Taking Stock
Consider this some sort of 'State of the Katherine Address,' I guess.
Wednesday night again. We've picked up the house, kind of. I made a good dinner to counteract the foods of the past couple nights (French bistro fare, then a Peking duck feast, both delicious in fact, but you know), scrubbed down the counters, did the dishes in the sink, and even cleaned some paper debris off the surface of my home desk.
(No, this isn't going to be one of those fascinating kinds of blogs. Sorry. I started this bad dude for myself, and you're essentially being exploited to provide the illusion of audience, 'cause I had this idea that direct address would be, somehow, helpful...to me.)
Anyway, right, so I cleaned my desk and made up this spinach/grape tomatoes/pasta/lemon juice/feta/olive oil thing. I drank some of that really strong cranberry juice that Meg and I are liking so much. And I had this feeling of needing or wanting to get organized...
I had a little to-do list for tonight. It said:
1) Write to Eric (done)
2) Blog something for Larry Smith (not, but I have an idea now)
3) Blog something for tmk (I guess that's this)
4) Work on 400 Words site (whatever)
Is that really all? OK. I went to the Greenmarket and bought two small houseplants for my desk at work. I'll re-pot them first. I got two heirloom tomatoes and a cucumber. The sign at the stall said "Revolutionary Tomato" and "Revolutionary Cucumber." Revolutionary! Nothing's ever going to be the same. I also bought a head of romaine lettuce. It isn't revolutionary, but it is enormous and it only cost a dollar.
Then I went by Gimme! Coffee on Lorimer, and bought a pound of Mexico and a pound of Platinum Blonde. Meg is mourning the fact that she can't get Stumptown without paying overnight-mail prices or something every time. We're auditioning new coffees. The lack of good coffee in NYC is really pretty remarkable to me. In this day and age.
So...right. Taking stock and all that.
Here's how things are right now.
When my mother was here visiting a couple of weeks ago, she said this thing to me. She said, "I can see your masters' degree slipping through your fingers!" I promised her that I would go back and get it. I said, out loud, "I'm never going back to Cornell as a student," which doesn't maybe sound like such a radical statement, but is actually kind of a big deal to me.
In theory, it shouldn't be too hard. I was at Cornell for two years, did plenty of coursework, and wrote a handful of seminar papers, at least one of which is theoretically long and stong enough to be defensible as a maters' thesis. In theory, I can make an appointment with my committee, go back there, orally defend the thesis, and the idea is that then they'd bestow on me the masters' degree that I eminently deserve.
In theory. In practice, even thinking about graduate school has been, since I left -- a year ago next month -- a colossal source of mental resistance. I can't do it. I can refer to it flippantly, or sometimes even seriously, in conversation, but actually sitting down and being with the reality of it and the reality of leaving it has been just a failsafe recipe for a lot of unpleasant anxiety effects.
So one of the things on my big to-do list is email my committee and tell them I want my degree now, and I'm ready to burn the possibility-of-coming-back bridge that that would accomplish, and work out with them the best way to do it. It shouldn't be that hard. It won't be that hard. They're probably not actually going to tell me that I'm the worst graduate student ever and that I am a disgrace and a blot on the whole institution of grad-studentdom. But there's part of me that's still really afraid they will. So, right, the concomitant idea is to use this blog as a place to talk about the weirdness, and also to take advantage of the at least theoretical public-ness of this blog to sort of prod myself into actually doing what I need to do.
Right. So that's pretty much item one on the to-do list, or at least it should be.
What else is going on in life right now?
Today actually marks three weeks since I've had a drink. Or, right, "went straightedge," as I took to calling it right before my birthday. Or "purity," as Meg and I took to calling it after it began (and she decided to join up too). It's an experiment, and I've been meaning to blog about it some. Soon.
I've been enjoying my job this week. Another thing I've been meaning to write about, having a job and what that's like.
