Depression Is.... (My symptoms)

Depression is…..

- Uncontrollable tears – not sobbing, just tears – whenever you’re alone and sometimes when you’re not.

- Oversensitivity to rejection, real or imagined

o Guilt about feeling rejected

§ Frustration at yourself for feeling guilty about feeling rejected

- Complete lack of appetite

o Nausea when you don’t eat

o Nausea when you do eat

- Physical exhaustion from anything that expends either mental or physical energy

- Attempting to be cheerful when other people are around

o Physical and mental exhaustion at trying to be cheerful

o Resentment that other people won’t understand how hard you’re trying to be cheerful

§ Guilt over feeling resentful

- Uncontrollable annoyance at other people’s cheerfulness or good fortune

o Guilt over feeling annoyed

§ Frustration with yourself for feeling guilty about being annoyed

- Seesawing between insomnia and sleeping fourteen hours per day

- Uncontrollable annoyance or anger over things that are minor or even funny when you’re normal

- The desire to do nothing but stare at the wall, or maybe the TV, for hours

o Guilt that you’re not spending your time being more productive

§ Frustration that even when you try to be productive, things don’t happen the way you want them to

o Flitting from activity to activity trying to find something that will distract you for more than five minutes

Restarting, take 29348

I am lying on my bed, in my pajamas, watching the darkening grey sky that is either a result of the Icelandic volcano or just normal England spring, and it’s 8:30 pm. Why am I in my pajamas at 8:30 pm, you might ask? Well, because this week I started an internship. It’s supposed to be only four days a week, but since this is my first week, I’ve gone in every day – to make myself known, to let myself get to know the project and the people.

It’s a four month internship, so I’ll be there until the end of July. Four months of sitting in an open-plan office, making databases and sending email. I honestly could not be more thrilled. I said, after last fall, that I needed a quiet office job, and that is what I have right now.

Plus, the database I’m currently making is of research case studies from every school in the university. I get to read representative research from every field. How could I not love this? I said in an email to my supervisor today that I keep getting distracted from building the database by actually reading the case studies. I keep finding out about research centres that are based here that I had no idea even existed. Like the Centre for Evidence-Based Dermatology, which is actually in the same building as I am.

It’s amazing how hope and energy come back when you have something external to do. I’ve picked up some writing from a “content mill” (where you get paid by pageviews, for the most part), plus this internship, and I’m starting to feel like a productive member of society again. And even though I’ve been fairly tired when I’ve gotten home this week, it’s been the kind of tired that makes me yawn, not the kind of tired that makes me unable to do anything but stare mindlessly at the computer. (Instead, I stare mindfully at the computer. Or something.)

The tiredness also may have something to do with the commute – I’ve walked both ways every day. There is a bus combination that could do it, but honestly with the waiting and the changing it would probably take about as long. And it’s been mostly nice outside. Like I said at the top, the greyness of today is either due to typical English spring or the Iceland volcano that’s pushing an ash plume across the British Isles and northern Europe today. Tuesday afternoon was drizzly, and I probably should have taken the bus, but every other day has been fine or sunny. It takes me just under an hour to get to the campus where I’m working. Home again takes a little bit longer if I stop at the store for some food (even though I really should be eating what I have in the house, by the time I am coming home I am so hungry that I can’t focus on “what do I want to make tonight”). As the weeks go on, I’m sure that I’ll get used to the hours and the walk and the lack of snacking (or manage to snack more) and I’ll be fine. I’m developing some calluses on my feet already from the shoes I’ve been wearing.

I really am excited about the project I’m interning on. It’s sort of a University-wide practice for the research assessment that’s coming up in a couple of years – the guidelines and requirements have changed, and no one really knows what to expect, so it’s probably best that we figure it out before the real thing comes. It manages to satisfy my mild organizational obsession with the database creation and the file-naming, it lets me be in thrall to academia and research (even if it’s not my research) for a little while longer, it lets me work with adults who know what they’re doing, and work on things that I kind of know how to do, and am getting better at every day (even little things like “go to Marie and ask her to do this thing” – that’s something I’m getting better at!)

I’m already not looking forward to (late) August, after this job is over and after my mom goes home. I know that this summer is going to be fantastic, and I won’t want it to end.

Entering my 30th year

364 days to get my “before I’m 30” list done. And instead of doing anything productive on the list, I’m lying on the couch, ill, and watching DVDs. It’s really not that different from what I do during the day, except that I’m slightly feverish and coughing, and therefore allowing myself not to feel guilty about not working on my books and stories. I’m also allowing myself to stay inside all day – normally I force myself outside at least once a day. I did answer the door earlier, so that counts as my fresh air for the day. It’s really too bad, because it was beautiful and warm today. But I am staying in bed until I am well, or at least better.

Overall, it was a pretty good birthday. Apart from the being ill thing, of course. I got lots of birthday wishes on facebook. Some were expected, some were unexpected. All were welcome. I had nice long conversations with some people and watched The Princess Bride with my housemates, who’d never seen it.

