempted to take the T and read this book about global warming, but since my plan is to watch baseball in Cambridge this evening, it seemed wise to take the bike. My shoulder hurts a little, but it's not excruciating. Avoiding the T makes me feel independent and powerful. Public transit can be a huge bummer sometimes.
My prospectus, the one I frantically wrote in December, is apparently not good enough. It doesn't have enough original work, or enough by way of 'proposal' and has too much in terms of background. I made some slight changes in the hope that I can just slip through the cracks, but I'm not optimistic. My absentee adviser is working on some hairbrained grant to study psychosomatic changes during meditation, and hasn't given any input to this snafu whatsoever. I wouldn't expect him to, but it's fun to talk about the degree of his ludicrous uninvolvement.
What I'm studying is something you probably wouldn't understand. It's called calculus of variations. Here's the intuition: in regular calculus, one of the problems is finding the value of a function such that it's value is a minimum. For example, how many scarves should I knit, given that I want to make as much money as possible in the time that I have? In calculus of variations, you're trying to vind the minimum value for a function of a function. The canonical example is distance between two points, which is a function of the path you choose. But the path you choose is a function itself! You tell me what time it is, and I tell you where you are on the path. You tell me what path you take, and I tell you how far it is from point A to B. It turns out that you can think about functions as occupying a space like numbers, which means that a lot of the rules of calculus apply to that space, too. It's a very abstract area of math, but if you understand it, it's a pretty powerful tool.
My life: the study of powerful tools.
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| Tuesday, April 7th, 2009
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2:08 am - Changes
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Over the last few years, the internet has changed in some pretty fundamental ways. Consider myspace. Now, instead of being forced to use this atrocious pile of ick, you can use one of the social networks that is specifically designed with you in mind! Why, I myself am on two of them, one for furries, and one for chubs/chasers. But unlike myspace, there are no delusions here about the purpose of these sites. It's for porn. But it's an amateur aesthestic, and one that I can really get behind. Did I mention it's hot? That helps.
Not so very long ago, fursuit sex seemed exotic. Now, anyone can go watch a fursuit sex video for free on xtube. It's a beautiful thing. Of course, even on xtube, you've got about 1 for 5 in the comment category telling the video poster how they are JUST WRONG, but I'm still just ecstatic that I get to see hot chubby furries going at it.
I can't help but feel a little left out, though, it's like I'm missing something. I feel like I'm on the sidelines, and missing out on the rah-rah-rah sex camraderie. Maybe I'm overthinking this, but if there is a community, then I'm definitely not involved in it. Is it because I don't respect people for posting smut, or that I don't think smut is sufficient? Or do I just not really like the specific people that seem to make up the community? I don't know.
Jim comes in a few weeks, and I'm pretty excited about that. I love him, and really want him to be happy, and know that he feels the same way about me. And with that in mind, I think we have the tools in place to weather a lot of storms, particularly if we're open minded. Jim is a little fluffy, but sometimes, in the throes of horniness, I really want a chubby guy, or someone who wants to dress up like an animal, or any of the other silly things that turn me on. And with 1600 miles between us, it can be awfully challening to feel intimate. But that's what talking is for. And if I've learned anything so far, it's that we get to make all the rules, and that everything is better if we're honest.
Anyway, aside from sexin' and thoughts about sexin', my life has gotten busy. I'm frantically trying to get my p's and q's in order so that I can graduate, I'm working on a book chapter that I'm woefully underqualified to write, and I'm looking for part-time tutoring jobs so that I won't be totally broke over the summer. I figure also that if I can get some tutoring experience under my belt, that will always be an easy job to pick up, no matter where I am. It could make it a lot easier to look for my dream job, whatever that may be.
