I'm now a fully dissertated former grad student. While I'm really looking forward to sleeping for more than two hours at a time tonight, I'm really not happy that my year is over. If I thought I could actually get away with living in the common room in the philosophy building - as I not infrequently threaten to do - then I would. There are shower facilities and a kitchen in there, after all; I could make it work.
I'm really pleased with myself for getting my dissertation done and turned in. It was a fascinating project to work on and hopefully it turned out well. As I know I've said before, I was writing about mental health policy and legislation and I want to thank everyone who has ever commented on this blog and everyone who writes the blogs I read - I couldn't have done it without you. I've been keeping this blog for going on two years now and the ongoing conversation has been a great help not only in crafting my dissertation but also in deepening and elucidating my own personal understanding of what mental disorder is and who I am. Not the least important, I have enjoyed it!
Showing posts with label grad school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label grad school. Show all posts
01 September 2010
26 August 2010
Extra Thoughts and Some Music
I've got what feels like less than enough time to finish my dissertation and so my brain has, naturally enough, kicked into overdrive. As a result, I have a few things that keep floating up to the surface of my consciousness so I'm skimming them off here in the hope that that will lay them to temporary rest.
1) I've often thought about the problem of being in a relationship and having a mental disorder. I've written about it before, a couple of times. Today, however, I started thinking about it in a different way. I've been thinking about it only in terms of the way I feel as though I were "damaged goods": it's a cruel phrase, but it's the one lodged in my subconscious mind. If one looks at it more broadly and with fewer innappropriate moralistic overtones, then on can reframe it as a relationship (potentially) between a neurotypical person and a non-neurotypical person. It seems to me that this correctly captures the extra effort required with the additional advantage of making it perspicuous that the effort flows both ways. The statistical likelihood is that if I (a non-neurotypical person) end up in a relationship, that relationship will be with a neurotypical person because there are a lot more neurotypical persons than non-neurotypical persons. Thus, the expectation that I will have to make extra effort to accommodate a person whose neurological architecture is significantly different from mine is a strong expectation. I do no, however, consider that the effort is too costly. It seems fine and acceptable to me. Whenever I have hitherto considered it from the other side, however, it has often felt like it would be asking too much of any person to bear the burden of accommodation for my non-typical neural architecture. The effort, however, that that hypthetical neurotypical person would have to make is theoretically no greater than any effort I will have to make; it is just statistically less likely that any given individual neurotypical person would have to make that effort in any given relationship. Thus, I can now see that I have been falling for an informal fallacy all these years! I'm going to try to stop worrying about it, or at least to acknowledge the effort I would have to make as being equally important. Liberating.
2) Learning the music for a Handel oratorio, while a joyful and worthwhile end in itself, is not actually commensurate with writing a dissertation. Must put mp3 player away now.
3) There was another one but now I can't remember what it is. Distracted even in my distractions. Damn! That's some distracted! Oh well.
Here's some Handel for your delectation:
And some silly Handel with dancing by the ever-wonderful Mark Morris Dance Group:
Almost done! Can't wait! Day in bed with chocolate, Carson McCullers novel and Handel score coming up. Then, my 30th birthday party. How did I get this old? Last time I checked I was still 25.
1) I've often thought about the problem of being in a relationship and having a mental disorder. I've written about it before, a couple of times. Today, however, I started thinking about it in a different way. I've been thinking about it only in terms of the way I feel as though I were "damaged goods": it's a cruel phrase, but it's the one lodged in my subconscious mind. If one looks at it more broadly and with fewer innappropriate moralistic overtones, then on can reframe it as a relationship (potentially) between a neurotypical person and a non-neurotypical person. It seems to me that this correctly captures the extra effort required with the additional advantage of making it perspicuous that the effort flows both ways. The statistical likelihood is that if I (a non-neurotypical person) end up in a relationship, that relationship will be with a neurotypical person because there are a lot more neurotypical persons than non-neurotypical persons. Thus, the expectation that I will have to make extra effort to accommodate a person whose neurological architecture is significantly different from mine is a strong expectation. I do no, however, consider that the effort is too costly. It seems fine and acceptable to me. Whenever I have hitherto considered it from the other side, however, it has often felt like it would be asking too much of any person to bear the burden of accommodation for my non-typical neural architecture. The effort, however, that that hypthetical neurotypical person would have to make is theoretically no greater than any effort I will have to make; it is just statistically less likely that any given individual neurotypical person would have to make that effort in any given relationship. Thus, I can now see that I have been falling for an informal fallacy all these years! I'm going to try to stop worrying about it, or at least to acknowledge the effort I would have to make as being equally important. Liberating.
2) Learning the music for a Handel oratorio, while a joyful and worthwhile end in itself, is not actually commensurate with writing a dissertation. Must put mp3 player away now.
3) There was another one but now I can't remember what it is. Distracted even in my distractions. Damn! That's some distracted! Oh well.
Here's some Handel for your delectation:
And some silly Handel with dancing by the ever-wonderful Mark Morris Dance Group:
Almost done! Can't wait! Day in bed with chocolate, Carson McCullers novel and Handel score coming up. Then, my 30th birthday party. How did I get this old? Last time I checked I was still 25.
18 August 2010
Over-Educated Undead
I think grad school might be a species of zombie.
1) If one is in grad school, one must write a dissertation.
2) Dissertations will eventually take over your inner running commentary; you will eventually realise that you are losing your ability to think about non-dissertation things and your ability to make complete sentences out loud. Groaning constitutes a large part of your discourse.
3) Monomania, the inability to make complete sentences and the increase of groaning are all indicators that one's brain is being eaten.
4)If it is a thing that eats brains, it is a zombie.
5) Dissertations are brain eating things. 2, 3 Hypothetical Syllogism
6) Grad school is a brain eating thing. 1, 5 Hypothetical Syllogism
_________________________________________
Therefore, Grad school is a species of zombie. 6, 4 Hypothetical Syllogism
Proof: I love logic. Brain eating ceases 5pm 1 September. Wish me luck!
1) If one is in grad school, one must write a dissertation.
2) Dissertations will eventually take over your inner running commentary; you will eventually realise that you are losing your ability to think about non-dissertation things and your ability to make complete sentences out loud. Groaning constitutes a large part of your discourse.
3) Monomania, the inability to make complete sentences and the increase of groaning are all indicators that one's brain is being eaten.
4)If it is a thing that eats brains, it is a zombie.
5) Dissertations are brain eating things. 2, 3 Hypothetical Syllogism
6) Grad school is a brain eating thing. 1, 5 Hypothetical Syllogism
_________________________________________
Therefore, Grad school is a species of zombie. 6, 4 Hypothetical Syllogism
Proof: I love logic. Brain eating ceases 5pm 1 September. Wish me luck!
21 July 2010
Stress and Moodiness
I've been sort-of hard at work on my dissertation this week and last; sort-of hard at the socialising, too. We have a draft due on Friday and I'm having a hard time getting the words onto paper.
Unfortunately, I often have writer's block when it comes to submitting work to be graded. This is still a relatively new problem for me. In 2006, I had what can only be called (pathetic as this sounds) a traumatic grading experience. It was the final paper for a class I had been doing very well in. The professor who had previously been quite supportive and quite enthusiastic about the work I had done really did not like my final paper. I, on the assumption that she would like it as much as the rest of my work, was careless about picking up the draft from her in a timely fashion. It was the end of the semester, which is always a very busy time, and so I didn't get it back from her until about six hours before our exam period, during which she had decided we would present and discuss our papers instead of sitting an exam. Clearly, this was not the best decision on my part but I do think that I was reasonably justified in expecting that, on the whole, any comments would be largely positive. What I got instead was a barrage of mixed justified criticism and emotional hogwash. It's not on to accuse someone of being species-ist in a ten page paper; it is acceptable to say that soemthing is too much of an assertion and not enough of an argument.
The difficulty for me was that the argument and the idea behind the paper are objectively good. I have had many good discussions about it, I have even had that very same paper accepted for a conference. That class was the first class I had ever had with that particular professor and over the years I learned more about her. I learned that she (being an arch second-wave feminist) really hates logic and thinks that it can only ever be used to oppress people. My paper was based around a deductive logical argument and contained the word logic in the title. I have learned, particularly from hearing more of her own work, that she is very invested in essential notions about sex and gender and really believes that women (have to) do philosophy in a significantly different way because they are women. My paper was intended to be critical and possibly destructive about essentialist notions of sex and gender. Knowing more about the way she looks at the world, I can see that she must have experienced that paper as a personal attack, designed to oppress her, written by a female student who obviously was a sex traitor for using logic and saying that women are not necessarily different from men. From that point of view, it would have been philosophically coherent for her to react emotionally to my paper, rather than to try to argue against it or be objective about the merits of its content.