The best part about my birthday was that I hadn’t really missed out on any celebrations. My housemates and I all have birthdays within about six weeks of each other, and this year our combined ages add up to 100. So last weekend we had a joint birthday party for the four of us. The theme was 100 Years Under the Sea, because of our birthdays and the Dolphin Paradise. Of course, being a party that my housemate planned, it was a costume/fancy dress party. I just wore a pretty dress and called myself a water nymph. Among the others were a mermaid (housemate), the Titanic (housemate), a scuba diver (friend, won prize for best costume), a mob informer (friend), a sailor (friend), and a disguised merman (friend, won prize for best excuse). It was a great party. Some people got very drunk (not me, I don’t drink to excess anymore if I can avoid it), and I stayed up until half past five talking to one of my housemates. (This is one of the reasons that I am sick.)

Looking back on the last year, it’s been very eventful. I got an MA, I had a fairly active social life, I moved house (from the dorms to an actual house), I had a minor breakdown and actually sought help for it (and got help for it, also unusual), I went back to the States for whirlwind events (my sister’s M.Ed. and my grandfather’s funeral), I won a short story contest, and I continued my almost decade-long quarter-life crisis. I still don’t know what I want to be “when I grow up”, at least not what I want to do to make a living. I still want to write, I still do write, but I need something to keep paying the bills, and teaching is on hold until I get myself mentally stable again.

And I have 364 days to finish my list.

My goals

They're not "New Year's Resolutions," because it's already January 17th. They're not deadlines, because I have a problems sticking to self-imposed deadlines. They're goals. Goals that will hopefully not be too onerous to meet, that are flexible enough to allow for my current schedule and social life (ha), and that should eventually lead to the ever-elusive income. And they are "at least" goals, so I can exceed them if I want to and can.

They are to apply for at least two jobs every day, and to write at least 500 words on something that is not a blog every day. I'm getting better about getting in the habit of writing, and the words are coming more easily, but it's far too easy to blather on for 1100 words about football or something and not make any progress on my long-term plans.

So, those are my goals.

Yeah, just more of me whining

I seem to be at yet another career crossroads. I have been teaching part-time at a school, covering some classes for a teacher who's been ill long-term. I am getting incredibly bored. Some of this has to do with the timetable - it's very sporadic, but just enough that I can't really find another part-time job. Some of it has to do with my general mood - I am incredibly apathetic right now, and it's hard to tell which is causing which. Some of it has to do with the fact that teaching kind of feels like a "been there, done that" - and that worries me. I know I am a good, caring teacher. I'm just no longer sure that I should be.

I have started to take steps to get past it. I still have the employment problem that I don't have a teaching qualification (so, if I stay in teaching, I would either have to stay at private schools or get one, which is the current Plan) but I don't have experience in anything else. I have applied for a couple of internships at my postgraduate university that should help expand my experience and CV. The thing is, though, the school may still need me. It's still very nebulous whether the teacher that I'm covering will be coming back full-time at all, I learned today. I don't want to abandon a school that needs me; I don't want to abandon a job even if it's not ideal when I don't have anything else in the pipeline. But I can't keep going in this limbo - coming in and essentially being at school full-time or nearly full-time when I'm only teaching 1-3 lessons per day [I have been getting to school at 8:30 or so every day, and leaving at 1:30 ish except for days when I need to be there until 4]. If I'm going to stay, I need a more....consolidated timetable. Or a fuller one.

I have to do something to get past this apathy. I have any number of projects bouncing around my head, but I do not have the motivation or energy to work on them, even when I give myself deadlines. I just can't seem to care, and that's not going to help the job search or the productivity at all. I spend my time doing the things that should be done in 'coffee break' times (like, say, blogging. Or checking Google Reader), and not doing the things that I should be taking a break from. And then it's nearly 10 or 11, and because I'm either exhausted or the alarm's going off at 6, I still don't do them. Something needs to change. I need to get my drive back. I need to pull out of this incipient depression (after several days of being relatively okay, I woke up crying again this morning). I need help.

The devil is in the details

The school where I'm temporarily working is having an inspection this week. Everyone's very worried about it. Sometimes I think I should probably be worried about it too, but I just can't make myself care. For one thing, an inspection is supposed to see how things normally run, so there's not really anything different I can do. For another thing, I don't have any administrative responsibilities that they'll be checking. For a third thing, no matter what the outcome of the inspection, I am not really going to be affected. For a fourth thing, I still have the "I'm new" excuse.

I keep running across tiny little things that I have no experience with. Like yesterday, when I told my class to finish our activity for homework, they told me about "homework timetables" and that they're not supposed to have English homework on Mondays or they'd get overloaded. These are the sorts of things that it is good to know. They are also the sorts of things that, if you are used to the system that uses them, you don't think to mention. They are so automatic to the way you work that it doesn't even occur that it's not done or done differently in other places.

I just know that something is Not Right in my life. I believe very strongly that your body/mind/soul tells you when something's wrong and, while nothing seems Wrong right now, something's Not Right either. I need to do something to get back to where I'm 'supposed' to be - the career path where I feel comfortable - not complacent, but comfortable. At least I've stopped crying in the shower every morning - but that doesn't mean that whatever was bringing it on has been solved, just that my mind/body/soul has shut down from dealing with it. Hence the apathy, I suppose.

