Panting to the Finish Line

Wow, what a packed last few days. As I'm typing this, I'm surrounded by a small fort of books--the library's and my own. When I write my papers, I sort of stack them around me and the computer as I use them. I didn't realize how they make me look like I'm under siege until I tried to get out of the book-castle. I don't want to take them back until the very end, just in case I need to make some last minute changes.

I had my interview yesterday. Holy Shitsky what a stressful event. I was interviewed by a committee of four people--I've only ever been interviewed one on one before. I did my homework and came prepared, but I absolutely loathe those personal "performance" events, so I was still nervous. I think I did OK, but honestly it's still one big blur. Hopefully I didn't say "poop" or something else self-defeating. I can only imagine what it's like to interview at MLA. That's where the "real" job interviews are held, at the convention once a year. I was trying to explain the process to Director/Buddy, about how each school takes out a conference room for a certain length of time and sends a panel to interview lots of people in one day. "Sort of like the NFL draft?" She asked. Yes. Pretty much like the draft of the really "good" English grad students.

This Friday I will know whether I made it to the second round. Second round??? I'm starting to feel like I'm on American Idol. I didn't even know there was a second round. I was happily thinking I was done until I got the new set of info at the end of the interview. If I make it, I'll be interviewing with one or more deans on Monday. Holy Shitsky II. This job is a lot more involved than I thought it was. I thought it was some departmental thing, but apparently it's part of a greater university program to try to improve student retention. If I got the job, I'd be one of 8-9 people hand picked to carry out the experiment in his/her field. The realization that I got close enough to interview for something that important hit me pretty hard. Our chair didn't even have to interview with the dean.

The next nine days or so are just packed like crazy. I'll be glad to get through them. They shake down like this:

Wednesday: student conferences, bunch of appointments, class at night (last one, woot!)
Thursday: work all day as hard as I can to get the office back to normal from where Stinky destroyed it. Class at night. Last one ever. Woot.
Friday: last day of teaching, discover whether I made it through to the second round or not, leave immediately for KY Derby, drive all day. Party. Woot.
Saturday: Horsie! Horsie! Horsie!
Sunday: Breakfast and let down of no more horsie, long drive home
Monday: Grade portfolios like mad, potentially meet with dean for second round interview, freak out.
Tuesday: leave for state literacy conference, unfortunately an overnighter in a city that should be fun but just isn't.
Wednesday: All day state literacy conference; contemplate stabbing out own eyeball
Thursday: proctor a prof's final exam at the buttcrack of dawn, give back my own portfolios, work, dinner meeting with tutors, possible 80's themed party at Batmite!'s in celebration of being done with grad school, collapse
Friday: work to try and catch up for having been out of the office, discover whether I got this job or not, choose whether or not to drown my sorrows in what's left of the Patron tequila or whether I celebrate my new success with what's left of the Patron tequila
Saturday: all day strategic planning session for the literacy program; contemplate stabbing out own eyeball
Sunday: and on the 12th day, she rested.

Then, perhaps, the dust will settle. Regardless of what happens with this job, the dust soo needs to settle.

-- Virgil

Last Forced Reading

So, last night's class was the last required reading I'll ever have to do in my life.

It was called, "The Escape; or, A Leap for Freedom."

Irony.

--DV

Tired. But Done. Bitch.

I don't normally divulge when I get done with my graduate work each semester, because I know how frustrating it is to not be finished with your own papers/research and have somebody else running their piehole about how they were done two weeks ago. Makes you want to strangle them. But when JP came into the office and saw me grading a stack of MGRPs, pointed and mockingly laughed at me, well, my etiquette slipped. "Go ahead and laugh," I told him. "You know why? Because this is all I have to do. That's right, I'M DONE." Bitch. The look on his face was glorious. Sort of like biting into an apple that turns out to be a lemon. Serves you right for picking on me. :p

That's right people. Minus a few cosmetic fixes, I'm d.o.n.e. Done with my monstrous seminar paper on Adam Smith and environmental ideological rhetoric. Done with my other paper on ecocriticism in slave narratives. Done grading MGRPs. Done grading all their little stuff. I just have to get through the next week without collapsing and grade portfolios when they come due. Oh, and not lose my flash drive or destroy the data somehow (yes, that nightmare has already started happening). I'm not sure how I managed to put so much pedal to metal. But it worked out well.

Because I get to go to the Kentucky Derby next weekend. Woot. The kids turn in portfolios and thirty minutes later I'm on the road to the Derby. We're going to have a blast again, and I'll take more pictures. I have a different dress this year, and I'm still hat shopping. But I can go without having to worry. My papers are both due the Monday right after Derby weekend. But that's OK now, because I'm done. (Did you hear me yet, JP? DONE.)

