Bring On 2009!

So many people seem to have New Year’s resolutions to blog more. I’m not going to do that. I want to start writing again but I’m not going to officially resolve to do it. If I do that I’m likely to disappoint myself and others. Not to mention, as soon as something feels like an obligation, no matter how much I usually enjoy it, I start feeling intense ambivalence and deliberately avoid doing it at all. For years my resolutions were extremely easy and non-specific. They also usually followed with things I was going to do anyway so there was little chance of failure. I figured, why feel bad about myself for the things I didn’t do, why not congratulate myself on every little thing I actually did, no matter how easy or inconsequential. One year I resolved to have more fun. I think that was also the year I resolved to call people back more often. Another year I resolved to go back to school for a Master’s degree (I had already applied). The next year I resolved to finish my Master’s (I was half done at that point anyway). I used to also think not about goals so much as themes for each new year. 2003 was all about fun. 2004 was about exploring new places. Then, 2007 rolled around and someone gave me a very hard time for not pushing myself enough and having pathetic resolutions. I was told I should have goals — to not have goals is lazy. The thing about me though is I already push myself more than enough. Easy resolutions were a way of giving myself a break. But being the pushover that I am, I took the criticisms to heart, made myself a long list of difficult resolutions grouped around a common theme, and succeeded in all of them. Although it felt good and I was proud of my accomplishments, I don’t know how necessary the relentless drive to self-improvement was. Some of my daily habits improved permanently — some of the things I resolved to do two years ago I now do without even thinking about it. But again, I’m a pretty goal-driven person to begin with and I could probably use a break more than anything. I would like to enjoy life and be satisfied with myself rather than constantly trying to improve. But I still made myself a list of goals for 2009 and we’ll see how it goes. It’s a very short list of things I meant to do anyway so hopefully it doesn’t end in me beating myself up over my failures. It ranges from fun (playing guitar again) to not so fun (paying down debt) to some combination of the two (writing a draft of my dissertation). 2008 was the year of taking my life back and finding some happiness. I don’t know what 2009 will be, but I’m looking forward to seeing how it all unfolds.

I Kill Bugs

That’s right, I said it. I kill bugs.

I can’t help it. I came from a long line of farmers. I grew up with fly-swatters in the house. My parents, my grandparents, my aunts and uncles — they don’t put spiders back outside, they step on them, so that’s what I’ve always done as well. If I don’t, it’s not out of any sense of compassion, it’s because I’m scared. If a spider is too big I won’t go anywhere near it. I once threw a suitcase at a spider that I was too scared to get close to but too scared to let crawl under my bed. I don’t kill wasps or bees because I know if I don’t get the job done they will come back to hurt me. And sometimes I’m just so grossed out by the thought of having to clean up a squished insect carcass that I will somehow usher it out the door. I once vacuumed up a junebug, then left the vacuum sitting outside for a week out of fear that the junebug was perhaps still alive and would crawl back out of it.

I didn’t realize until quite recently that most people around me don’t kill bugs. When people find out that I kill bugs they look at me as if I just said I kill cats. I’ve never thought of insects as animals. I think of them as insects. Disgusting, scary insects that will crawl on me in my sleep if I don’t eliminate them. But it turns out that a lot of people don’t share my feelings. So out of a new and very strong sense of guilt I’m trying to be more compassionate these days and just letting the bugs live. Today while I was sweeping my kitchen I came across a huge and ugly caterpillar of sorts. It was all squirmy and disgusting but I tried to get it into my dustpan to put it outside. Unfortunately I think I may have accidentally squished a bunch of its legs trying to get it out of the kitchen and now I’ve released it back into the wild all broken. Is that any better than if I had just stepped on it?

My Big Hang-Up

Be forewarned: what follows is a clear display of neurosis, perhaps bordering on insanity. Just so you know.

It’s my birthday next week and there is nothing in the realm of social norms that I dread more than my own birthday party. I usually don’t do anything for my birthday. Last year I planned a very low-key pub night with a small handful of people, and only because it was my 30th and I felt like I should probably celebrate the milestone. But, for the most part, if I end up doing something on my birthday it is a random, last-minute affair. Probably the best birthday I ever had was when I lived in Japan. I hardly knew anyone there so my boyfriend and I just went for dinner. Turns out that the other foreign teachers in my neighbourhood found out it was my birthday while they were all out that night so on their way home they dropped by my apartment with a bunch of dollar store gifts and wine. It was a pleasant surprise and we had a fantastic night. The following year I had just arrived in Edinburgh and I didn’t know a single person in the city. I ended up going to the pub with another girl in the hostel I was staying at, whom I had just met that afternoon. I never told her it was my birthday. We had a few beers and chatted for awhile, then went to bed early. It was a good day and I ended up becoming good friends with that girl for the year we both lived in Scotland.

It’s not that I have a problem with getting older. That doesn’t actually bother me at all. The plain fact is that I just can’t handle the anxiety and the expectations. I can only imagine what a huge disappointment it would be if I were to plan a birthday party and people didn’t come. No one likes rejection. But rejection on your birthday? Worst time ever. I would gladly host a party or plan an outing any other day of the year — and I do — but on my birthday I would rather just stay home alone and avoid even the remotest possibility of hurt feelings.