One clue to this Not Right-ness was Monday afternoon. I felt fine at school, developed a headache on the way home, was home by 2....and was asleep by 2:15. I woke up sometime after 4:30, still with a headache, and was groggy and headachy the rest of the night. The temperature in our house doesn't help, either - our gas bill was higher than we were expecting and higher than we want, so we're trying to conserve. This, of course, means that we do things like bake more and keep the electricity use high, but whatever. We'll get through it somehow.


I think I'm getting burned out from education. Not from me learning - I still want to do a PhD at some point - but just from being in the education bubble. I am quite bored and apathetic right now about being a teacher. While for some people that may make them stricter, for me it lets my classes kind of run amok, which then doesn't do anything to increase my enthusiasm. I want to do something else for a while: it will help me clarify, one way or another, my desire to be a teacher. I still have the problem of have experience in education but qualifications for other things, but I'm working on that. Back to the soul-destroying job hunt I go, I suppose.

A new job and other stuff

I find that my life is a lot more productive when I’m more scheduled. Something about having limited time makes me actually use the time I have.

I just started a new job. It’s part-time, it’s temporary (until Christmas), but it’s an income for now. As long as it gets me through until I apply for my next visa, I’m okay. [Note: the visa will not guarantee me a job afterwards, but should make it a little bit easier, plus to get the visa I need a minimum bank balance so that I can prove that I’m not going to be a drain on UK society.]

The job is a teaching job, which also accomplishes the goal of getting experience in a UK school so that I can apply for the GTP (which is an employment-based teacher qualification program). In fact, the head of the department talked to me today about treating this next month as if it were an unofficial GTP. So in addition to teaching classes, I will occasionally observe and be observed (a few times a week, we’re thinking). I am all in favour of this. Anything that makes me a better teacher and gives me a bit of an edge finding another job is a good thing. As an international (non-EU) resident, I face quite a lot of barriers to employment until I get a permanent visa (which will be difficult for me to do without a job).

But anyway, the job. Like I said, it’s part-time, it’s temporary, it’s teaching. It’s a private (independent) school, which is how I’m able to work there actually as a teacher even without qualifications. I’ve taken over some classes for a teacher who’s been ill since August. He’s recovered enough to take back his exam-level classes, but that leaves quite a few classes that he’s not ready for yet. So I’m teaching a class of year 9s and a class of year 10s and I share a class of year 7s. I’m teaching Lord of the Flies to the year 9s and Great Expectations to the year 10s.

It’s been a bit rough. The other teachers are wonderful, and I have no problems with any of them apart from my natural shyness and independence which combined make it difficult for me to offer opinions and ask for help. The fruoghness has come with the kids, especially the older ones. I am the third teacher they’ve had this year, and it’s not even the end of the first term. I am obviously new and unfamiliar with the school’s procedures. And by the end of my first week of working (I started teaching on a Wednesday and the crisis hit last hour on the next Tuesday) they’d pushed me and themselves to a breaking point. Things are better now – they’ve been yelled at, repeatedly, and I have a better idea of what to do and how to handle them – but I’m used to classes who, for the most part, love me, and even if they don’t, they respect my being there and they don’t punch each other out in the middle of my class. (Unless they’re making a YouTube video.) I need to become better at discipline and classroom management with classes that I don’t know, with students that I don’t know, and with systems that I don’t know. If I can’t, I’ll never survive the GTP next year (assuming that I do the GTP next year).

And I do still want to get teacher qualifications – at the very least, it would be nice to have qualifications to match my experience. But I also am still looking for office-type jobs. I can’t help wondering what it would be like to work in an office instead of a school, having set tasks to do and a defined job description that doesn’t necessarily require me to be ‘on’ all day.

And this leads me back to my opening statement. This is a great job, a great school, and may lead to further things next term (details pending). But I’m not busy enough to get things done. There’s always ‘more’ that I could do, of course, but I’m only scheduled to teach a few class hours – or, in this timetable, half-hours – each day. Today, even, I only had one half-hour since my double class was cancelled (the class was doing something else with their form tutor). I was technically done teaching at 9:40 this morning. I stayed, of course, for a quick staff meeting and to at least outline my classes for tomorrow, Monday, and Tuesday – I didn’t go much further for various reasons, including not really having a sense of how much we’ll reasonably get done tomorrow, Monday, and Tuesday, and having no classes until 11:30 tomorrow so I can spend the morning tweaking it, and having a huge block of time Tuesday to do more – and ended up observing a class which, as previously mentioned, is a good thing. The thing is, if I’d had more classes to teach yesterday, I probably would even have gotten more done. Because I wouldn’t have had as much time to ponder what I was going to do, I would have made decisions faster about what to do in my various classes. And probably still gotten the blog posts written and etc. etc. etc. Oh, well. Sigh.

As I was leaving today, I told one of my colleagues that I was done for the day, and she jokingly asked if I wanted to teach her afternoon class instead – I told her that, seriously, if there are days when she’s feeling too overwhelmed by her other stuff and can hand me a lesson plan, I’ll do it. And by the end of the brief conversation, we’d tentatively agreed to team-teach a General Studies unit about the different education systems/experiences in the US and the UK. Yay for more work and more experience!

