Monday, June 11, 2012

not waving, but--

Today I lost it. Angry, tantrumy, teary mess. 

Two professors emailed me about a teaching possibility for next year. Very reasonably (I thought), I explained to them why this was a completely unworkable, unreasonable idea: I need to focus on finishing my dissertation by January so I can defend in March and graduate in May. I have been telling myself the story of this timeline for months. It has become something of a mantra: chapter 5 August chapter 6 November chapter 1 January revise February defend March graduate May. Teaching full time would force me to revise the mantra and I have been so proud of the mantra: finally I might redeem all that time I wasted, all that privilege squandered. 

I am teaching now and it is all I feared it would be: more work than I have time to do; no idea how well or poorly I am doing; no clue how to prepare or improve; no pleasure or satisfaction or reward. I hate things I am not already very good at and I am not already very good at teaching. The thought of taking it on full time--more accurately, the thought of trying to do so--scares the shit out of me. I am already more lonely than I thought I could be--I who require large doses of solitude, I who can't handle too much social time am overwhelmed by my feelings of isolation and aloneness and insignificance. The thought of taking on such loneliness for years? I lost it. Freaked out completely. Sobby irrational mess. 

The boy says I have to do it. That I can. That it's necessary to try. I knew he would say so. 

To be at all ruffled would be sufficiently irritating. That I have become entirely disheveled, emotionally speaking, is distasteful. I am just the kind of person I despise. 

I will, with red-faced soul, retract my reasonable arguments and try. Or try to try.