The real reason I wanted to write this though was because I was looking at pictures from this year's Further Confusion, and just felt tons of gratitude towards all of the people who were nice to me. I can be a hard one to crack in some circumstances, and there have been lots of furries that stuck with me for a pretty long time. It's ironic, really - a lot of people that I meet in real life think of me as a charmer, someone that knows the right thing to say at the right time, knows how to diffuse tension and seems ceaselessly cheerful. And the people that find me first here find me saturnine, aloof and awkward. It's a strange dichotomy, and I realize that I don't do a lot to dispel those notions on the internet. Deep down, I feel like I am aloof and awkward, and I think that's tied to my depression, my complicated desires and my vast capacity to introspect. I spend a lot of time kind of staring off into space, letting deep personal thoughts simmer. Anyway, it makes me wonder about the people that find my journal engaging, now or ever. A lot of people stuck around for the short haul, only to find it too...depressing? Others seem to have stuck around for way more than the short haul, only to come to the same conclusion. And yet others seem to find it engaging no matter what I do.
Anyway, for those of you that never got a chance to see me be a social butterfly, I really appreciate the time and effort that got left here in e-land. Maybe someday, when I'm all figured out, we can laugh about the e-anguish and the e-awkwardness. Or maybe you'll never be entertained by me calling things e-things, and you find my real life shtick dreadful. And if that's the case, I have to wonder if you spent that time and effort out of a sense of obligation to the community, the community that I feel so aloof from, or because you thought maybe you _would_ like my shtick? That's what it boils down to: did you pay attention because you liked me, or because you pitied me?
And now, it looks like I'm getting rabidly emo, spinning yarns of self-pity. But I am not! And I can see such protestations to the contrary are useless in the wake of "did you pay attention because you pitied me", and sentences in that vein. It makes sense. Sometimes the questions I pose are black holes, where answering them pulls you into a vortex of incomprehensible goo, from which no lightness of being can escape. If that is indeed the case, then all that's left is a youtube video of something mind-numbingly sweet. Happy Tuesday!
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| Friday, March 13th, 2009
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12:50 pm
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It's spring break! To celebrate, I went back to Texas to visit Jim, and things have been very nice. It's terrifying, because I really like him, and that's never happened before, but it's also terrifying because I'm in freaking Texas. I don't know if I want to live here long term, or what I can do down here, but since I don't know what to do with my life anyway, I guess that's not much of a surprise. Regardless, I'm at the lovely Cricket Cafe, a vegetarian cafe with free wifi (!) a block from Jim's ceramics gallery, and even though it's stormy and gross outside, places like this make me think that I can get by here. I mean, I've gotten by here before, but it wasn't easy. I also didn't have a car or a boyfriend, so it's hard to judge, but it didn't give me that "finally, I'm home!" feeling that some places seem to give off.
It's hard to overemphasize how great a guy Jim is. Like how I basically burned down his kitchen last night by putting his entire collection of tupperware lids over an open burner, and he didn't flip out or anything. Later, he went on to tell me that it cemented his feelings for me. Burning down his kitchen. He's a keeper.
There was no permanent damage, but there's melted plastic everywhere, and Jim needs some new tupperware. The fire extinguisher didn't work, but Jim poured baking soda over the stove, and that did the trick. That and throwing the flaming tupperware in the sink. After an hour of chiseling plastic off of the stove, we got ice cream. He's a keeper.
So I'm in this cafe, and it's raining, and I'm trying to motivate myself to do work. We'll see. Jim gets off work in an hour, and we'll hopefully do some fun and productive thing after that. Having a long distance relationship is shitty, but what can you do? It's nice to feel like some part of my life is anchored and has direction. He's coming up to Boston next month, which will usher in a bunch of firsts. He wants my friends to like him. *I* want my friends to like him, too. We'll see. Back to work!
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| Wednesday, February 18th, 2009
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2:34 am - parachute
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This has been a tumultuous few weeks. The tumult really began last Sunday, a day in which I was incredibly depressed. I'd talked to Jim, my Texan, whom I was going to visit on Wednesday, and he suggested that I do something fun, which I'd attempted to do, but kind of wasn't able to pull off. It was just one of those foul days where nothing seems right - I did chores and laundry, lazed around waiting for something fun to strike me, and then jumped on my bike to head to the gym. About half a mile from my house, due to some mysterious calamity whose nature still eludes me, I went head over heels into the pavement, crushing my head and shoulder.