I really do enjoy all the other teachers in the English department at this school. This school year so far has been incredibly chaotic for them – there’s the teacher I’m covering for who has been ill and is not sure when he’ll be able to come back full time, there’s the head of department who needs leg/hip surgery sometime in the late winter/early spring and has been trying to arrange that as well as take care of the personnel changeover of this fall, there’s the lovely one who had a miscarriage over half-term, there’s the new one who had a minor breakdown last week, there are a couple of part-time people who are wonderful but not in every day….it’s a department in flux but everyone is so nice and so supportive of everyone else.

There’s not a lot else going on in my life. I still miss my ex – one of the hardest things about that terrible Tuesday that I mentioned above was that I wanted to text him and tell him about it, so that he could sympathise and then make me laugh and forget about it – but I couldn’t. Not because I ‘can’t text him’ – because I can, we’re still friends of sorts, I saw him a couple of weeks ago and we’re fine – but because if I had, it would just have been a way for me to try to hang on to the way things were between us and not the way things are, and that’s not healthy.

I have no idea what I’m going to be doing for Christmas. I don’t think I’ll have enough money for a plane ticket to go home, unless one of my parents helps me out, and I don’t know where various family members are going to be for Christmas anyway. Staying here would certainly be easier from both a financial and a bureaucratic perspective. It may be incredibly depressing, though.

Sometimes you need to talk about something else.

Life kind of sucks right now, so I am in avoidance mode so that I am not in constant emotional-wreck mode.

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I was talking online to a friend of mine who is also going through a hard time, and we agreed that one thing that would be helpful when we are going through hard times is to talk about something other than what we are going through. Not ignore the bad things, necessarily, but everyone asks, “How’s it going,” and it’s exhausting to rehash everything over and over, and to dwell on it for too long. So my first message to her today was “I’m here for you if you want to vent/rant/talk about something else entirely.” She appreciated that.

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I have found a way to watch football online. I love football. ‘My’ guys have had a good day, too. By which I mean their names have been mentioned on air. That is exciting for me.

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I finally put up almost all the pictures and things on the walls in my room. It still feels kind of like a dorm room, but I’m sure that once I settle more into the rest of the house, that feeling will ease. I still feel like a student, is part of the problem. Once I get a job of some kind I hope that feeling will fade a little bit.

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Because of the depression/grieving that I’m going through right now, I have all these ideas for ‘things I should do’ (edit the novel, brush up on Latin, write a PhD proposal, etc.) but don’t have the energy or motivation to actually do them. This, of course, adds to my stress and depression. I’m working on it. Job-searching is soul-crushing and I find myself repeatedly refreshing facebook and twitter for about three hours, and then getting annoyed with myself for wasting time. I really should give myself a break. Something will turn up. It always does, somehow.

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Depression/grieving is also exhausting. Even when I haven’t been crying, my eyes feel like I have. Being around other people helps, most of the time, but I can’t count on that for the however many hours I’m awake during the day. I’ve got people-oriented things I can do this next week, at least.

Eighteen months to go.....

The dissertation has been turned in; I’m not completely happy with it, to the point where I almost want to apply for a PhD just to have the external motivation to make it better, but it has been turned in and there’s nothing I can do now but wait and hope that I haven’t disappointed my supervisor and second reader.

Today (September 12) marks eighteen months until my thirtieth birthday. In some notebook somewhere I have a list of ‘things I want to have accomplished before I turn 30’. I should find that list. I know one of the things on it is ‘make a decision about a PhD’….so I give myself eighteen months to decide. Another thing I know was on the list was ‘get the novel into publishable form’. So I have eighteen months to get that done, too. I can’t remember what else was on there, other than ‘be or have been in a long-term relationship’ which is not something I can control in the same way…

What else should be on my list?

My weekend getaway

Saturday afternoon I went down to London for a brief weekend getaway. There were two plans for the weekend: see the production of Arcadia on Saturday night, and go salsa dancing on Sunday night. Everything else was incidental.

I got in uneventfully, checked into the hostel relatively uneventfully although there were some problems with the specifics of which bed I was in, and then went out for a shop/wander. My hostel was literally right up the street from the salsa club for Sunday night, so that worked out nicely for me.

I went to Waterstone’s Piccadilly, because it calms me and because I wanted to check prices on a few things and because what else am I going to do at 5:30 on a Saturday night in London? I restrained myself from buying any more books. I can’t buy any more books until I have an income of some kind. Then I bought some food from the Tesco Express at Trafalgar Square and sat on the grass outside the National Gallery and ate and read and people-watched. Trafalgar Square was packed – not only is the plinth project still going on – although I still find it more interesting as a web feed – but there were also some acrobatics/break-dancing/magic performances going on. There were also a few protests – I saw one guy in a Polska shirt making what I assume will be a YouTube video about the political situation in Iran, and there were some Falun Gong supporters handing out leaflets just past St. Martin-in-the-Fields. I felt a little bit guilty brushing them off, but one person can only care about a certain number of causes before exhausting themselves, and I’d rather support someone I actually know.

I wrote about the performance of Arcadia here. Suffice to say, it deserves every good word that it has gotten, and I have a few new actor crushes.