I am quite logically convinced that she is in the wrong, that the paper - while far from perfect - is not the fundamentally flawed piece of drivel she tried to make it out to be. However, I only know this and it is hard to convince myself that she was wrong on the level of psychological belief or felt truth. Thus, I continue to have writer's block and it continues to make life hard for me from time to time. Whatever the merits of my paper, it was wrong and unprofessional of her to attack me in that way; I understand now that she felt that I had attacked her and that she was responding in kind BUT I didn't attack her, I attacked an idea and she knows it. She just reacted in an ideological way to what I was saying. She reacted in a way that I believe is a betrayal of the social contract between a teacher and a student, and a way that is an unhelpful disruption of the norms, ethos and mores of a university. If she's that committed to that particular variety of second-wave feminism, then what is she doing teaching at a university? They're definitely and demonstrably tools of male oppression in much the same way as logic! She has a right to her beliefs about the world and the right to act on them and I have a corresponding duty to respect that; however, I have a right to my beliefs about the world and a right to act on them and she has a corresponding duty to respect that!
The whole experience has had some benefit. It really deepened my understanding of how to practise philosophy and how to read another person's work and how to disagree and why philosophers disagree with one another in the way that they do (i.e. respectfully). I am still having a hard time, however, with the writer's block. It has gotten much, much better over the years - so much better. I'm sure it will continue to get easier. It is not, however, gone. When a deadline gets close, I experience a lot of negative stress. It's the kind of stress that comes tinged with self-loathing and self-harm ideation and this makes it very hard for me to work.
On a year to year basis (though not necessarily on a day to day one), I have been on an upward trajectory since I was in hospital a little more than three years ago. Having an accurate diagnosis has helped me to understand what to look for symptom-wise and all that looking has helped me become increasingly familiar and accurate in understanding what's going on with me by what I'm thinking and what I feel, both emotionally and physiologically. This familiarity in turn has given me an increased ability to look after myself well and effectively. I have learned some ways to help myself get over or past various psychological stumbling blocks and how to deal with the stubborn symptoms that are really not under my control. I'm far from perfect at it - the logical possibility of my ever being perfect at it is close to zero - but I'm much better than random and much better than I used to be. This writer's block seems to be one of those things that I have some control over - limited control but susceptible to improvement.
This week, the stress of writing through the self-loathing is pushing me towards the serious kind of moodiness. It will be okay - it will be over soon and then it will be as though it never happened, or so I keep telling myself. Nevertheless, I'll get to go through it again but a bit worse at the end of next month when the final paper is due and I'm going to be job hunting between now and then, which is usually a stressful and rather discouraging activity. I'm also going back to visit the family for a week and this means long haul flying and jet lag which has, historically, set me off mood-wise. That's an unusual number of risk factors and it worries me a bit.
Anyhow, I'm really curious as to what other people do to cope with things like this, especially writer's block. I would really like to get rid of it. Even if it isn't something you've done but rather something that happened, I would be very appreciative if you'd tell me about it. What I've been able to do so far specifically for the writer's block is to just carry on writing through the teeth of it, look back on and analyse what happened and what it was that upset me and why it might have happened, seeking other people's opinions on the work (e.g. entering it for and presenting it at a conference) and letting time pass. And I started this blog - really. It seemed like having another reason to write and a different audience might help, as it has indeed done.
This isn't the best post I've ever written - in fact, I suspect it's a bit boring; sorry about that - but this is a subject much on my mind at the moment. Back to the word-arranging grind, now.
Unfortunately, I often have writer's block when it comes to submitting work to be graded. This is still a relatively new problem for me. In 2006, I had what can only be called (pathetic as this sounds) a traumatic grading experience. It was the final paper for a class I had been doing very well in. The professor who had previously been quite supportive and quite enthusiastic about the work I had done really did not like my final paper. I, on the assumption that she would like it as much as the rest of my work, was careless about picking up the draft from her in a timely fashion. It was the end of the semester, which is always a very busy time, and so I didn't get it back from her until about six hours before our exam period, during which she had decided we would present and discuss our papers instead of sitting an exam. Clearly, this was not the best decision on my part but I do think that I was reasonably justified in expecting that, on the whole, any comments would be largely positive. What I got instead was a barrage of mixed justified criticism and emotional hogwash. It's not on to accuse someone of being species-ist in a ten page paper; it is acceptable to say that soemthing is too much of an assertion and not enough of an argument.
The difficulty for me was that the argument and the idea behind the paper are objectively good. I have had many good discussions about it, I have even had that very same paper accepted for a conference. That class was the first class I had ever had with that particular professor and over the years I learned more about her. I learned that she (being an arch second-wave feminist) really hates logic and thinks that it can only ever be used to oppress people. My paper was based around a deductive logical argument and contained the word logic in the title. I have learned, particularly from hearing more of her own work, that she is very invested in essential notions about sex and gender and really believes that women (have to) do philosophy in a significantly different way because they are women. My paper was intended to be critical and possibly destructive about essentialist notions of sex and gender. Knowing more about the way she looks at the world, I can see that she must have experienced that paper as a personal attack, designed to oppress her, written by a female student who obviously was a sex traitor for using logic and saying that women are not necessarily different from men. From that point of view, it would have been philosophically coherent for her to react emotionally to my paper, rather than to try to argue against it or be objective about the merits of its content.
I am quite logically convinced that she is in the wrong, that the paper - while far from perfect - is not the fundamentally flawed piece of drivel she tried to make it out to be. However, I only know this and it is hard to convince myself that she was wrong on the level of psychological belief or felt truth. Thus, I continue to have writer's block and it continues to make life hard for me from time to time. Whatever the merits of my paper, it was wrong and unprofessional of her to attack me in that way; I understand now that she felt that I had attacked her and that she was responding in kind BUT I didn't attack her, I attacked an idea and she knows it. She just reacted in an ideological way to what I was saying. She reacted in a way that I believe is a betrayal of the social contract between a teacher and a student, and a way that is an unhelpful disruption of the norms, ethos and mores of a university. If she's that committed to that particular variety of second-wave feminism, then what is she doing teaching at a university? They're definitely and demonstrably tools of male oppression in much the same way as logic! She has a right to her beliefs about the world and the right to act on them and I have a corresponding duty to respect that; however, I have a right to my beliefs about the world and a right to act on them and she has a corresponding duty to respect that!
The whole experience has had some benefit. It really deepened my understanding of how to practise philosophy and how to read another person's work and how to disagree and why philosophers disagree with one another in the way that they do (i.e. respectfully). I am still having a hard time, however, with the writer's block. It has gotten much, much better over the years - so much better. I'm sure it will continue to get easier. It is not, however, gone. When a deadline gets close, I experience a lot of negative stress. It's the kind of stress that comes tinged with self-loathing and self-harm ideation and this makes it very hard for me to work.
On a year to year basis (though not necessarily on a day to day one), I have been on an upward trajectory since I was in hospital a little more than three years ago. Having an accurate diagnosis has helped me to understand what to look for symptom-wise and all that looking has helped me become increasingly familiar and accurate in understanding what's going on with me by what I'm thinking and what I feel, both emotionally and physiologically. This familiarity in turn has given me an increased ability to look after myself well and effectively. I have learned some ways to help myself get over or past various psychological stumbling blocks and how to deal with the stubborn symptoms that are really not under my control. I'm far from perfect at it - the logical possibility of my ever being perfect at it is close to zero - but I'm much better than random and much better than I used to be. This writer's block seems to be one of those things that I have some control over - limited control but susceptible to improvement.
This week, the stress of writing through the self-loathing is pushing me towards the serious kind of moodiness. It will be okay - it will be over soon and then it will be as though it never happened, or so I keep telling myself. Nevertheless, I'll get to go through it again but a bit worse at the end of next month when the final paper is due and I'm going to be job hunting between now and then, which is usually a stressful and rather discouraging activity. I'm also going back to visit the family for a week and this means long haul flying and jet lag which has, historically, set me off mood-wise. That's an unusual number of risk factors and it worries me a bit.
Anyhow, I'm really curious as to what other people do to cope with things like this, especially writer's block. I would really like to get rid of it. Even if it isn't something you've done but rather something that happened, I would be very appreciative if you'd tell me about it. What I've been able to do so far specifically for the writer's block is to just carry on writing through the teeth of it, look back on and analyse what happened and what it was that upset me and why it might have happened, seeking other people's opinions on the work (e.g. entering it for and presenting it at a conference) and letting time pass. And I started this blog - really. It seemed like having another reason to write and a different audience might help, as it has indeed done.
This isn't the best post I've ever written - in fact, I suspect it's a bit boring; sorry about that - but this is a subject much on my mind at the moment. Back to the word-arranging grind, now.
14 June 2010
Gaudeamus Igitur
Exams are over! I'm now allowed to think about whatever I want and read whatever I want and do things that are not studying! Woohoo!
I may even write a real post before too long...
I may even write a real post before too long...