I'd really like to get back to yoga or something. All of the sitting I do appalls me. But my greatest health and/or lifestyle complaint these days is the effects of looking at a computer screen most of the day (and yes, I realize it's ironic and maybe kind of stupid that I'm here, at home, in my time off...looking at a computer screen). My eyes burn a lot, the little muscles around them get weird and sore, and coming off a long day at work it takes me some time to even feel as though I can focus, both literally and figuratively, on the three-dimensional world again. I don't like that at all. I have ordered a fancy antiglare/anti-radiation screen for my comp. at work, and I'm hoping that will help. Aside from the physical stuff (and it even has a name, "Computer Vision Syndrome" -- thank you, internets!), I am guessing that my concern and annoyance at all the computer-looking is kind of a microcosm or symbol of my feelings about enforced activities in general. Which reminds me that I still want to write that essay or something about my mother telling me about how she "hates being told what to do." It was such a revelation and I still think about it almost every day, a few months later.
400 Words continues apace. I'd like to have a launch party in late August, but at this rate...yeah. Time goes by so fast these days. I guess that's a feature of getting older, right?
I was reading something not long ago; I can't remember what but I think it might be semi-famous. The author was talking about boredom, and how the idea of boredom has become an anathema in modern America, which he finds sad. Boredom, he wrote, is the state in which all creative endeavors begin; in fact, without boredom, we cannot create. I think about that a lot lately, too. Not long ago a high school student, a senior, wrote to me; she wanted to know if I'd swap a copy of her poetry chapbook for a copy of 400 Words. I said yes, and I got her work in the mail earlier this week ("My Word For You Is Light Bulb," by Theodora Ranelli, if you want to know), and not only is it really quite good, but also it reminded me of how amazing high school is and was. It's an incredibly creatively fecund time, and I think that has a lot to do with the intimacy that it allows with boredom. I don't know. You hear a lot about "the institution kid" and stuff, these days, and how kids today are overscheduled, but how they have to be to get ahead, and blah blah blah. Looking back, I'm very glad that my parents don't seem to have felt a need to push in any way. And that my school offered gobs of unstructured-ness. If anything, my life veered a little too much towards the unstructured at times, but I think that was so much better for me than the opposite would have been. Recently, since moving to New York, I find ample occasion (when I can make the time for it, natch) to be nostalgic for a life that included boredom.
Moving on: other plans and items for the future...if I get really brave, maybe soonish I'll do some Zoloft blogging.
For a while there I was getting up and writing and/or exercising before work. Nowadays I seem to prefer to stay up later and sleep in later tangled in the very thin white cotton blanket and the cool, crumply off-white sheets, blown on by the fan, chasing the last little scraps of dreams.
I often feel like I'm running out of time and/or money, or that I would do very well with a bit more of these things.
I'm talking to Eric a lot in the form of long emails. I don't know what is happening. In a way, it's nice; we're talking more and more fankly than ever. In another way...never mind, I had enough of thinking about the other way late last week, and it had this feeling of being both sad and unavoidable. But this is different, this is some kind of limbo. I honestly have no idea what is going to happen. If I had to make a bet. I'd stand there paralyzed. I'd put a chip down on every square. Something.
I spend a lot of time thinking, or doing that thing that is between daydreaming and thinking, about my future here in New York. And that is nice.
Last night after coming home from the Chinatown thing I became very engrossed in something that had come in the mail: a little booklet giving the history of the founding and growth of Microcosm Publishing, written by Joe Biel. Because it was enclosed with a check for the most recent 30 copies of 400 Words I sent him, it made me feel good and buoyant and practically part of something already. 'People do good and unusual things,' it made me think. 'I could do good and unusual things.' And maybe I just will. Not in such a way that I have to feel all antsy about it and like I'm not living up to my potential or something. On days like these, when I'm enjoying my job and thinking how fine and odd it is, how lucky I am to have found it, how the work I do will always bear the imprint of who I am and what I'm about no matter what, I feel like I already am.