On a more positive note, my last therapy session is next week. Dr. Ian says that people don't normally progress through therapy as fast as I have. So I guess I'm doing well. I think it's helped. At least somebody else got to verify the craziness of my life.

Oh, and did I mention I have a job interview this coming Monday? >:D

-- Virgil--mock me again. I dare you.

Let's Get Ready to Rumble!!

Well, my pictures are back from our second annual wrestling tourney. It's our biggest fundraiser for that county's literacy program, and this year we more than doubled our profit on it. I think this can only go up. The wrestlers who come are from a regional group, and they generally fall into one of a few categories: 1) too old to be on TV 2) got cut for being bad (drugs, etc.) 3) got let go because they were no longer needed 4) up-and-comers who *might* make it to the big leagues, if they're very, very lucky 5) people who love to do it but have no shot in hell at being successful on a grander scale because they're, say, 5'7" and the current system prefers you to be at least 6'4". That's pretty much the range of our wrestlers for this event.

I think it's hysterical to go, if only for the people watching factor, which some of my crew engaged in with great delight. One woman was so worked up that the referee wasn't paying enough attention to the cheating bad guy that she ran up to the ring and started beating on it. Security (in the form of a pot bellied man with a black t-shirt) came flying over. Another woman's tween got so excited she had an asthma attack. The wrestlers who come out are usually incredibly hokey and their moves are usually incredibly scripted. They just aren't the kind of gymnasts it takes to make wrestling "moves" look less than planned. Which is even funnier.

This was the first year that Dante got to go to the event. Last year he was in Kentucky. This year he drove up with El Hijo and the crew, and I reserved him a front row seat. As you can see from the outfit below, he came in his luchador mask and a staff "Got Read" shirt (because he figured he could get better access to the wrestlers if they thought he was staff). The wrestlers actually did notice his outfit and were good about asking him "Are you sure you're not part of the show?" Which of course he ate up. Here's some pictures from the event:



His outfit also attracted the local newspaper people, and he made the papers, making him a minor celebrity at school. He got to meet most of the wrestlers, and took pictures with them.


Even though Dante sort of went together with the Masked Assassin, given his luchador mask and decision to also wear red, I have no problems mentioning that this guy was a complete asshole to the kids. Enough to make me say something along the lines of "Come on, honey, he's either had too much or not enough steroids today." Jerk.


This guy, on the other hand, was great. He's "The Lumberjack" and he came into the ring with an axe, which freaked Dante out. He was a hit with the ladies. Dante spent most of the event hoping and dreading that a wrestler would make personal contact with him during the match. When the Maestro's handler grabbed the sign the boy next to him was waving and tore it up, I thought he would piss himself he was so excited and scared. But by the end of the event, he was brave enough to yell "You're a meatball!" at the Maestro. Speaking of said 'Stro, he is a rather...friendly guy. Anything you need, anything at all, just contact him. Here's his card. Seriously. Anything he can help you with at all. You can even call. Anything you want. He hugged me at least six times before and after the event. JP and Batmite! were quite merciless with their teasing about it. When he came out in character during his last match, he walked by me (Dante and I were both on the front row) and winked at me. "Some people have a lot of nerve!" Dante yelled. I thought that was the funniest and most mature thing I've heard him say to date. Here's some pictures of the Stro.



And his sparkley cape:


But the main event of the night was this guy:


He wrestled as "Eugene", a "slow" wrestler who goes berserk if he gets hit in the head too many times. He was recently released from WWE for reasons I'm not sure about. But we got soooo lucky to get him--I believe he was the reason we made as much money as we did. The kids were incredibly excited to see him. He was really popular on TV, and his popularity certainly came through at our event. Some of the others also hopped in the ring with Eugene:


Har. JP, if you want the picture for your own blog, let me know and I'll give it to you. Here's Batmite! and girl-buddy who also reads this blog, but never comments. (Why??):


All in all, it was a great time. For those people like Dante and the adults who still wanted to get into it like Dante, they had a blast. One of those said adults leaned over about halfway through the event and said rather nostalgically, "Man, it's just like being 8 years old again." ???? For the rest of us who would be disturbed highly by that thought, we enjoyed the event itself for the people watching and the fakeness of it all. It was great.

-- Virgil

Working Toward a Solution

I'm obviously an incredible workaholic. That's something that has come out in sessions with Dr. Ian. One of the reasons I came to see him is because I don't have a healthy relationship with free time. I tried living the "life of the mind" when I first graduated college. I worked a small job and tried to spend the chunk of free time I had writing and all those other things. I actually finished an entire collection of short stories--over 20 of them, actually, that need to be edited and reworked. But still, it drove me out of my mind. I also started a business. Sigh. I get jittery with time off, and I feel like I should be doing other things, something more productive with my time than sitting around watching old 1930s movies at 9:00 in the morning. I should be reading the Iliad or something. Even if I've read it before. Go get Sophocles or read the Shakespeare plays I haven't yet read. Or clean up the damned library.