16 March 2010
It's March Already
So, where have I been? Of late, my days have been:
Get up (6.30)
Drink coffee and read the Guardian (I've got it down to 40 minutes now)
Avoid getting dressed for as long as possible because it's so cold
Bus and Central line to Holborn (also takes 40 minutes: it would be great to combine it with the paper but often there doesn't seem to be enough room for my elbows even so no broadsheet reading on the train) (8.30)
Library
More coffee
Seminar (10.00)
Lunch with philosophers who haven't stopped even though the seminar has
Walk twice around Lincoln's Inn Fields (or similar - there are many squares nearby)
Library
Tea in the Common Room and more reading
Write an essay
Lecture (15.00)
Drinking with philosophers who are not able to wait until the seminar to discuss the lecture
Central line and bus home
Put something in the oven, switch on the water heater (20.00 - 21.00)
Sit on the couch, take shoes off and groan for a while
Read
Eat
Wash dishes, fill hot water bottle and have a bath
Read something that isn't a newspaper or philosophy while my hair dries out some
Finish drying hair
Watch whichever inane yet bearable programme I can find on the telly (anything too interesting ends with me staying up too late)
Go to sleep (23.00)
Repeat.
Term ends on Friday.
Get up (6.30)
Drink coffee and read the Guardian (I've got it down to 40 minutes now)
Avoid getting dressed for as long as possible because it's so cold
Bus and Central line to Holborn (also takes 40 minutes: it would be great to combine it with the paper but often there doesn't seem to be enough room for my elbows even so no broadsheet reading on the train) (8.30)
Library
More coffee
Seminar (10.00)
Lunch with philosophers who haven't stopped even though the seminar has
Walk twice around Lincoln's Inn Fields (or similar - there are many squares nearby)
Library
Tea in the Common Room and more reading
Write an essay
Lecture (15.00)
Drinking with philosophers who are not able to wait until the seminar to discuss the lecture
Central line and bus home
Put something in the oven, switch on the water heater (20.00 - 21.00)
Sit on the couch, take shoes off and groan for a while
Read
Eat
Wash dishes, fill hot water bottle and have a bath
Read something that isn't a newspaper or philosophy while my hair dries out some
Finish drying hair
Watch whichever inane yet bearable programme I can find on the telly (anything too interesting ends with me staying up too late)
Go to sleep (23.00)
Repeat.
Term ends on Friday.
06 February 2010
Now What?
I'm feeling pretty good these days on the whole (hurray!) but I don't quite know what to do with myself. Every time my mood changes in the larger sense (not just from having a bad day or a good day) the edges of various solipsistic information about the world show up. It's something like having a piece of paper that has been folded over places, then had the surface written on and then unfolded again, showing blank spots that were always there but previously unseen. It's simultaneously expanding and contracting - there's more paper but there's more blank space.
Now I'm here and I can finish my work in short order and I don't really have enough to fill my days now that it isn't painful to get out of bed. This makes me think I must be doing something wrong because I'm sure that grad students aren't supposed to have free time in such abundance. I could, of course, make myself busy with study. Perhaps I should. I doubt, however, that I shall. That doesn't feel like what's missing. I can't quite identify what's missing. I think I might doubt or fear my own agency. Any ideas? Any similar experiences?
Now I'm here and I can finish my work in short order and I don't really have enough to fill my days now that it isn't painful to get out of bed. This makes me think I must be doing something wrong because I'm sure that grad students aren't supposed to have free time in such abundance. I could, of course, make myself busy with study. Perhaps I should. I doubt, however, that I shall. That doesn't feel like what's missing. I can't quite identify what's missing. I think I might doubt or fear my own agency. Any ideas? Any similar experiences?
29 January 2010
Third Post I've Written This Week But The First Time I've Published Instead of Deleting
It is almost undoubtedly a wanton display of hubris to say this but I think I am getting better at having bipolar disorder. And what do I mean by that? I'm not quite sure.
I think a large part of what I mean is that I don't experience so much conflict about it anymore. Instead of forcing other people or my own actions or external circumstances into awkward positions in order to have an explanation for feeling a certain way. Instead, I'm now able to say to myself that while it is true that I don't like X (and Y and Z), X (even combined with Y and Z) is probably not sufficient cause to make me feel this bad for this long; that it's probably a mood that has descended. It doesn't mean that X or Y or Z isn't actually bothering me - it's a recognition that X and Y and Z are not sufficient.* If I can tell the difference (and I seem to be getting better at it) then I save a lot of energy and a lot of time and a lot of discouragement.
It drives me absolutely up the wall when I feel miserable and the poor people who are kind enough to undertake to talk to me about it shower me with platitudes about tomorrow being another day and that everything will be okay and that this too shall pass and that I'll feel better soon. For a little while this became a bad problem when I would talk to my mother. She wants me to feel better and she says these things in order to be soothing and in order to make me feel better and she needs to be able to say something encouraging. I understand all this but (and again I'm going to blame philosophy) because neither she nor anyone else on earth has any strong or valid knowledge that I (or anyone else) will be all right in the future or feel better at any point (whatever 'better' is supposed to mean in that context), it only makes me more upset when people say these things to me because they aren't grounded in any kind of logic and if I feel that bad, any optimism I might have had has disappeared anyway. My reaction to such statements had, though, gotten to the point of being unfair to my mother, whose intent was certainly never to upset me, so I sat down and tried to think of something to be substituted that would allow her to express her wish to comfort me and would not offend my (overly honed for ordinary conversation) sense of logic. In the end, I came up with 'it won't always feel exactly like this'.
This alternative platitude has worked out well, largely because I can believe it. I might not feel better next week or next month (and I might not feel worse) but I know and can believe that I will not feel exactly the same. The intensity of whatever I'm feeling will alter, its emphasis will shift, my intrusive thoughts will develop variations. I will experience these changes as being better or worse and it is extraordinarily unlikely that I will not experience variation. Internalising this has actually helped. On the nights when it's 3.00am and I haven't been able to sleep and I'm lying in bed feeling horrendously guilty all out of proportion to anything I might have done or failed to do and everything seems completely hopeless and on the verge of falling apart I can tell myself that I'm not going to feel exactly as horribly suffocated by all the wrongness in myself and in the world forever. That perspective is not the new reality of life.
Hopefully that all makes some sort of sense. It's the way I have found out of the totalising meta-narrative that a depressed mood (or a manic mood) imposes. It's a way out that doesn't invalidate the emotional content of my moods - instead of saying that I don't really feel that way, it's a disease, I can say I do really feel that way, it's just not the way I am always going to feel nor is the totality of what I feel.
Anyhow, it has gotten me through the past six weeks, much of which I have spent fairly depressed, relatively unscathed. It helped stop me freaking out and flailing in all directions. It stopped me taking things out unfairly on others and stopped me chucking away things that I value in the long term but temporarily didn't know what to do with. I woke up this morning feel better with my life still intact and I'm happy about that and now I've written a post that I'm not going to immediately delete and I'm reasonably confident that I'll be asleep before three - hurray.
_______________________________________________
*I apologise: I go to a university where they make us read analytic philosophy all the time and then I talk to my fellow students who also read analytic philosophy all the time and at this point, we seem all to have started talking as though we were dictating analytic philosophy. My mind attempts metaphor but all that comes out are more variables.
This is what analytic philosophy looks like:
My writing style isn't quite as bad as all that yet but I imagine it's only a matter of time.
I think a large part of what I mean is that I don't experience so much conflict about it anymore. Instead of forcing other people or my own actions or external circumstances into awkward positions in order to have an explanation for feeling a certain way. Instead, I'm now able to say to myself that while it is true that I don't like X (and Y and Z), X (even combined with Y and Z) is probably not sufficient cause to make me feel this bad for this long; that it's probably a mood that has descended. It doesn't mean that X or Y or Z isn't actually bothering me - it's a recognition that X and Y and Z are not sufficient.* If I can tell the difference (and I seem to be getting better at it) then I save a lot of energy and a lot of time and a lot of discouragement.
It drives me absolutely up the wall when I feel miserable and the poor people who are kind enough to undertake to talk to me about it shower me with platitudes about tomorrow being another day and that everything will be okay and that this too shall pass and that I'll feel better soon. For a little while this became a bad problem when I would talk to my mother. She wants me to feel better and she says these things in order to be soothing and in order to make me feel better and she needs to be able to say something encouraging. I understand all this but (and again I'm going to blame philosophy) because neither she nor anyone else on earth has any strong or valid knowledge that I (or anyone else) will be all right in the future or feel better at any point (whatever 'better' is supposed to mean in that context), it only makes me more upset when people say these things to me because they aren't grounded in any kind of logic and if I feel that bad, any optimism I might have had has disappeared anyway. My reaction to such statements had, though, gotten to the point of being unfair to my mother, whose intent was certainly never to upset me, so I sat down and tried to think of something to be substituted that would allow her to express her wish to comfort me and would not offend my (overly honed for ordinary conversation) sense of logic. In the end, I came up with 'it won't always feel exactly like this'.