Wednesday night again. We've picked up the house, kind of. I made a good dinner to counteract the foods of the past couple nights (French bistro fare, then a Peking duck feast, both delicious in fact, but you know), scrubbed down the counters, did the dishes in the sink, and even cleaned some paper debris off the surface of my home desk.
(No, this isn't going to be one of those fascinating kinds of blogs. Sorry. I started this bad dude for myself, and you're essentially being exploited to provide the illusion of audience, 'cause I had this idea that direct address would be, somehow, helpful...to me.)
Anyway, right, so I cleaned my desk and made up this spinach/grape tomatoes/pasta/lemon juice/feta/olive oil thing. I drank some of that really strong cranberry juice that Meg and I are liking so much. And I had this feeling of needing or wanting to get organized...
I had a little to-do list for tonight. It said:
1) Write to Eric (done)
2) Blog something for Larry Smith (not, but I have an idea now)
3) Blog something for tmk (I guess that's this)
4) Work on 400 Words site (whatever)
Is that really all? OK. I went to the Greenmarket and bought two small houseplants for my desk at work. I'll re-pot them first. I got two heirloom tomatoes and a cucumber. The sign at the stall said "Revolutionary Tomato" and "Revolutionary Cucumber." Revolutionary! Nothing's ever going to be the same. I also bought a head of romaine lettuce. It isn't revolutionary, but it is enormous and it only cost a dollar.
Then I went by Gimme! Coffee on Lorimer, and bought a pound of Mexico and a pound of Platinum Blonde. Meg is mourning the fact that she can't get Stumptown without paying overnight-mail prices or something every time. We're auditioning new coffees. The lack of good coffee in NYC is really pretty remarkable to me. In this day and age.
So...right. Taking stock and all that.
Here's how things are right now.
When my mother was here visiting a couple of weeks ago, she said this thing to me. She said, "I can see your masters' degree slipping through your fingers!" I promised her that I would go back and get it. I said, out loud, "I'm never going back to Cornell as a student," which doesn't maybe sound like such a radical statement, but is actually kind of a big deal to me.
In theory, it shouldn't be too hard. I was at Cornell for two years, did plenty of coursework, and wrote a handful of seminar papers, at least one of which is theoretically long and stong enough to be defensible as a maters' thesis. In theory, I can make an appointment with my committee, go back there, orally defend the thesis, and the idea is that then they'd bestow on me the masters' degree that I eminently deserve.
In theory. In practice, even thinking about graduate school has been, since I left -- a year ago next month -- a colossal source of mental resistance. I can't do it. I can refer to it flippantly, or sometimes even seriously, in conversation, but actually sitting down and being with the reality of it and the reality of leaving it has been just a failsafe recipe for a lot of unpleasant anxiety effects.
So one of the things on my big to-do list is email my committee and tell them I want my degree now, and I'm ready to burn the possibility-of-coming-back bridge that that would accomplish, and work out with them the best way to do it. It shouldn't be that hard. It won't be that hard. They're probably not actually going to tell me that I'm the worst graduate student ever and that I am a disgrace and a blot on the whole institution of grad-studentdom. But there's part of me that's still really afraid they will. So, right, the concomitant idea is to use this blog as a place to talk about the weirdness, and also to take advantage of the at least theoretical public-ness of this blog to sort of prod myself into actually doing what I need to do.
Right. So that's pretty much item one on the to-do list, or at least it should be.
What else is going on in life right now?
Today actually marks three weeks since I've had a drink. Or, right, "went straightedge," as I took to calling it right before my birthday. Or "purity," as Meg and I took to calling it after it began (and she decided to join up too). It's an experiment, and I've been meaning to blog about it some. Soon.
I've been enjoying my job this week. Another thing I've been meaning to write about, having a job and what that's like.