My immediate sentiment was one of anger, that I wanted to go to the gym and couldn't, that my bike was all fucked up and would cost more imaginary dollars to fix, that my shoulder was really pretty hurtin', and that it wasn't even my fault. I didn't hit a bump, have a run-in with a vehicle, get distracted, try to jump over something - nothing like that. It was all systems go and then pulling myself off the pavement a second later.
At the emergency room, they didn't seem too concerned, and laughed about my use of frozen chickpeas instead of an ice pack. After x-rays and drugs, I was sent home to recover. As it turns out, my shoulder is separated, and I'll have a big ol' bony bump there for the rest of my life, but I'm getting movement and strength back, so it's not a huge impediment to life. I also didn't let it be a huge impediment to going to Houston to visit my Texan, which was extremely positive. Unlike anyone I've ever been with, he seems intent on talking with me and being honest and just generally communicating very well. It's ambiguous how much is me finally having been to enough therapy to talk about stuff and how much is him just bringing it out of me, but any way you slice it, it's a very good thing.
We had hot sex, and cuddling, and all sorts of faggy delights, and I didn't do any work or stress about school, which was lovely. I had my first ever valentine's day with a valentine, which was really pretty swell. I can see how people can get into that 'significant other' thing, and I'm still surprised at the ease with which we can communicate and accommodate each other. I'm not sure when I'll see him next, but we've been phoning still. He called to check in to ensure that I didn't get totally depressed as I returned (communication!) but I didn't need it.
Partly, I wasn't depressed because I had a great time and really like the Texan, but partly I wasn't depressed because I read What Color Is Your Parachute?, a guide to career changers and job seekers. It gave me new insight into how grad school and probably science is really just not for me, and the courage to address that and try to really figure out a solid next step. I'm assembling a team of people who also want to 'live the dream', as I'm calling it, and we're going to go through the exercises and whatnot, and really figure out what's up.
I've been basically walking on a cloud since then, since I feel empowered and capable about figuring out my shit, once and for all. Or maybe not once and for all, but at least figuring out my shit for now. It's long overdue.
Of course, it was only a matter of time until this glorious feeling of empowerment came to a close, and sadly, that closing was tonight at the bar with my lab mates. Lab meetings tend to depress the shit out of me, since people seem to talk about work the whole time, and I often feel like a space cadet, since I'm often just not really interested in, say, the topographic distribution of V1 receptive field size, let alone the stuff I know nothing about which gets discussed ad nauseum. I decided to eschew alcohol for the evening, since I think that doesn't help the depression, but somehow I got really bummed out anyway.
I think it has something to do with having come up with essentially no novel research, and every idea I come up with is basically instantaneously rejected, and on sound ground. It's a tactic that makes me feel incredibly impotent and saps that empowered feeling almost immediately. But buoyed by the notion that I might be able to work around it, and that science isn't really my bag anyway, I didn't spiral into desolation.
Well, not until I had a twenty minute chat with a postdoc about how in terms of problems with my advisor, he takes my advisor's side. For what it's worth, my therapist thinks my advisor is a total douchebag, and I don't pay her to blow sunshine up my ass. My advisor had my prospectus, my thesis proposal, for six weeks and didn't read it. Finally read it, gave me two pieces of feedback, and then said he didn't really want to talk about it with me. This is a guy whose ideas are completely incomprehensible to me, who comes from a different planet research-wise, and communicates with me in a way that I just don't understand. We have a terrible relationship, work-wise. My strategy has been to try and figure things out for myself, and when I talk to him, he usually dismisses what I've been working on, and then gets back to like, learning Sanskrit or something.
This postdoc seems to think that I have failed in a couple of regards. He thinks I need to talk to him more often, that I don't project enthusiasm about my work, that I whine about not understanding stuff and want somebody to hold my hand, and that I'm generally just too absent and lazy.
It's pretty much the anti-pep talk. If it were a medicine, it would be Pep(no) Dismal. If it were a song, it would be the macarena. If it were an instruction manual, it would be 'how to jump off a bridge and not survive'.
This might be a good talk to give to somebody who doesn't have a few self-esteem issues, but jeepers, why do you want me to feel worse about myself? I tried to point out that the research topic that got swatted down earlier that evening was one that I'd actually been working on a lot, and hadn't been whining about, and felt kind of on top of (until aforementioned smackdown).