This alternative platitude has worked out well, largely because I can believe it. I might not feel better next week or next month (and I might not feel worse) but I know and can believe that I will not feel exactly the same. The intensity of whatever I'm feeling will alter, its emphasis will shift, my intrusive thoughts will develop variations. I will experience these changes as being better or worse and it is extraordinarily unlikely that I will not experience variation. Internalising this has actually helped. On the nights when it's 3.00am and I haven't been able to sleep and I'm lying in bed feeling horrendously guilty all out of proportion to anything I might have done or failed to do and everything seems completely hopeless and on the verge of falling apart I can tell myself that I'm not going to feel exactly as horribly suffocated by all the wrongness in myself and in the world forever. That perspective is not the new reality of life.
Hopefully that all makes some sort of sense. It's the way I have found out of the totalising meta-narrative that a depressed mood (or a manic mood) imposes. It's a way out that doesn't invalidate the emotional content of my moods - instead of saying that I don't really feel that way, it's a disease, I can say I do really feel that way, it's just not the way I am always going to feel nor is the totality of what I feel.
Anyhow, it has gotten me through the past six weeks, much of which I have spent fairly depressed, relatively unscathed. It helped stop me freaking out and flailing in all directions. It stopped me taking things out unfairly on others and stopped me chucking away things that I value in the long term but temporarily didn't know what to do with. I woke up this morning feel better with my life still intact and I'm happy about that and now I've written a post that I'm not going to immediately delete and I'm reasonably confident that I'll be asleep before three - hurray.
_______________________________________________
*I apologise: I go to a university where they make us read analytic philosophy all the time and then I talk to my fellow students who also read analytic philosophy all the time and at this point, we seem all to have started talking as though we were dictating analytic philosophy. My mind attempts metaphor but all that comes out are more variables.
This is what analytic philosophy looks like:
My writing style isn't quite as bad as all that yet but I imagine it's only a matter of time.
10 December 2009
(Possibly Stupid) End of Term Fun
So apparently getting a bit tipsy at the departmental Christmas party and kissing (possibly inappropriately) a girl on whom you have a non-crush cures fear. Who knew?
All right, cure is probably too strong a term. It's more likely that the fear has just been temporarily over-ridden. Or it could be that the fearfulness was more connected to this summer's epic rejection than I realised and that evidence that I am not entirely undesirable has made me feel better about myself. In which case, hurray, because that's something I know I can and will get over.
Okay, so that's probably not it, or at least not most of it. I'll take part.
Whatever will come of this (probably an) indiscretion, I don't know and at the moment, I don't really care. I don't have any particular expectations and it's not likely to descend into irretrievable awkwardness. It was fun. That was enough.
Ah, nice day today and my essay is almost done and I'm not even up late yet and once it is done, that's it for the term and I can get myself a Christmas tree.
All right, cure is probably too strong a term. It's more likely that the fear has just been temporarily over-ridden. Or it could be that the fearfulness was more connected to this summer's epic rejection than I realised and that evidence that I am not entirely undesirable has made me feel better about myself. In which case, hurray, because that's something I know I can and will get over.
Okay, so that's probably not it, or at least not most of it. I'll take part.
Whatever will come of this (probably an) indiscretion, I don't know and at the moment, I don't really care. I don't have any particular expectations and it's not likely to descend into irretrievable awkwardness. It was fun. That was enough.
Ah, nice day today and my essay is almost done and I'm not even up late yet and once it is done, that's it for the term and I can get myself a Christmas tree.
28 October 2009
Overwhelmed and Omphaloskeptic
There are too many things going on! I'm not sure that's really a complaint, as I quite like most of the things. However, they are myriad.
On the things I quite like side are parties; Monday night philosophy drinking; my new armchair that I lugged home in the box from Ikea over one bus route, the Overground and the Underground*, which was a rather painful thing to do but more than compensated for by having someplace to sit that isn't the floor or my bed; a new addition to my collection of favorite philosophy quips**; reading Tristram Shandy and its heroic 18th century punctuation - can't think why I haven't read it before nor why we no longer punctuate like that; all the arguments I've been able to make about infinite regress and infinites by addition; being back in London; the shocking - to me - way I've made friends so quickly and effortlessly; the general thrill of studying interesting things; seeing old friends that I haven't seen for years; reading the Guardian; my new shoes; having a clothes rail and hangers and my newsagent.
On the things that are not things that I like side very much are plumbing faults; owing medium to large amounts of money to various institutions; not having very much money to pay said institutions with and also buy food; that it takes four to six weeks for overseas cheques to clear and mine has been sitting in the bank for four weeks and still hasn't cleared; the reaction of various Anglicans to the Pope's recent announcement; the fact that somehow Rousseau's concept of the general will has gotten stuck in my head in the manner of an annoying song***; the fact that there is so much going on that I seem to miss at least half of it; that my feet hurt so much and so often and with such minimal provocation; the way this overwhelmed-ness makes my head too swimmy to concentrate and think properly; Boris Johnson; the way my hair hasn't gotten used to the hard water yet and sticks up in strange and disturbing ways in the morning; being tired all the time still and a very annoying virus/cold/cough thing that has been plaguing me for a week without actually making me properly ill or allowing me to be properly well****.
Things that I may or may not like (just not sure yet) side are the post-lecture drinking with the professors on Wednesdays because it makes me very nervous but the conversation is good; my inability to feel any emotion, positive or negative, about the ex-girlfriend which is a relief but does not bode well; the amount of Hackney Marshes closed off for development for the Olympics, which development may or may not be a good thing in the end*****; a weird crush I've developed on a new-friend girl at university that is not really a crush but something in between (and therefore not holy, see fourth footnote) that makes me uneasy and implies subtle and delicately strange things about myself and my ethical convictions; the unpredictable bursts of high-burning glittering bliss that might be the early warnings of hypomania - enjoyable when they occur but worrying afterwords and the way this post has footnotes with footnotes.
The world is all the things that are the case, and so it follows that this is the world I'm in for now******.
____________________________________________________________________
*I feel very boring though to be buying furniture from the Ikea. Why did I lug it home? Please see paragraph three, thing I don't like number four.
** "That's not a counter-example, it's a monster." Imre Lakatos
***I wouldn't have thought that philosophical concepts were capable of this but it seems to have happened anyway.
****This virus is a thing partway between being and not being and is therefore not holy (Please see De divina omnipotentia++, a letter written by St. Peter Damian to Pope Gregory. Peter Damian was also in charge of reforming cannon law and is responsible for the formalisation of the law concerning priestly celibacy {somehow, the Catholic Church made it through 1,000 years without actually requiring it} and the regularisation of cannon law concerning homosexual behavior {I know we think of it as identity and not act now generally but it would be inaccurate to say that Damian condemned homosexuality itself rather than homosexual acts} that has led to the modern Catholic condemnation of homosexuality via Aquinas' natural law theory and thus forward to the present day to one of the things I dislike in paragraph three. These later accomplishments and the reasons behind them are discussed in Damian's Liber Gomorrhianus, which is a very interesting read. Impressing pagans is part of the reasoning behind the celibacy dogma and the restriction of the priesthood to men and priestly duties with regard to hearing confession are behind the condemnation of homosexual acts.
*****It was a great thing for my childhood stomping ground, Atlanta, but then look at Calgary - hard to predict.
******Blatantly stolen from the beginning of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
____________________________________________________________________
++ De divina is found in vol. 6 of Damian's Opera Omnia, if memory serves. It's definitely in the Opera Omnia but it might not be vol. 6.
On the things I quite like side are parties; Monday night philosophy drinking; my new armchair that I lugged home in the box from Ikea over one bus route, the Overground and the Underground*, which was a rather painful thing to do but more than compensated for by having someplace to sit that isn't the floor or my bed; a new addition to my collection of favorite philosophy quips**; reading Tristram Shandy and its heroic 18th century punctuation - can't think why I haven't read it before nor why we no longer punctuate like that; all the arguments I've been able to make about infinite regress and infinites by addition; being back in London; the shocking - to me - way I've made friends so quickly and effortlessly; the general thrill of studying interesting things; seeing old friends that I haven't seen for years; reading the Guardian; my new shoes; having a clothes rail and hangers and my newsagent.
On the things that are not things that I like side very much are plumbing faults; owing medium to large amounts of money to various institutions; not having very much money to pay said institutions with and also buy food; that it takes four to six weeks for overseas cheques to clear and mine has been sitting in the bank for four weeks and still hasn't cleared; the reaction of various Anglicans to the Pope's recent announcement; the fact that somehow Rousseau's concept of the general will has gotten stuck in my head in the manner of an annoying song***; the fact that there is so much going on that I seem to miss at least half of it; that my feet hurt so much and so often and with such minimal provocation; the way this overwhelmed-ness makes my head too swimmy to concentrate and think properly; Boris Johnson; the way my hair hasn't gotten used to the hard water yet and sticks up in strange and disturbing ways in the morning; being tired all the time still and a very annoying virus/cold/cough thing that has been plaguing me for a week without actually making me properly ill or allowing me to be properly well****.