Back at the hostel, I remembered why I don’t look for hostels first when planning weekends like this one. You can’t beat the price, and when all you need is a bed for the night, it’s fine – but everyone is so young: they’re on a gap year, or just spontaneously travelling, and if they’re not a current student then they’re ‘actually a college grad!’ as one girl smugly said. I know I was the same way when I was 20, 21, 22, 23 – and to some extent still am. Doesn’t mean I can’t mock it when I see it.

I tried to sleep in Sunday morning, since I knew I would be staying up incredibly late. I made it to 9 o’clock, which is not really sleeping in when you don’t go to sleep until 1 or 2 am and are planning on staying up until 6. I had seen a poster on the Tube for an exhibit at the Wellcome Collection about ‘Exquisite Bodies’ – mostly anatomical models: it looked interesting, and I’d never been, so I decided to see if I could find it. The Wellcome Collection is near Euston, so it wasn’t a horribly long walk (I was staying near King’s Cross), and I picked up some food at the train station to have for lunch. The museum was fantastic. The special exhibit was indeed full of anatomical models, quite a lot of which featured pregnancy which reinforced my “ADOPTION!!!!” belief. The rest of the museum was also quite interesting – exhibits from Wellcome’s own collection, one case of which made me want to research and write about death rituals across cultures/time periods. Somehow I wasn’t quite as fascinated by the collection of amputation saws and obstetrical forceps. Then there was a section on different aspects of research that they do – I found the genome stuff quite interesting, malaria less so, but that’s just my personal interests and research. Each section – there were four, I think? Human Genome Project, malaria, obesity, and the body/health – had an area of artistic representation (sculpture, painting, writing, etc.) connected to it. There was one print in the genome section called Twenty Three Pairs by an artist called Andrea Duncan, where she represented the 23 human chromosomes as socks, which I thought was very cool, and a poem in that same section called “To John Donne” that I liked a lot as well. (I should do a Poetry Day again….any suggestions?) Anyway, the point is that if you want a different museum to go to in London – not that there’s any lack of them – The Wellcome Collection is very cool and well-done. Interactive parts that aren’t just for children, as well, which is nice…..

Then I ate my lunch in Green Park and tried to decide what to do next. I ended up walking around the shopping areas, including a browse through Carnaby Street and a return to Waterstone’s Piccadilly where I unexpectedly found out what my absolutely least favourite teacher of all time is doing now. At this point it was mid-afternoon, and I still had several hours before I was meeting people for dancing, so I went to the V&A – my original thought was to go to one of the Proms Concert Music series, but I didn’t want to spend more money than I had to and didn’t want to have to deal with a schedule and whatnot. I may come down some other time in the next few weeks specifically to do one of the Proms. So I went to the V&A instead, and admired the plaster casts of the Plantaganet tombs. Fontevrault is so on my list-of-places-to-visit someday.

There’s not a lot else to do on a Sunday afternoon for an hour or so before meeting people, especially when you’re wandering by yourself, so I went back to the hostel and packed up my stuff and put it in a place that I could grab it easily when I came back in the morning (a good thing as it turned out, since due to the aforementioned confusion over beds, when I came back this morning there was someone sleeping in the bed that I would have collapsed on. But as it was 7am already, and my stuff was all ready to go, I didn’t care so much). Then I wandered through the Russell Square area, talked to my sister (and drained my cellphone battery, oops), and reminisced about early visits to London.

Met my fellow dancers with no major problems, and went to a weekly salsa event that, as it turns out, is at the hotel that we stayed at one of the first times we were in London. Danced, danced, danced….then went to find food which is not easy to do at 10:30 on a Sunday night. We ended up getting a takeaway and eating it in the waiting area of King’s Cross. We also did some impromptu salsa and rueda in the waiting area of King’s Cross, to the amusement of the night staff and people waiting for the last trains. Finally – after about two hours of eating, everyone else drinking and trying to find ways to put off going to the big salsa club, we made it to our – well, my – main destination. Where we stayed until 6 am. There was never a point where I wanted a dance and had to go more than a song to be asked to dance. But, then, some of the fun for me at major salsa events is watching everyone else and admiring how good they are. But still – lots of dancing, lots of new people whose names I’m either never going to remember or never knew in the first place (and a very few for whom that is a Good Thing – my creepy-guy-repellent WAS NOT WORKING. Grinding is not salsa. Grabbing my arse is not an appropriate salsa hold. And kissing my ear before you’ve even made eye contact, without saying a word, IS NEVER OKAY. SHUDDER.) But anyway, I got lots of good dances, some with people that I knew and most with people that I didn’t, and the only dark spot (other than the creepy guys) was the total vanishing of the friend that we’d gone there to meet, sometime during the last song. I hate incomplete evenings like that, without even a chance to say goodbye.

The crew of us that had gone together then went to McDonald’s to fortify for the rest of the day – they were all going to Notting Hill Carnival, but I knew that I would just freak out if I went, so I instead caught the first train back to Nottingham (thank goodness for bank holidays and no off-peak restrictions) where I came home, charged my phone, checked facebook, and slept for a whole three hours. I’m surprised I’m not more tired now, actually. I think I may be able to make it to midnight fairly coherently.

And then it’s back to work for me. I only have a week to whip the dissertation into shape, but after the getaway it’s all seeming more manageable.

Fear of commitment

I apparently have a fear of commitment. I can't make decisions about my life and stick with them. I am constantly wondering, "But what if I did this instead?" or putting off decisions until it's too late to do anything about it.