I'd really like to get back to yoga or something. All of the sitting I do appalls me. But my greatest health and/or lifestyle complaint these days is the effects of looking at a computer screen most of the day (and yes, I realize it's ironic and maybe kind of stupid that I'm here, at home, in my time off...looking at a computer screen). My eyes burn a lot, the little muscles around them get weird and sore, and coming off a long day at work it takes me some time to even feel as though I can focus, both literally and figuratively, on the three-dimensional world again. I don't like that at all. I have ordered a fancy antiglare/anti-radiation screen for my comp. at work, and I'm hoping that will help. Aside from the physical stuff (and it even has a name, "Computer Vision Syndrome" -- thank you, internets!), I am guessing that my concern and annoyance at all the computer-looking is kind of a microcosm or symbol of my feelings about enforced activities in general. Which reminds me that I still want to write that essay or something about my mother telling me about how she "hates being told what to do." It was such a revelation and I still think about it almost every day, a few months later.
400 Words continues apace. I'd like to have a launch party in late August, but at this rate...yeah. Time goes by so fast these days. I guess that's a feature of getting older, right?
I was reading something not long ago; I can't remember what but I think it might be semi-famous. The author was talking about boredom, and how the idea of boredom has become an anathema in modern America, which he finds sad. Boredom, he wrote, is the state in which all creative endeavors begin; in fact, without boredom, we cannot create. I think about that a lot lately, too. Not long ago a high school student, a senior, wrote to me; she wanted to know if I'd swap a copy of her poetry chapbook for a copy of 400 Words. I said yes, and I got her work in the mail earlier this week ("My Word For You Is Light Bulb," by Theodora Ranelli, if you want to know), and not only is it really quite good, but also it reminded me of how amazing high school is and was. It's an incredibly creatively fecund time, and I think that has a lot to do with the intimacy that it allows with boredom. I don't know. You hear a lot about "the institution kid" and stuff, these days, and how kids today are overscheduled, but how they have to be to get ahead, and blah blah blah. Looking back, I'm very glad that my parents don't seem to have felt a need to push in any way. And that my school offered gobs of unstructured-ness. If anything, my life veered a little too much towards the unstructured at times, but I think that was so much better for me than the opposite would have been. Recently, since moving to New York, I find ample occasion (when I can make the time for it, natch) to be nostalgic for a life that included boredom.
Moving on: other plans and items for the future...if I get really brave, maybe soonish I'll do some Zoloft blogging.
For a while there I was getting up and writing and/or exercising before work. Nowadays I seem to prefer to stay up later and sleep in later tangled in the very thin white cotton blanket and the cool, crumply off-white sheets, blown on by the fan, chasing the last little scraps of dreams.
I often feel like I'm running out of time and/or money, or that I would do very well with a bit more of these things.
I'm talking to Eric a lot in the form of long emails. I don't know what is happening. In a way, it's nice; we're talking more and more fankly than ever. In another way...never mind, I had enough of thinking about the other way late last week, and it had this feeling of being both sad and unavoidable. But this is different, this is some kind of limbo. I honestly have no idea what is going to happen. If I had to make a bet. I'd stand there paralyzed. I'd put a chip down on every square. Something.
I spend a lot of time thinking, or doing that thing that is between daydreaming and thinking, about my future here in New York. And that is nice.
Last night after coming home from the Chinatown thing I became very engrossed in something that had come in the mail: a little booklet giving the history of the founding and growth of Microcosm Publishing, written by Joe Biel. Because it was enclosed with a check for the most recent 30 copies of 400 Words I sent him, it made me feel good and buoyant and practically part of something already. 'People do good and unusual things,' it made me think. 'I could do good and unusual things.' And maybe I just will. Not in such a way that I have to feel all antsy about it and like I'm not living up to my potential or something. On days like these, when I'm enjoying my job and thinking how fine and odd it is, how lucky I am to have found it, how the work I do will always bear the imprint of who I am and what I'm about no matter what, I feel like I already am.
posted by katherine | 11:04 PM
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