Things that I may or may not like (just not sure yet) side are the post-lecture drinking with the professors on Wednesdays because it makes me very nervous but the conversation is good; my inability to feel any emotion, positive or negative, about the ex-girlfriend which is a relief but does not bode well; the amount of Hackney Marshes closed off for development for the Olympics, which development may or may not be a good thing in the end*****; a weird crush I've developed on a new-friend girl at university that is not really a crush but something in between (and therefore not holy, see fourth footnote) that makes me uneasy and implies subtle and delicately strange things about myself and my ethical convictions; the unpredictable bursts of high-burning glittering bliss that might be the early warnings of hypomania - enjoyable when they occur but worrying afterwords and the way this post has footnotes with footnotes.
The world is all the things that are the case, and so it follows that this is the world I'm in for now******.
____________________________________________________________________
*I feel very boring though to be buying furniture from the Ikea. Why did I lug it home? Please see paragraph three, thing I don't like number four.
** "That's not a counter-example, it's a monster." Imre Lakatos
***I wouldn't have thought that philosophical concepts were capable of this but it seems to have happened anyway.
****This virus is a thing partway between being and not being and is therefore not holy (Please see De divina omnipotentia++, a letter written by St. Peter Damian to Pope Gregory. Peter Damian was also in charge of reforming cannon law and is responsible for the formalisation of the law concerning priestly celibacy {somehow, the Catholic Church made it through 1,000 years without actually requiring it} and the regularisation of cannon law concerning homosexual behavior {I know we think of it as identity and not act now generally but it would be inaccurate to say that Damian condemned homosexuality itself rather than homosexual acts} that has led to the modern Catholic condemnation of homosexuality via Aquinas' natural law theory and thus forward to the present day to one of the things I dislike in paragraph three. These later accomplishments and the reasons behind them are discussed in Damian's Liber Gomorrhianus, which is a very interesting read. Impressing pagans is part of the reasoning behind the celibacy dogma and the restriction of the priesthood to men and priestly duties with regard to hearing confession are behind the condemnation of homosexual acts.
*****It was a great thing for my childhood stomping ground, Atlanta, but then look at Calgary - hard to predict.
******Blatantly stolen from the beginning of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
____________________________________________________________________
++ De divina is found in vol. 6 of Damian's Opera Omnia, if memory serves. It's definitely in the Opera Omnia but it might not be vol. 6.
16 October 2009
Feminist Quasi-Rant With a Cheerful Postlude
It has been easy for me to forget what a male dominated academic discipline philosophy is but I can't help noticing just now. Out of all my set texts for all of my seminars, none were written or edited by a woman. Only two out of the fourteen professors in the department are women. In my philosophy of science seminar, I am the only woman. In my further logic seminar, I am one of two women. In my political philosophy seminar, I am one of three women. In my moral philosophy seminar, I am one of five women. Each of these seminars has fifteen people, so in the one with the largest number of women, we still make up only one third of the group. All of this at a university where women outnumber men when the university population is considered in its entirety (53% female, 47% male).
Added to that, there is a man in his mid-forties in philosophy of science who has gone out of his way to tell me what seminars I should be taking instead of philosophy of science and further logic. Apparently, philosophy of science is so specialised and jargon laden that it will be too hard for me to join in and it does not seem to matter how many times I explain to him that I have yet to find any jargon I am not already familiar with in the reading and that I have a prior acquaintance with several of the set texts. I am a philosopher and therefore acquainted with philosophy. Philosophy of science is a subset of philosophy and I am, therefore, sufficiently qualified to study philosophy of science. It is not as though I am trying to teach it!
During undergrad, nine of the ten people in the philosophy department in my year were women, which is unusual but is what I am used to, so all this is a bit of a shock to the system. I don't want to be unfair to my new university: the professors for philosophy of science and further logic are very clearly supportive of my being in there and two very nice PhD students (one who is in phil of sci and logic with me, the other of whom is in phil of sci and public policy) have been very encouraging and supportive, so it is not as though I am suddenly staring down the establishment all alone. Nevertheless, it has all been rather jarring.
I am having a fabulous time though, spending hours each day talking about philosophy and art and politics, and drinking copious amounts of coffee. I thought that I would enjoy being here, I just never thought that I would be quite this happy quite this soon. No objections on my part to that. I didn't think I'd make friends this easily either but lo and behold, I have a party invite for tomorrow night and a date to see the Turner Prize show at the Tate. I don't know what's happened to my life but I like it.
Added to that, there is a man in his mid-forties in philosophy of science who has gone out of his way to tell me what seminars I should be taking instead of philosophy of science and further logic. Apparently, philosophy of science is so specialised and jargon laden that it will be too hard for me to join in and it does not seem to matter how many times I explain to him that I have yet to find any jargon I am not already familiar with in the reading and that I have a prior acquaintance with several of the set texts. I am a philosopher and therefore acquainted with philosophy. Philosophy of science is a subset of philosophy and I am, therefore, sufficiently qualified to study philosophy of science. It is not as though I am trying to teach it!
During undergrad, nine of the ten people in the philosophy department in my year were women, which is unusual but is what I am used to, so all this is a bit of a shock to the system. I don't want to be unfair to my new university: the professors for philosophy of science and further logic are very clearly supportive of my being in there and two very nice PhD students (one who is in phil of sci and logic with me, the other of whom is in phil of sci and public policy) have been very encouraging and supportive, so it is not as though I am suddenly staring down the establishment all alone. Nevertheless, it has all been rather jarring.
I am having a fabulous time though, spending hours each day talking about philosophy and art and politics, and drinking copious amounts of coffee. I thought that I would enjoy being here, I just never thought that I would be quite this happy quite this soon. No objections on my part to that. I didn't think I'd make friends this easily either but lo and behold, I have a party invite for tomorrow night and a date to see the Turner Prize show at the Tate. I don't know what's happened to my life but I like it.
09 October 2009
Ah, the Joy of my Very Own Pay As You Go Mobile Broadband Stick-Thing
Hello!
I am now the happy possessor of a flat of my own in east London, a travelcard, a phone, an NUS card, an interesting seminar schedule, various library cards, a minimally sufficient amount of furniture, and some new friends. Now I just need a bank account (actually harder to get than a visa, believe it or not: UKBA should take lessons) and an iron and I'll be all set.
And some sleep - I can't remember the last time I was this exhausted.
I am now the happy possessor of a flat of my own in east London, a travelcard, a phone, an NUS card, an interesting seminar schedule, various library cards, a minimally sufficient amount of furniture, and some new friends. Now I just need a bank account (actually harder to get than a visa, believe it or not: UKBA should take lessons) and an iron and I'll be all set.
And some sleep - I can't remember the last time I was this exhausted.
26 August 2009
Life Right Now is Bland, Tasteless and Rather Squishy
After two days spent not changing out of my pajamas and/or leaving the house I have had to admit to myself that I am just plain depressed. I don't seem to have any motivation to do anything besides read and knit and I can't seem to make myself stay on top of all the fun governmental paperwork I'm trying to do.
It's hard to tell whether this is 'real' depression in the DSM sense. After all, that's supposed to go on for at least two weeks (yes) with a marked change in appetite (no) and change in sleep patterns (hard to say). The main criterion, in my mind, is whether or not it interferes with your daily life (I can't tell).
I can't tell because I don't have much of a daily life at the moment, not because I'm avoiding people or too panicky to go anywhere, but because all I have to do at the moment is move and work on my visa application. I don't have to be anywhere. There is no particular reason for me to get up at any specific time, nor to get dressed and it's hard for a schedule like that to be interfered with by anything. I do feel melancholy but I think that's more to do with breaking up my home than anything else.
Everything is flat right now and that is the case for me when I'm depressed; that complete lack of desire that makes it almost impossible to choose one thing over another even when there are no particular consequences (such as picking out a book to read).
Another possibility is that I am extremely bored. I rather hope that that's it. Usually, when the semester is over and I have sixteen weeks ahead of me with no requirement to do anything, go anywhere or see anyone, I feel a huge sense of relief. This year, I woke up on that first Monday morning and thought, dammit, I have nowhere to go and no one to see: I took that to indicate that I wasn't depressed.
Right now, I feel like I have some sort of interior dimming, a grey-out of desire and interest. I have plenty of time to do some work (e.g., write a post that has actual content instead of navel-gazing) but I don't seem to be able to summon the concentration or will to do so. And time keeps folding up in strange ways so that some days feel like weeks and some weeks feel like days and two hours will pass agonisingly slowly until I look at the clock and notice that it's three hours later than I thought.
I do hope it's just boredom. I suppose I'll find out soon, when term starts.
It's hard to tell whether this is 'real' depression in the DSM sense. After all, that's supposed to go on for at least two weeks (yes) with a marked change in appetite (no) and change in sleep patterns (hard to say). The main criterion, in my mind, is whether or not it interferes with your daily life (I can't tell).
I can't tell because I don't have much of a daily life at the moment, not because I'm avoiding people or too panicky to go anywhere, but because all I have to do at the moment is move and work on my visa application. I don't have to be anywhere. There is no particular reason for me to get up at any specific time, nor to get dressed and it's hard for a schedule like that to be interfered with by anything. I do feel melancholy but I think that's more to do with breaking up my home than anything else.