My latest thing is getting a Ph.D. For years I just assumed that I'd get a Ph.D. eventually. I am good at academics, my parents work in academia, etc., etc. This fall when the application deadline was approaching, I passed on it. I had just barely started the Master's - at least that's what it felt like - and had no idea what area I wanted to work in. Since part of the application process here is a research proposal, and I had none, I passed. After the essays in May - a completely emotionally and mentally draining experience - I told myself that I'd clearly made the right decision, that I couldn't possibly spend the next three years putting myself through that.

Then I started work on the master's dissertation. And the closer I get to the end of it - *insert panic here* - the more I realize how much I enjoy it. The more I can see myself doing something similar, long-term. The more I wish I were going on to do a Ph.D. And I don't know if that's just because I'm nervous about 'what comes next' - the whole job search thing especially - or what. But the thing is, I still enjoy my topic. I'm a little bit bored, because other than the dissertation there's not a lot going on in my life, but I still enjoy my topic. I enjoy finding new things to read about it and I even enjoy the frustration of the writing, trying to figure out what exactly to say and how exactly to say it. (Maybe it's also a sign that non-fiction writing is something I should pursue more intensively than I have been doing....)

I also have been going back and forth about the job search. Obviously I am here in Nottingham for the next while, due to leasing a house here and things like that. And there are really good reasons to stay in this area. But as I look at the job listings, I can't help but be tempted by many other places. I'm almost paralysed by choice. I find myself rationalising looking for jobs in Birmingham and London especially - it's not that far by train, etc. - even though I know all the reasons why I am staying here, and should just stick with it.

I can't escape what-ifs. How would my life be different if I did - or had done - this? What if I'd done something differently in my relationship - would things be different now? What if I found a job in London - would I be happier? What if I decided to pursue a Ph.D. - how would that change my life? I need to find focus.

My dad's visit

My dad came to visit at the beginning of August. It was lovely. We rented a car and were able to go around any number of places that I couldn't or wouldn't have gotten to on my own; we also spent some time just hanging out and trying to understand cricket.

Note: I still do not understand cricket. I understand it a little bit more now than I used to, but I think I need one or both of two things: 1 - to attend a live test match. 2 - a specific player to watch/follow through a game/series.

One of the nice things about my dad being here, and taking me around places, is that it reminds me of some of the things I like about this area of the country: the history. London is the obvious place for history, of course, and god knows I love going to London and going to the museums and turning a corner and seeing, say, the pub that Chaucer frequented (it's in Southwark) or Dickens (it's in the City and is actually quite dark inside) or whatever.

History in the Midlands, at least the history that is packaged for tourists, is much more of the 'normal people' form of history, where 'normal people' often means 'noble people who were active outside of London'. Pre-Industrial Revolution sites are stately homes of landed gentry, not usually royal (there are exceptions); post-Industrial Revolution sites are, you know, focused on the Industrial Revolution and its effects including the rise of the merchant/middle/industrialist class.

Dad suggested going to Newstead Abbey, but I have been there twice in the last ten years, and have less than no desire to go back. The Romantic poets tend to annoy me and I can't stand Byron as a personality. Instead, to satisfy the literary pilgrimage portion of the trip, we went to Eastwood. It made for a nice afternoon trip - we went to the main museum which also had quite a lot of information about mining in the area and daily life for the working class at the time, as well as Lawrence's life, and we went to the birthplace museum, in the house that Lawrence was actually born in. I quite like Lawrence, actually, and think that his writing often gets overshadowed by either the more 'experimental' modernist authors like James Joyce or Virginia Woolf or people like that, or by the obscenity trial about Lady Chatterley's Lover. I really liked Lady Chatterley's Lover. I liked the writing style of Sons and Lovers, although I found the central relationship between Paul and his mother incredibly creepy. I also want to read Women in Love, but haven't gotten to it yet.

We also took a day and drove up to Gainsborough Old Hall. That was fantastic. We found out when we got up there that Gainsborough has a claim to be the place where King Canute 'tried' to stop the tide, so that's really cool in and of itself. The Old Hall, although smaller than other manor houses we've been to and completely surrounded by the town now, is a fantastic museum. The kitchen and banqueting hall area is set up as it would have been in the late fifteenth century, when Richard III visited, and the kitchen especially shows what a working medieval kitchen would have been like. The audio tour gets a touch long at times, but is informative without being boring. Gainsborough Old Hall was also a safe place for the Puritans/'Pilgrim Fathers' before the Dutch exile and journey to America. I can imagine that they do quite a lot there with living history/reenactment events - it's a perfect place for it.

Over the weekend that he was here, we did things slightly closer to home. First we went to Sudbury Hall. The Hall itself is fine - nice, but nothing really extraordinary. The Museum of Childhood, on the other hand, is amazing. A nice mix of display and interactive - including a 'chimney' that kids can climb through to see what it would have been like for chimney sweeps, a Victorian classroom, and a room on storytelling/books/imaginative play. It was a blast. We were there with my godmother and her granddaughters, and another family friend with her husband and mother-in-law. The girls loved the Museum of Childhood, even the older one who's fourteen. (She and I had a lovely squee-ing discussion at the Doctor Who exhibit that was part of the 'pop culture'/'collectibles' exhibit.) The eight-year-old was in heaven. She went through the chimney about ten times. There's also a lake on the estate, with about two dozen swans that we counted, so we got some relaxing "be in nature" time in as well. The other nice thing is that, no matter what, days at my godmother's are always full days with my godmother. If she comes in to Nottingham, then it's lunch and maybe an hour or two of shopping. If I go there, it's "Oh, no, we'd better drive you back because it's after dark now."