I have exactly three weeks of class left and one week of "finals", which for me just means turning in my own stuff and grading my students' work. After that, no more grad school. Yippy Skippy. My fear is that after a month or two, I'll have crammed all that new time with other projects. It's my habit. I don't know how to just "be" and it feels foreign to me anyway. Now for the couch-psych talk.

The primary reason I work so hard is because validation from work is really the only kind of validation I credit. And the reason it's the only kind of validation I credit is because it was my father's primary judging mechanism for the worth of a person, and I valued him more than any other person on earth. Somebody who worked hard--who tried, no matter what--was a valuable person to him. Likewise to me. And like him, it really didn't matter whether you succeeded; the value was in the effort. He also taught me how to work. He showed me the right way to do things--how to hold equipment, for instance. I remember he used to bring home what he called "secretary work" every now and then for which he'd pay me. I don't even remember what it was, something about sorting papers based on some numbers at the top, but god I loved to do that work. I felt like I was part of the adult world. He taught me how to drive. He taught me all the technical details and he taught me the intangible ones, like diligence and perseverance. If he told you that you'd done a good job, you knew he meant it in every possible sense. I was never prouder than when he said, "I'm proud of you."

Of course I don't have that any more and I haven't had it for a very long time. And though I've had other people tell me they were proud of me (not many, by the way), it doesn't have the same feel to it. My family rarely says it to me, except for my sister, and well, she's my little sister. Our religion rarely endorsed being proud of somebody because A) it was a sin and B) you were never doing enough for Jehovah any way, so what was there to be proud of? Unless you stood up for your beliefs under great adversity. Then you were a hero. Eyeroll. I've had accomplishment after accomplishment, and they just don't do anything for me. I just don't feel anything when I get them. No sense of pride or elation. I feel the same as I did five minutes before I knew I was getting something. I'd like to change that.

But I don't really know how. I like working. The problem is I have a skewed sense of how much work is too much. Dr. Ian and I had a giant debate on the subject last session--he's getting more feisty in our sessions. I'm up for a job this fall that's essentially full time. Maybe about five hours short of full time, but close to that. I'm wanting to keep my other job on top of that, because it's really not any different than the teaching hours I'm working now. In fact, compared to the schedule I'm on this semester, it's actually less work than I'm doing now. He is suggesting I need only the one job. To me, that seems like a big reduction in hours, and I'm scared I'll just cram it full of something else. Might as well get paid for it, if I'm going to do that. So the argument developed to the point where my "homework" is to list all of the bad things that could happen if I only take this upcoming job and don't do both. I think I see where he's going with it, and I hate it when he has a point. I calculated what my average work week looks like right now, including teaching, grad school and my nonprofit job. I'm working 65-70 hours a week. Holy Shitsky. Once grad school is gone, that work week looks like 52 hours a week. You can see how that looks like a big bonus to me, and I can (begrudgingly) see why Dr. Ian thinks that's still too much.

I also have to figure out how to get my sense of validation without pursuing inhuman projects all the time. I don't know how to feel more "empowered" by what I do. I need my daddy to tell me he's proud of me. I've at least figured out that it's a mentor thing. When my favorite prof was in town lecturing, we went out to breakfast (she requested me!); when I explained my project to her, she beamed and said, "Virgil, I'm so proud of you." It was the exact same feeling. So it must have something to do with mentorship. I get a slight charge out of being the mentor and getting to be the one who says "I'm proud of you." When some of my individual students do something fantastic, especially if it's above and beyond their normal lazy selves, I get a good feeling out of telling them how proud I am of them. And they seem to really get genuine benefit from it. That feels good. Not as good, but good.

So I have to figure out what to do with my time if I scale back to working normal people's hours. What the hell do I do that's not "work"? How do I figure out how to have meaningful validation without working myself into a fit? That's your homework. Suggestions, please!

-- Virgil

Bombs Over Beijing

I'm sure that other countries have thought about or tried this, but this news article I found on yahoo made me split my sides: linkidedoodah.

I guess it's the context that cracks me up. Not that Western countries haven't probably considered the idea, but the thought that a totalitarian government has plans to even control and destroy dissident weather just really cracks me up. There's no problem a little fascist coersion with the aid of weaponry can't solve!