Everything is flat right now and that is the case for me when I'm depressed; that complete lack of desire that makes it almost impossible to choose one thing over another even when there are no particular consequences (such as picking out a book to read).
Another possibility is that I am extremely bored. I rather hope that that's it. Usually, when the semester is over and I have sixteen weeks ahead of me with no requirement to do anything, go anywhere or see anyone, I feel a huge sense of relief. This year, I woke up on that first Monday morning and thought, dammit, I have nowhere to go and no one to see: I took that to indicate that I wasn't depressed.
Right now, I feel like I have some sort of interior dimming, a grey-out of desire and interest. I have plenty of time to do some work (e.g., write a post that has actual content instead of navel-gazing) but I don't seem to be able to summon the concentration or will to do so. And time keeps folding up in strange ways so that some days feel like weeks and some weeks feel like days and two hours will pass agonisingly slowly until I look at the clock and notice that it's three hours later than I thought.
I do hope it's just boredom. I suppose I'll find out soon, when term starts.
24 August 2009
The Other Side of Envy
I did tell myself in my strictest tone that I was to go to bed at 10.00, no arguments. It worked last night. Here I am, however, at 1.24am. I finally got really excited about going to London. I've spent a great deal of time with boxes and back pain this week. It's about forty minutes of packing, ten of whinging followed by three hours of sitting on the couch with the hot water bottle.
I have an ink stain on my couch, annoyingly: this is the price I pay for building nest on the couch out of blankets, pillows, my journal, several pens because I can never seem to find the same one twice, books of various kinds, both reference and fiction, my knitting and one or more shawls. I think I shall be quite content to be 65 and eccentric, once I get there. There used to be a cat and a pack of biscuits in there too but those have disappeared (and no, the disappearance of the biscuits was not an easy thing for me either). Somehow, the cap seems to have come off the pen - I only use ink pens for proper writing on paper - and somehow re-attached itself in the night for when I picked it up this morning, the cap was on but the pen was entirely empty and there was this big black mark. Time to get out the rubbing alcohol and old paper and rags. This has nothing to do with anything in particular so I shall return to the subject at hand...
...renewed enthusiasm. During all this knitting, pen covered, hot water bottle couch sitting, I have been watching movies set in London. I didn't start off doing that on purpose: I just picked one and then another one. Now I'm excited and my accent is doing that shifting thing that it does. We have an Oxbridgian Classics professor at the university and whenever I talk to her I get accent shift and then turn tongue-tied because I'm worried she'll think I'm making fun of her.
It's an odd, rather moth-eaten accent that I get living in England. It sounds British to Americans and American to Brits, although I do get the occasional confused inquiry as to whether I hail from Ireland or New Zealand. That mostly happens when I'm drunk. But it shifted enough today that when my sister called, she teased me about it.
She also told me she envied me a little. She hasn't been the only one to say that recently and it feels strange to me. Many of these statements come from people whom I envy. I tend to be envious of their ability to graduate from university in a normal amount of time and to hold down jobs and to settle down and get married and, in spots, enter into the property market. This has something to do with my impending 29th birthday, I'm quite sure, but a few (well, only one out of that list, to be quite honest - going to grad school has put paid to my worry over my ability to graduate with my BA, hold down a job, since I have a good reason not to for a whole year and I have no overwhelming desire to entangle myself with real estate for the time being) still hold. I only have intermittent envy over their mental boringness since I can see two sides to being mentally interesting.
I have spent the vast part of this summer longing for that one thing, as though I were a transplant from the earlier part of the 20th century. I would rather have that than an MSc, at the moment. I've had to sit myself down and, again in my sternest tones, tell myself that if I can't have it, at least a year in London and a good degree is an excellent consolation prize; and really, it is. Still, it's funny to see that while they have what I want, I have something that they want. Even my sister, whose life to me seems so well-run and complete and perfect of its kind and whom I would envy with an ill grace if she weren't such a lovely person and good, beloved sister to me.
I miss my cat. All this taking myself aside and giving my self stern talkings-to is a bit more to the side of madness than it was when he could be involved. Then it was more like being Alice through the looking glass. She had three: a cat and two kittens. Of course, things turned out rather more oddly for her than they have for me.
I find I'm on the other side and it's a strange place to be: it is strange to have something that can be envied, especially something for which I have had an incomplete desire all this unending summer. I don't know what to do with it, nor to think of it. The world has switched sides while I was otherwise occupied and I'm disoriented. That has happened fearfully often this summer but to elaborate would need another post.
Speaking of posts, this is no way to end one but I have been on an anaxiolytic-induced shambly rambling tropos all evening so I shall just give in. Did you know that in both Latin and Greek, fearfulness is such an important and prominent emotion that there are 'fear clauses' in the grammar? They are usually followed by the subjunctive, occasionally the optative in Greek (if I remember rightly - the optative is a verb mood so alien to English that I have always had a great deal of trouble distinguishing it from the subjunctive, not least because the conjugated verbs are spelt nearly exactly the same way) and even, in Greek, make use of a different negation word than most sentences. Now whenever I use 'fear' or 'fearfully' my subconscious shouts 'fear clause!' at me. I wonder whether, by virtue of lacking a formal fear clause, English is braver or just less realistic about human nature.
I have an ink stain on my couch, annoyingly: this is the price I pay for building nest on the couch out of blankets, pillows, my journal, several pens because I can never seem to find the same one twice, books of various kinds, both reference and fiction, my knitting and one or more shawls. I think I shall be quite content to be 65 and eccentric, once I get there. There used to be a cat and a pack of biscuits in there too but those have disappeared (and no, the disappearance of the biscuits was not an easy thing for me either). Somehow, the cap seems to have come off the pen - I only use ink pens for proper writing on paper - and somehow re-attached itself in the night for when I picked it up this morning, the cap was on but the pen was entirely empty and there was this big black mark. Time to get out the rubbing alcohol and old paper and rags. This has nothing to do with anything in particular so I shall return to the subject at hand...
...renewed enthusiasm. During all this knitting, pen covered, hot water bottle couch sitting, I have been watching movies set in London. I didn't start off doing that on purpose: I just picked one and then another one. Now I'm excited and my accent is doing that shifting thing that it does. We have an Oxbridgian Classics professor at the university and whenever I talk to her I get accent shift and then turn tongue-tied because I'm worried she'll think I'm making fun of her.
It's an odd, rather moth-eaten accent that I get living in England. It sounds British to Americans and American to Brits, although I do get the occasional confused inquiry as to whether I hail from Ireland or New Zealand. That mostly happens when I'm drunk. But it shifted enough today that when my sister called, she teased me about it.
She also told me she envied me a little. She hasn't been the only one to say that recently and it feels strange to me. Many of these statements come from people whom I envy. I tend to be envious of their ability to graduate from university in a normal amount of time and to hold down jobs and to settle down and get married and, in spots, enter into the property market. This has something to do with my impending 29th birthday, I'm quite sure, but a few (well, only one out of that list, to be quite honest - going to grad school has put paid to my worry over my ability to graduate with my BA, hold down a job, since I have a good reason not to for a whole year and I have no overwhelming desire to entangle myself with real estate for the time being) still hold. I only have intermittent envy over their mental boringness since I can see two sides to being mentally interesting.
I have spent the vast part of this summer longing for that one thing, as though I were a transplant from the earlier part of the 20th century. I would rather have that than an MSc, at the moment. I've had to sit myself down and, again in my sternest tones, tell myself that if I can't have it, at least a year in London and a good degree is an excellent consolation prize; and really, it is. Still, it's funny to see that while they have what I want, I have something that they want. Even my sister, whose life to me seems so well-run and complete and perfect of its kind and whom I would envy with an ill grace if she weren't such a lovely person and good, beloved sister to me.
I miss my cat. All this taking myself aside and giving my self stern talkings-to is a bit more to the side of madness than it was when he could be involved. Then it was more like being Alice through the looking glass. She had three: a cat and two kittens. Of course, things turned out rather more oddly for her than they have for me.
I find I'm on the other side and it's a strange place to be: it is strange to have something that can be envied, especially something for which I have had an incomplete desire all this unending summer. I don't know what to do with it, nor to think of it. The world has switched sides while I was otherwise occupied and I'm disoriented. That has happened fearfully often this summer but to elaborate would need another post.
Speaking of posts, this is no way to end one but I have been on an anaxiolytic-induced shambly rambling tropos all evening so I shall just give in. Did you know that in both Latin and Greek, fearfulness is such an important and prominent emotion that there are 'fear clauses' in the grammar? They are usually followed by the subjunctive, occasionally the optative in Greek (if I remember rightly - the optative is a verb mood so alien to English that I have always had a great deal of trouble distinguishing it from the subjunctive, not least because the conjugated verbs are spelt nearly exactly the same way) and even, in Greek, make use of a different negation word than most sentences. Now whenever I use 'fear' or 'fearfully' my subconscious shouts 'fear clause!' at me. I wonder whether, by virtue of lacking a formal fear clause, English is braver or just less realistic about human nature.