The Sunday my dad was here, we went to Chatsworth House. It's one of our favourite places to go - in fact, I had begged off a trip with some friends the week or so before because I knew that my dad would want to go. Chatsworth is so beautiful. The house is currently undergoing quite a bit of restoration, but is still open to visitors, and they have an exhibit inside called "Chatsworth at the Movies" or something like that. Obviously one of their main film connections is The Duchess, but there's also Pride and Prejudice, where Chatsworth is both the interior and the exterior for Pemberley (as it may have been for Austen herself), and an upcoming movie called The Wolfman which I don't really want to see, but might since it features Chatsworth. (...what? That's normal.)

Chatsworth was also hosting a Jaguar car show that day. It was an incredible, welcome coincidence, because car shows are one of the things that my dad and I do together when we can, and we both appreciate Jaguars greatly. It was nice. I miss cars sometimes.

We also wandered through the grounds. Gave up on the maze - we know there's a way in, because we could hear people in the center. We just couldn't figure it out. We wandered around the gardens for a while, just enjoying the views and the fresh air and the fountains and the beauty of the area. I even took a few pictures, which is quite rare for me.

We'd rented a car, as I said, and a GPS system to go with it, because driving on the other side of the road is difficult enough without also having to figure out how exactly to get places. The only time the GPS was a problem was in Gainsborough, where it told us that the Old Hall was at least half a mile away from where it actually was. On the way back from Chatsworth, we turned off the GPS (it wanted us to take the motorway, and traffic was backed up for miles to get there) and managed to find our own way back. Success!

We also did some Nottingham-touristy stuff: The Galleries of Justice and the Caves, both of which now do dramatised tours although I think I preferred the Caves a few years ago when it was an audio tour setup. Also we learned that there aren't really any cybercafes in Nottingham - one up on Mansfield Road, I think they said, and a few computers at the information centre. That's it - at least, that's all that the information centre told us about. (I wonder if that would be a feasible small business idea, or if there are enough wireless access points around to make it unnecessary?)

While my dad was here, we also spent some time just chilling. I read Silks, by Dick Francis (which I reviewed on my new book blog, where you can also find some comments about literary pilgrimages a la our Eastwood trip), we watched The Ashes, we went to two pub quizzes (my normal monthly PGSA one and a commercially-provided one at the carvery attached to the hotel), and we ate takeaways. All in all, a good trip.

Feeling old

In nineteen months I will be thirty. My mind boggles at this fact. Most days I do not feel that I should be closer to thirty than to twenty-five. I look at how people my age are portrayed in the media (TV shows and movies) and think that I have not accomplished anywhere close to what they are shown to have accomplished, in any aspect of my life. I need to stop comparing myself to fictional characters. (I need to stop comparing myself to real characters, too.)

I still don’t completely know what I want to be when I grow up. Right now I’m trying to get back into teaching, but I have the bad habit of wondering – what if I would be happier doing something else? What if I’m just wasting my time waiting for this stuff to get worked out, when really I should be working toward qualifications in something else? Why can’t I just find something and be content with that?

Last weekend was the sesquicentennial celebration of my hometown, which included an all-school reunion, which included my ten-year high school reunion. I can’t believe that it’s been ten years. I still have vivid memories of high school. A decade cannot have passed when I remember it so clearly.

My life is nothing like I thought it would be ten years ago. When I graduated from high school, I thought that I'd go to Luther, get a job, have a relationship, and it would all work out. I never thought that ten years later, I'd still be floundering and drifting, looking for something to spark off some kind of passion within me.

Will I find that passion before I'm thirty? Before my next reunion? I hope so....

Why I don't want to go back to the US

I am so tired of the looks of disbelief and shock when I say that I don’t want to go back to the States when I finish my MA (or, indeed, ever). So. Tired. It all comes back to my general life frustration with people who can’t quite understand that other people have different motivations and desires than they do. Just because you want to go to the States doesn’t mean that I do. And it doesn’t mean that I am weird, or crazy, or misguided because I don’t.

If I went back to the States, I wouldn’t be able to go back to my hometown. There’s nothing explicitly preventing me from going there, other than the job market. The major employer in my hometown is the University, and it is highly unlikely that I would get a job there. Also, I don’t want to. As much as some people I know complain about the lack of things to do in Nottingham, Nottingham is a hotbed of activity compared to my hometown, and everywhere around my hometown. Therefore, if I wanted to get a job, and have any kind of a social life, I would have to move somewhere else. If I stay here, I can stay in a city that I already know with people that I already know.