So this year, my boyfriend told me that he was going to plan something for my birthday. I didn’t ask him to, and I didn’t expect him to, so the fact that he was going to do it anyway was really nice. I’m open to doing something, as long as I don’t have to arrange it myself. Somehow, if someone else puts on the party, it feels as if the results have no personal bearing on me. The thing is, I am positively bubbling over with anxiety about it. I can’t stop myself from forming all kinds of expectations, good and bad, and I’m so wound up about it that I actually started to cry this morning.

I’m sure it will be just fine. Maybe everything will go smoothly and I’ll finally be able to work through this little hang-up of mine. But really, I’d rather just hide in my bedroom for the next couple of days until all of this blows by me.

Yes, I am insane.

Sunday Baseball

I have come to the conclusion this summer that baseball is really fun. I was always so bad at it when I was younger. I was always the last person to get chosen for a team in gym class and I was so bad that even my friends made fun of me. It was humiliating. It didn’t help that, in my left-handed awkwardness, and due to budgetary restraints at my school, I had to both catch and throw with my left hand. Even if I magically caught the ball, by the time I was able to remove my glove to throw the ball in, the batter could have run all the way home with ease. I looked ridiculous. And at bat, I was even more incompetent. I’m pretty sure that before this summer I had only once ever made contact with the ball.

But somehow I’ve gotten better with age, even though, until this summer, I hadn’t played since Junior High school. Maybe my hand-eye coordination has just naturally improved. Or maybe I’m not as nervous and self-conscious. Picking baseball up again was almost like therapy. The first few times I swung, missed, and didn’t get booed, it was like unloading years of gym class baggage. Now I can hit the ball most of the time. It doesn’t go very far, but there is contact. I’m quickly learning to catch with my right hand and I can actually throw the ball a reasonable distance for someone who doesn’t play baseball. Yesterday I even got someone out at third base for the first time in my life. I cheered a little too loud and I felt bad for it after, but I think everyone forgave me my competitive outburst when I said it was the first time I’d ever taken anyone out.

It’s not really about being good though. Especially since I play in the least competitive game going. My roommate only convinced me to play by reassuring me about how non-competitive it really is. Seriously. Sometimes people wear dresses or flip-flops. Yesterday someone was batting in their bare feet. Someone else was swinging one-handed with a beer in the other hand. We had a player come in who said “how do you play this game again?” There are no strike-outs and I’ve definitely seen people swing at the ball so many times that everyone loses count. Some of them are good and some of them (myself included) really suck, but no one cares either way. It’s really just about getting outside, spending the afternoon with friends, and having a good time. It may be the only genuinely non-competitive sports situation I’ve ever found myself in. And now I really like baseball.

Two Fruitful Years

I came across a website called Wordle where you can input text and it will generate a word cloud for you. I input everything I’ve written so far for my Ph.D. — term papers from my coursework year, conference papers, conference proposals, my dissertation proposal, and practice candidacy exam questions.

Somehow the word cloud makes me feel like the work I’ve done over the past two years amounts to much more than I thought it did. Maybe it’s because I know the various contexts of all these words, but it seems to make my interests very clear. It also makes me feel cool that “punk” and “rock” are so big.

If It Worked For Derrida, It Must Work For Me Too

I love finding little tidbits in literature or philosophy or intellectual culture that validate my own lifestyle. Like today, I learned that until Jacques Derrida had to be somewhere in particular during the day, he stayed in his pajamas. Or, in Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent, one of the characters says that 11:00 am seems like a perfectly reasonable time at which to start the day’s duties.

So maybe I’m not quite the social deviant or general slacker that I sometimes appear to be. Or better yet, maybe being a slacker by contemporary standards isn’t such a bad thing anyway.

Yes I Said Yes I Will Yes

I’ve been knitting like a fiend the past two days, making a pair of wrist warmers. I tried cable knit for the first time and I completely nailed it. I’m very proud of what I have so far since I’ve never been a very good knitter.

However, I feel a little bit like Penelope. I’ll leave that one to your powerful analytical minds.

Better

I think I may have killed the depression. I decided to take a slightly longer break from my school work. I’m burned out, I need proper rest. I cleaned up the side deck so that I could hang out there in the sunshine. Then I went for a 10K run. 10K in an hour and 10 minutes. That’s a personal best for me. I may not be able to walk tomorrow, and I’m definitely going down for a nap now, but it was worth it.

It seems that my blog is becoming a repository for stories about all the boring shit I do during the day. I’ll probably work on changing that when I start to care more again.

Blah Blah Blah

I’ve been kind of depressed lately and I just can’t seem to pull out of it. I don’t really give a shit about the work I have to do, so I’m just not doing it. And I don’t feel like doing anything else either. I should be stoked. It’s sunny and warm out, which is usually enough in itself to put me in a good mood. And there are so many great things going on in my life that I should be my usual happy self.

So I gave up trying to do work this morning, cranked up a Rolling Stones album, and put up my new tent in my living room. As expected, it made me happy for about 20 minutes.

Ugh

I’m pretty sure that there’s no worse feeling in the world than missing someone whom you would really like to be around.