21 August 2009
Final Run-in With State Run Mental Health Services in North Carolina
For those of you who live in more civilised countries, let me first explain that in the US, state run mental health services are only for the uninsured and poor. In my home state, they were disastrously privatised in 2003 with more or less exactly the results one would expect.
I have been lucky that by pitching battle with them I have managed to stay under the care of a single psychiatrist for about a year and a half. He turned out to be a good one, which is more than I can say for some of his colleagues and co-workers. You can read, if you like, about one specific case worker I had who was worse than useless and more generally about the difficulties of engaging with these people. All of my readers in the UK may feel free to laugh at me but I am really looking forward to having access to the NHS next year. However bad it might be, and it doesn't sound idyllic, I have often found myself agog with envy at various descriptions even of being in hospital (they're allowed outside? they are allowed to go to the shops? they have crisis intervention teams? they have the option to see a therapist, even with a long waiting list?)
That short list of my own incredulity should give you some idea of what it's like here. Am I now a potential target for BNP anti-immigrant attacks for expressing an interest in the NHS? Or will they hold off because I'm white and English-speaking? Oh dear. I can't imagine, though, that anyone would wonder at it if they had to deal with the state of things in this country - or maybe I don't need to imagine it, just read the papers and see what the Republicans have been up to lately. It does seem to me that as I grow saner, the world has gone a bit farther off its rocker.
Anyhow, all I need do now is swing by there to pick up a copy of my chart (that will be interesting to see) to take with me and I'll be done! No more worrying that they will drop low need patients such as myself, no more worrying that the agency I'm currently enrolled with will go bankrupt (as happened last December - it took me six weeks and repeated phone calls that I would not have been able to make had I not been more or less well to get into a new one), no more worrying that I'll get a job only to have to pay for all this myself since most health insurance policies in the US don't cover mental health at all, or, if they do, have a lifetime limit that I would get through in about six months, a year at the outside.
I'm not going to miss this part of life in the US.
I have been lucky that by pitching battle with them I have managed to stay under the care of a single psychiatrist for about a year and a half. He turned out to be a good one, which is more than I can say for some of his colleagues and co-workers. You can read, if you like, about one specific case worker I had who was worse than useless and more generally about the difficulties of engaging with these people. All of my readers in the UK may feel free to laugh at me but I am really looking forward to having access to the NHS next year. However bad it might be, and it doesn't sound idyllic, I have often found myself agog with envy at various descriptions even of being in hospital (they're allowed outside? they are allowed to go to the shops? they have crisis intervention teams? they have the option to see a therapist, even with a long waiting list?)
That short list of my own incredulity should give you some idea of what it's like here. Am I now a potential target for BNP anti-immigrant attacks for expressing an interest in the NHS? Or will they hold off because I'm white and English-speaking? Oh dear. I can't imagine, though, that anyone would wonder at it if they had to deal with the state of things in this country - or maybe I don't need to imagine it, just read the papers and see what the Republicans have been up to lately. It does seem to me that as I grow saner, the world has gone a bit farther off its rocker.
Anyhow, all I need do now is swing by there to pick up a copy of my chart (that will be interesting to see) to take with me and I'll be done! No more worrying that they will drop low need patients such as myself, no more worrying that the agency I'm currently enrolled with will go bankrupt (as happened last December - it took me six weeks and repeated phone calls that I would not have been able to make had I not been more or less well to get into a new one), no more worrying that I'll get a job only to have to pay for all this myself since most health insurance policies in the US don't cover mental health at all, or, if they do, have a lifetime limit that I would get through in about six months, a year at the outside.
I'm not going to miss this part of life in the US.
16 August 2009
Stuck
I keep trying to write a new post but I think I am too mired in quotidianity to write anything sensible. My critical faculties seem to have departed and so I cannot see anything about which to write. There is a distinct lack of significant form. Everything is a sort of mush. A greyish mush.
I'm back in urban Appalachia at the moment, trying to finish the packing. I have hurt my back, however, and have been lying on the couch with the hot water bottle all afternoon instead of getting anything done. I'm finding it very hard to keep still; there are too many anxiety provoking things to think about.
One thing that causes me great difficulty when I'm depressed is not being able to look forward to anything. I should be looking forward to grad school: it's something I have wanted and planned to do for almost five years. I don't seem to be able to muster much enthusiasm for it, nor for any other plan. This has bothered me not a little.
Then, last Sunday, I talked to my sister on the phone. She had just been to the beach, some friends of mine have just been to the beach, others have just gone camping. I have not had what I would consider a proper holiday in many years and I was shot through with discontent and envy on hearing that my sister had been out to the beach. I haven't done anything like that because I haven't been able to afford it or I couldn't get anyone to go with me or there wasn't time or I was too depressed or there was school; or, or, or.
However, I am now in a different position. I have a little money from graduation gifts, I have some time and I'm not depressed. After I get to London, I will have two weeks before term starts and I am going to take myself out to St. Ive's for a few days. I have found a B&B for L30 a night, the train ticket won't be too much if I book it in advance and it doesn't cost much to feed me. I'm going to have three days of walking and thinking and reading and looking at art and just being somewhere that isn't full of associations and sorrow where I won't have to talk to anyone if I don't want to. Three days of time entirely for myself.
This, I cannot wait to do. Of course, to do it, I will have to pack up my belongings, arrange my visa, move and so on. I am very glad to have found something to pin my thoughts on! Now if I could just get my back to stop hurting...
I'm back in urban Appalachia at the moment, trying to finish the packing. I have hurt my back, however, and have been lying on the couch with the hot water bottle all afternoon instead of getting anything done. I'm finding it very hard to keep still; there are too many anxiety provoking things to think about.
One thing that causes me great difficulty when I'm depressed is not being able to look forward to anything. I should be looking forward to grad school: it's something I have wanted and planned to do for almost five years. I don't seem to be able to muster much enthusiasm for it, nor for any other plan. This has bothered me not a little.
Then, last Sunday, I talked to my sister on the phone. She had just been to the beach, some friends of mine have just been to the beach, others have just gone camping. I have not had what I would consider a proper holiday in many years and I was shot through with discontent and envy on hearing that my sister had been out to the beach. I haven't done anything like that because I haven't been able to afford it or I couldn't get anyone to go with me or there wasn't time or I was too depressed or there was school; or, or, or.
However, I am now in a different position. I have a little money from graduation gifts, I have some time and I'm not depressed. After I get to London, I will have two weeks before term starts and I am going to take myself out to St. Ive's for a few days. I have found a B&B for L30 a night, the train ticket won't be too much if I book it in advance and it doesn't cost much to feed me. I'm going to have three days of walking and thinking and reading and looking at art and just being somewhere that isn't full of associations and sorrow where I won't have to talk to anyone if I don't want to. Three days of time entirely for myself.
This, I cannot wait to do. Of course, to do it, I will have to pack up my belongings, arrange my visa, move and so on. I am very glad to have found something to pin my thoughts on! Now if I could just get my back to stop hurting...
09 August 2009
Greetings From Our Nation's Capital
I am up in DC where it will be around 37C tomorrow (100ish F) and humid as only a city built on a drained swamp can be. What can they have been thinking? Philadelphia (the original capital) has much nicer weather, if you ask me.
So far, I have not done much but drag myself out on walks in the heat, ducked into the National Gallery for the sculpture garden, gotten gravel in my shoes and blisters marching around the National Mall and made thick clouds of smoke in the guest room where I sit and worry for most of the day. The pleasant side effect of all this worrying is that it has driven me to reading novels with a speed and concentration I thought I had lost years ago. I'm glad to find I can still read like that, with total absorption.
So far I have made it through 'Mariana' (Monica Dickens), 'Someone At a Distance' (Dorothy Whipple), 'No Fond Return of Love' (Barbara Pym), something else too light for me to name without embarrassment - snobby of me, I acknowledge - and most of 'Persuasion' (Jane Austen). Next in the pile is 'Cheerful Weather for the Wedding', which I bought on the strength of the fact that Virginia Woolf compared the author, Julia Strachey, to Katherine Mansfield.
I have been here four days.
Unfortunately, spending time with the parents has made me more muddled than less about what I ought to do with myself. They are very sweetly concerned about my health but with the result that I am more confused about what course I should follow in the immediate future. Between that and the long wait to hear about what funding I will have for next year, my anxiety, never very well moderated, is assuming operatic proportions. I wish, in my cowardice, that someone more competent could take over my life for the next few weeks, sort everything out and then hand it back over. However, I must do as E.M. Forster has recommended and face both the external and the internal situation bravely. I aim to do better than Lucy Honeychurch; I should like to do as well as Margaret Schlegel.
Tomorrow is church, which always makes me feel better. Sunday is my favorite day of the week. I do wish, though, that my mother's church's new organist would not play everything so slowly. I don't have the breath control to make whole notes (semibreves) last that long. 'Joy to the World' sounded like a dirge at Christmas midnight mass this last year and became slower and more grandiose with each verse. I was gasping by the end of it.