It would not be out of the realm of possibility to move to, say, Chicago. However, if I moved anywhere other than Chicago (or a city of similar or larger size), I would have to have a car. There is very little public transportation between cities in the US unless you are on the eastern seaboard. If I lived in Chicago or somewhere similar I could probably manage to survive without a car. Anywhere else, I could not. And if I had a car, I would also have to have little things like car insurance and, probably, a parking permit or a garage. If I stay here, I don’t have to deal with a car. I can get around perfectly well, anywhere in the country, without one.

If I moved back to the States, I would have to find somewhere to live. It is possible that I could find a place with an (unknown) roommate, or a sublet, which would be mildly affordable. I would probably need furniture. It is difficult to find a furnished place to rent in the States. At the moment, I don’t own much furniture. I have a few antique things that I have inherited from various relations, but I don’t have things like a bed and mattress. No matter where I went, I would have to buy them. If I stay here, I can (and have) found a furnished place to live.

If I moved back to the States, I would probably have to live in a city where I don’t know anyone, or at best I would only know one or two people. I would have to form an entirely new social group without any of the constructs that normally help people form an entirely new social group. I am an introvert. This would be exceptionally difficult for me. If I stay here, I can stay near my social group and support network.

If I moved back to the States, I would have to buy health insurance. It is possible that I would be able to get a job with a company that provided health insurance of some kind. Even with company health insurance, health care in the US is expensive. If I stay here, I can still use the NHS.

If I moved back to the States, I would have to find a job. No matter where I am in the world, this is going to be difficult. I have degrees in literature. This qualifies me for essentially nothing. I have teaching experience, but no teaching qualifications. If I were to try to become a teacher in the US, I would have to deal with what I consider one of the most misguided, poorly written, and poorly executed forms of education legislation in No Child Left Behind. I would also have to get teaching qualifications, which would also cost money. If I stay here, even though I need a visa in order to stay, I have figured out what I need to do.

Those are most of the reasons why I don’t want to go back to the States right now. But the most important reason is also the hardest to define. I don’t feel like I fit in the US. I fit here. I feel comfortable here. I feel happy here. I have been happier here than I have been anywhere else in the world. My life makes sense here in a way that it never did in the States, and that it only approached in Slovakia.

I just really wish that people would stop treating my decision to stay here as if it were completely incomprehensible. I have reasons. They are good reasons. They work for me. If I wanted to go back to the States, I would have done so after my job in Slovakia. Why is this so hard for other people to accept?

I have tested my limits, and they are here.

Empirical, non-scientific, totally subjective evidence that my headaches are stress-related: I went for a walk today to try and wake up, etc. My headache decreased the further away from my place that I got and increased when I came home. It’s mostly gone now, although the light-headedness and exhaustion is back.

I have been incredibly stressed for the last week or so, which is where the lightheadedness and exhaustion comes from. It turns out that the amount of stress I can handle before having a minor breakdown is just this much. Unfortunately, the stress hasn’t eased (much) and most of the stressful situations aren’t resolved yet. (Two of them have; at least five are ongoing.)

“Afternoon” is not sufficient detail when making plans with me for the next day. Just something to keep in mind. Another thing to keep in mind is that I hate, hate, hate waiting for people. I get stuck in a state of limbo where I can’t do anything, and then I feel like I’ve wasted time, and then I get angry and frustrated.

I haven’t done much of anything today. I will probably regret that later.

Beating my own path

My facebook status right now reads, “in the middle of things, and can’t quite see the path to the end yet.” It’s a feeling that I have a lot. Sometimes it’s reassuring. I try to tell myself that I’m in the middle of, say, a novel, and the (happy) ending is still coming. Right now it’s just overwhelming.

I’m in the middle of the job search. I have applied to nearly twenty different places (mostly schools, for jobs that don’t require teaching qualifications) but haven’t heard back from anywhere, except for a few acknowledgements that they have received my application. I have several websites that I check every couple of days to try to find more places to apply, but everything I’m finding either has an immediate start or is something I’m not qualified to do yet. I can’t do something with an immediate start, since I’m working on my dissertation this summer and working part-time for the International Office as well. I may have to scale back the job applications – or at least the emotional stress of them – until it gets closer to September and I actually can do something with an immediate start. By then, I may need something with an immediate start. I just hope that the things I’m seeing now are still around then.

I’m in the middle of my dissertation research. Objectively, I have plenty of time. The paper’s not due until September. But if I don’t start writing something, I will lose momentum and get distracted by other aspects of the paper and other things in my life. But I keep running across more things that might be relevant, and take a break to find them and think about reading them. This is a normal stage for me of the paper-researching and paper-writing process. I just need to buckle down and get through it.

I’m in the middle of house-hunting. My housemates and I applied two and a half weeks ago for this house that we had totally fallen in love with. The estate agent said they’d be in touch ‘soon.’ We haven’t heard anything yet. My housemates’ lease is up in a month, and we need something we can move into in about three weeks. Things are getting a touch frustrating.

I’m in the middle of planning and writing a presentation for the International Office on student travel in the UK. This is another thing that I just need to sit down and do. I keep getting distracted by the websites and looking up my own stuff. I don’t have the money or the time for a trip somewhere (other than the ones I have already factored in). It shouldn’t take me too long to write the presentation. I just need to do it.

Any one of these things would be manageable if it were on its own. It's all of them happening at the same time - and all being at approximately the same chaotic stage - that is affecting me right now.