To have one's own world only, at best, at arm's length.

Some slow, slow, weak stirrings like I might want to do something post-degree after all, but I can't even say what.  Started a web/arts project; ran into a minor hitch figuring out AWS and put that on hold. . . about a month ago, now.  Did very minor organizing for poetry book #3; nothing on that in weeks.  Have thought about ideas for poems for poetry book #2, & promised myself I'd write ten new ones this year, but nothing more than that so far.  Last night, went to the symphony & thought about learning to play the flute.  I bought one two or three years ago when I was crushed for progress on my dissertation and finally decided that if I wasn't going to get anything done on that in the near future, I might as well do something.  So that's another thing I could pick up, maybe email the music dept & see what grad student would like to give me lessons.  Without any pull in any particular direction, though, not much is actually happening yet.

My father retired at the beginning of the year.  Not happy about the idea of him at home all day every day, so I sent him subscriptions to a couple woodworking magazines.  One started to show up and he must have liked one of the projects, because he emailed me to say he was clearing out some things in his shop so he could make it for me for my birthday, and then three or so days later, he wrote again to say it was finished, and these things were a lot easier when you don't have to go to work every day.  Indeed they are -- but that's part of the problem, for him, that it may likely be easy for him to run out of things to do/ways to fill his time. 

For me, I do still have the day job, but it's more a frustration even than a distraction.  Predictably, with my mood kicked into a hole, my sleep issues have gotten more insistent, and for weeks, pretty much since I got over the exhaustion from finishing the manuscript, I've been fighting the thing where I feel groggy and several kinds of bad all day, then I'm thoroughly useless in the evening, whether I nap or not, and then around 10 or 11, I finally start to feel ok.  Again, whether I nap or not.  Then, since I'm suddenly calmer and feeling much more positive, I want to stay up and do things, but I can't because I have to put myself to bed so I can get up the next day.  I end up essentially not sleeping in anything resembling a healthy manner but for recuperating Fridays and Saturdays -- and doing things like coming home Friday, sleeping 3-4 hours, getting up to feed my cats, then going back to sleep til noon the next day, doesn't actually constitute a healthy habit.  I can tell that what my psyche and neurochemistry need is the winter break I would have gotten shortly after my defense, when I could have slept really hard, stretched out into my native nocturnal schedule, and so recharged myself for the next go.  I think I even like exhausting myself for work, as long as I get that revivifying phase afterward, but the ongoing, steady drip of energy out, it's not good for me.  My limbic system doesn't have the right processes to get anything back while that's going on.


Jobwise, still nothing.  Nothing nothing nothing.  I'm continuing to apply to postdocs & will continue to apply to any tenure track positions I find, but in March or so I may start picking cities where I'd like to live and papering them with my CV.  For years I've been saying I wasn't interested in moving halfway across the country (or more) for $35k and 75+ terrible freshman essays at a time, but I miss teaching.  A lot of that isn't even teaching per se, but things like having control over my schedule.  Even with a 4/4, you have day hours to run errands or go to lectures and readings, the former of which, especially, are invariably around 2-4 pm.  Very accessible hours for academics; virtually nonexistent for office professionals, and I'm missing the intellectual life terribly.  Maybe I ought to be able to manufacture that for myself, at least by reading and thinking, but so far, I haven't been.  This was my fear, that without the looming pressure (or promise) of finishing my degree, I wouldn't be able to do that kind of work.  I got out From the Other Side of the Century last week, thought I'd read a bunch of the late-20th-c. poets whose work I only sort of know, at least think about what's excerpted there & see whether any of them spark larger interests.  I got through two in about 3 or 4 hours at the campus Starbucks.  I want to keep going through it, but I'm so much more motivated by the prospect of teaching work like that, or writing on it or writing it toward tenure, than I am by the vague belief that it will be good for me, somehow.  And bear in mind, this is stuff I love.  I went through Oppen and the whole time felt like, oh, gosh, yes, Oppen!  Still had a hard time concentrating, feeling like I should be doing something more immediately practical but having no clue what that could be.


I had a notion that I'd blog my thoughts as I went through it, and, like, get some content here other than helpless lamentation, but I really may not.  I had some thoughts.  If I keep reading, I'll have more.  Problems like this post's, though, of what am I even supposed to be doing with myself, feel much more urgent than my questions about whether Olson's gender politics are really as messed up as people have suggested, or what it felt like to remember how underimpressed I am with his classicism, and to realize I'd forgotten that in the first place.