I never meant for this blog to become so personal but I cannot get my mind un-mired from from the Slough of Despond that has made up so much of this summer. We are past Midsummer Night now and it is a relief to think how soon it will be autumn, my favorite season, full of the smell of rotting leaves and gloomy skies.
So far, I have not done much but drag myself out on walks in the heat, ducked into the National Gallery for the sculpture garden, gotten gravel in my shoes and blisters marching around the National Mall and made thick clouds of smoke in the guest room where I sit and worry for most of the day. The pleasant side effect of all this worrying is that it has driven me to reading novels with a speed and concentration I thought I had lost years ago. I'm glad to find I can still read like that, with total absorption.
So far I have made it through 'Mariana' (Monica Dickens), 'Someone At a Distance' (Dorothy Whipple), 'No Fond Return of Love' (Barbara Pym), something else too light for me to name without embarrassment - snobby of me, I acknowledge - and most of 'Persuasion' (Jane Austen). Next in the pile is 'Cheerful Weather for the Wedding', which I bought on the strength of the fact that Virginia Woolf compared the author, Julia Strachey, to Katherine Mansfield.
I have been here four days.
Unfortunately, spending time with the parents has made me more muddled than less about what I ought to do with myself. They are very sweetly concerned about my health but with the result that I am more confused about what course I should follow in the immediate future. Between that and the long wait to hear about what funding I will have for next year, my anxiety, never very well moderated, is assuming operatic proportions. I wish, in my cowardice, that someone more competent could take over my life for the next few weeks, sort everything out and then hand it back over. However, I must do as E.M. Forster has recommended and face both the external and the internal situation bravely. I aim to do better than Lucy Honeychurch; I should like to do as well as Margaret Schlegel.
Tomorrow is church, which always makes me feel better. Sunday is my favorite day of the week. I do wish, though, that my mother's church's new organist would not play everything so slowly. I don't have the breath control to make whole notes (semibreves) last that long. 'Joy to the World' sounded like a dirge at Christmas midnight mass this last year and became slower and more grandiose with each verse. I was gasping by the end of it.
I never meant for this blog to become so personal but I cannot get my mind un-mired from from the Slough of Despond that has made up so much of this summer. We are past Midsummer Night now and it is a relief to think how soon it will be autumn, my favorite season, full of the smell of rotting leaves and gloomy skies.
25 July 2009
This Post Has No Concluding Paragraph
Well, amici mei, I am feeling much better these days. I'm through the worst of the finding money for school, a form for this whole visa application process that I thought would be scary turned out not to be at all bad and will take me about five minutes to fill out and my personal life is no longer in tatters. Hurrah!
I know that this is going to sound obscure and specific simultaneously but I'm just going to say that I'm a lot happier having my third choice than my last choice with respect to my personal life. I don't know that it's really my third choice because I haven't actually undertaken a quantitative ranking but you get the idea. Things being what they are now, it is the best outcome anyone could expect, so I suppose it's my pragmatic first choice.
[I have tried three times now to write a concluding paragraph to this post but it has come out trite and/psycho-babbley each time. I give up! I'm just going to stop here and hope that my writing skills return to me for the next post...]
I know that this is going to sound obscure and specific simultaneously but I'm just going to say that I'm a lot happier having my third choice than my last choice with respect to my personal life. I don't know that it's really my third choice because I haven't actually undertaken a quantitative ranking but you get the idea. Things being what they are now, it is the best outcome anyone could expect, so I suppose it's my pragmatic first choice.
[I have tried three times now to write a concluding paragraph to this post but it has come out trite and/psycho-babbley each time. I give up! I'm just going to stop here and hope that my writing skills return to me for the next post...]
18 July 2009
Like Creeping Damp
As the day when I'll move to my parents and away from dear old urban Appalachia approaches I find that I am losing my mind. I wish I were saying that in the colloquial sense but I am not. Somehow, ending an important relationship, giving up my cat, the prospect of double moving (first to DC, then to London) and dealing with the federal student loan system has frayed my sanity around the edges. Fancy that.
It's rather disappointing. I've been doing so well. Now around 11am and 4pm every day, I find I have to stop whatever I'm doing and lie down for a bit. I'm not much of one for tears but I find myself weeping a little with the slightest provocation - like an emotional incontinence. I feel like a specimen of Victorian female frailty. Perhaps I should go somewhere for my nerves and take a rest-cure...
My mother is going to come down and give me a hand next week. I was hoping not to have to ask her and it worries me a little to ask her (after all, won't that make her secretly hate me?) but something has to give and I'd rather it not be my mind. I need the help. I keep saying out loud - to myself alone and not the cat, alas - 'Yes, if your mother comes to help you she will secretly hate you and take it out of you in other ways.' Put that way, it is risible. My mother never takes anything out on anyone, not even the mean-spirited, gossip-mongering faction of the hospitality committee at her church. If she can forbear them - I can't, it's not even my church and I still almost lost my temper with them - then she can easily bear with me.
It'll be all right once I get up to my parents. I'm just pretty thoroughly uncomfortable, for now.
It's rather disappointing. I've been doing so well. Now around 11am and 4pm every day, I find I have to stop whatever I'm doing and lie down for a bit. I'm not much of one for tears but I find myself weeping a little with the slightest provocation - like an emotional incontinence. I feel like a specimen of Victorian female frailty. Perhaps I should go somewhere for my nerves and take a rest-cure...
My mother is going to come down and give me a hand next week. I was hoping not to have to ask her and it worries me a little to ask her (after all, won't that make her secretly hate me?) but something has to give and I'd rather it not be my mind. I need the help. I keep saying out loud - to myself alone and not the cat, alas - 'Yes, if your mother comes to help you she will secretly hate you and take it out of you in other ways.' Put that way, it is risible. My mother never takes anything out on anyone, not even the mean-spirited, gossip-mongering faction of the hospitality committee at her church. If she can forbear them - I can't, it's not even my church and I still almost lost my temper with them - then she can easily bear with me.
It'll be all right once I get up to my parents. I'm just pretty thoroughly uncomfortable, for now.
13 July 2009
Memorial to My Cat - Further Evidence That I Am Indeed a Single Lesbian in Urban Appalachia
Tomorrow my cat goes off to his new home - in rural, rather than urban, Appalachia. He has been adopted by one of those classicist friends of mine. I know he shall be quite happy with her but I am going to miss him rather a lot. He is, after all, the best cat that ever was.
The cat is named after Vaslav Nijinski, a ballet dancer with the Ballets Russes in the early 20th century who was famous for his ability to jump and later went mad in Zurich. I saw him be born in a house 2 blocks away from my current apartment back in 2004 and I've had him at home since July 4, 2004. He's the only pet I have ever had apart from some very short term goldfish in elementary school.
Vaslav is an excellent catcher of bugs, which has been very useful since my across the hall neighbors moved away and their cockroach infestation tried to move over to my kitchen (keep in mind that these are Southern cockroaches - 1 to 2 inches long with big black wings that will chase you - not the measlier varieties that I have seen in more northern climes). He has successfully kept them at bay. He likes more than anything else to steal bits of lettuce out of my salads so he gets some as a treat for Sundays. His favorite thing to play with is bamboo stalks, preferably with the leaves still on. He plays fetch, too, with his toy mice and comes running up to the door when I come home. He watches me out of the window when I'm waiting at the bus stop, which is really very cute.
He sheds like nobody's business, though, and that's not so very cute.
He is only a pet, not a child or a friend or a loved one, but I'll still miss him. I just can't afford to bring him with me. I don't know how I'm going to be able to pretend that I'm not talking to myself without Vaslav around. He has been very patient with my ramblings over the years and truly a prince among cats.
The cat is named after Vaslav Nijinski, a ballet dancer with the Ballets Russes in the early 20th century who was famous for his ability to jump and later went mad in Zurich. I saw him be born in a house 2 blocks away from my current apartment back in 2004 and I've had him at home since July 4, 2004. He's the only pet I have ever had apart from some very short term goldfish in elementary school.
Vaslav is an excellent catcher of bugs, which has been very useful since my across the hall neighbors moved away and their cockroach infestation tried to move over to my kitchen (keep in mind that these are Southern cockroaches - 1 to 2 inches long with big black wings that will chase you - not the measlier varieties that I have seen in more northern climes). He has successfully kept them at bay. He likes more than anything else to steal bits of lettuce out of my salads so he gets some as a treat for Sundays. His favorite thing to play with is bamboo stalks, preferably with the leaves still on. He plays fetch, too, with his toy mice and comes running up to the door when I come home. He watches me out of the window when I'm waiting at the bus stop, which is really very cute.
He sheds like nobody's business, though, and that's not so very cute.
He is only a pet, not a child or a friend or a loved one, but I'll still miss him. I just can't afford to bring him with me. I don't know how I'm going to be able to pretend that I'm not talking to myself without Vaslav around. He has been very patient with my ramblings over the years and truly a prince among cats.
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