This feedback didn't feel super constructive, except for the general notion that I should...be less lazy, I guess? I would have liked to hear some positive feedback about something I've done, but I think my communication style reflects my lack of self-confidence, and leaves me open to attack.
I may not be a research superstar, but I'm no fool either. I know the implications of being lazy and inept, and it's not "living the dream". So my bubble got burst. I have to figure out a way to reconcile this in a way that takes this postdoc's comments into account without totally rejecting them or letting them cut so deep, but it's hard to invent positive feedback for myself. And now I'm scared that nobody in my lab thinks that I'm capable of anything, and that graduating will consist of basically somebody else writing my thesis (not unheard of, incredibly), because it's just not up to snuff. This prospect terrifies me.
I can be charming and likeable (or maybe not?), but I need to feel like I'm talented and capable, someone that can accomplish something. Parachute is good for that. Talking to people who know my professional output is not. This scenario is Not Good. If I can't convince my labmates that I'm not a flake, then...how do I know I'm not one?
Right now, my recourse is to sleep it off and hope that the sun shines on me tomorrow. A tumultuous week.
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| Friday, February 6th, 2009
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1:27 am
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One of the advantages of having a gigantic backlog of livejournal is that you can go back and read it and be reminded of how things have changed (and how they haven't). Here, for example, I give a full-on depiction of everything in my room. It's nice to be reminded of how I wasn't always living in what amounts to a monastery, and also that I regularly had the time and energy to just look at my room, and take joy in describing it. And somehow, looking back on those days, I seem far less depressed than I do now. I would have hoped that the opposite would be true.
On the ground is a pile of dirty clothes, a pile of clean clothes and broken electronics. On the wall are shelves, falling down under the weight of textbooks, and above that, water damage from my housemate's radiator. My CDs are stacked on a bookcase I found in the streets four years ago, but I am nearly ready to make the final transition to this era of mp3. I have no decorations on my wall, save a "bear fetish" which my grandmother purchased, and my grandfather gave to me after she died. It was easier to just take it than to cause a struggle, but I didn't have to put it on my wall. I don't even particularly like it, but there was a spot for it, and its entendre-ly name appeals to me, so up it went.
On my desk are 2tb worth of hard drives, a gorgeous 20 inch monitor displaying this evening's third install of Windows XP, two empty water bottles, and four glasses of water. There's some change, and some antidepressants, and some stuff which can really only be described as trash. I intend to clean that up. Just not right now.
On my bed are pajamas, which I only started wearing after being in Boston for quite some time. Prior to that, I slept naked, but something about the ratio of butt-on-sheet action to sheet-in-washing-machine action deterred me from that course of action.
Today I bought books on how to figure out the right career for me, including the much-lauded What Color Is Your Parachute? and another one about finding your path or something equally banal and reassuring. Afterwards, I read about children who were ludicrously gifted, and the struggles that they face in school. I was struck by the descriptions of the 'moderately gifted' and how much they read like me. As a child, I was into maps in a big, big way. I made fake places, I memorized everything in the atlas, I knew tons of capitals, countries, mountain ranges, lakes - but, as this article pointed out to me, I never thought to myself, "hm, what effect must a lake and mountains have on a culture? I wonder if cultures with lakes and mountains together have similarities across the world."
Further (personal) research demonstrated that being ludicrously smart as a child leads to being sort of dopey as an adult. Observe, for example, the journal of the world's most exclusive high-IQ society, the 1-in-a-million mega society. First off, why they need a journal is beyond me, but the published work in this journal borders on laughable. "A Brief Reflection on the Nature of Time" is a paragraph about how time and space are...related. Or MayTzu's poetry.
It is extremely improbable that God exists.
But it is certain that I do not exist.
Therefore, the existence of God is a much better bet.
Obviously, I'm jealous that I'm not mega-intelligent, but I'm glad that I had the self-awareness to stop writing poetry a long time ago. And I'm still proud of myself for not entertaining the idea of joining a super-duper smart society. Living in Boston and hanging out with academics feels enough like a super-duper smart society to last a lifetime.
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