Green Stuff

In the whirlwind of having worked the last 8 days straight, I happened to put my head up for a moment and noticed...green stuff. Everything seems to have sprouted overnight. One tree two houses down from me is in full bloom already--it's some weird tree with flowers on it. I keep meaning to ask the neighbors what it is, but that really hasn't made the priority to do list in 3 years. Grass was popping out everywhere. Those yellow bushes were all yellow-y--which I'm highly allergic to, apparently.

I think Spring has finally Sprung.

On the one hand, I'm so glad, because the weather is getting a bit warmer and it feels like "new beginnings" (although that's the name of a little evangelical church I know of, so I hate that phrase). But on the other, I still have four weeks to go, and I would much rather be out in the sun than with my nose in all my books. I need to get a lot done this week, if I'm to stand any chance of finishing well. No real time to stop and smell the roses, even if things are starting to bloom. Sigh.

-- Virgil

Validation, Dammit

Because I got my pics back recently, I'm going back to the teaching award I won recently. Mainly because I need the validation. I think D/B got some different and closer shots of me with the secretary of state, but this will do for now. Here is me getting the award on stage.

And here is me showing it off with my boy. He was proud, and that made me feel pretty good, too. He marched around with it after the ceremony was over. That's the secretary of state behind us--she's a tall drink of water. That's also a big ass plaque.

And here is the reason I worked for this thing. Pics are completely without their permission, of course.

These two in particular were just so sharp in class. The rest were knuckle draggers (with a couple of notable exceptions). But these two just got into it and cared about it. They showed up to see me get the award. Nobody else's students did. I think that say something right there. I got the pictures recently, which was a nice little shot in the arm, given recent events.

-- Award Winning Virgil

It's Spreading

Maybe stress is in the atmosphere? For the past few weeks, my cat Fanny seems to be sharing my stress levels. (She's not otherwise sick or anything, so I think she's just weirded out by me.)

Whenever I go into the kitchen and she's already in there, she'll turn and look at me. And then her tail poofs out to astronomic proportions. She doesn't hiss or seem otherwise upset. In fact, she'll rub my legs. It's as though she's saying, "You're freaked. That freaks me. Whoosh!"

Yesterday she came in the library where I was working on my ginormous paper about Adam Smith and the subversion of nature (how on earth did I manage to pick a topic that was the prof's specialty??). She jumped up on the window sill, turned and looked at me and puked.

She has taken to jumping up on me when I'm sitting down or laying somewhere, letting out what can only be described as a cat war whoop, and then kneading my stomach with her paws for all she's worth. Maybe she's trying to beat the stress out of me.

Apparently yesterday was just to much for kitty. She is normally a very sweet cat, not aggressive, very active. She loves on everyone who comes over. I was walking down the hall from the library to the living room, and she comes flying around the corner and lunges at me--all seven pounds of hell and fury--and wraps around my leg and simply put, tries to take me out. That's the only way it can be explained. She looked like a tiger coming to take down prey. Only in toy form.

I guess she figured she'd had enough, and it was either me or her. I understand completely, kitty.

-- Virgil

Dance, Puppets!

Well, more soul searching again. Read the following angst at your own peril. Or if you hang around with me a lot, for informative bits of self preservation, I guess. I'm at least aware enough to realize when breakdown/destructive behavior is imminent. I don't know how to stop it, but I can totally feel it coming on. Of course it starts with feeling stressed out. That's sort of a normal state of being. What really sets the stage for a problem is when the external things I can't control and the internal things I've set myself up for collide. That tends to happen approximately once every three or four months. I have no idea why there is a quarterly malfunction in my year; that just seems to be how it plays itself out.

So once a quarter, the stress I've put myself in and the stress of things I have no control over meet and create the perfect storm. Stuff I have no control over includes most of my family members, work stress, people like Stinky creating a giant quagmire at work, stuff like that. Messes I have created for myself include things like deadlines for graduate school, not having enough time to do it all, stuff like that. Sure I have no real control over that kind of stuff now. But I certainly had a choice in the beginning whether to take on a bunch of projects (which, I finally figured out part of that mystery; updates later.), and I chose to take them all on knowing there wouldn't be enough hours in the day. So even though a paper deadline isn't of my choosing, being in school was. I'm responsible for that.

This imminent breakdown is the result of the crappy work situation going on right now, the rapidly approaching deadlines of the two last papers I'll ever be forced to do in my life (and which also determine whether I get to graduate this summer or not), the fact that I'm up for two jobs, which is a bit nerve wracking, I'm still not done putting in all that paperwork, and the fact that I'm having relationship stress right now. I'm having the last bit because I don't know how to help with his personal stress and part of me is resentful for even having to deal with it, which isn't fair. I'm certainly not the only person entitled to stress. But it also creates/adds to the ethos within the house, so that home isn't even the place you can come home to anymore and try to hide from all the other stresses.

So now that stress has been established, the second step of my problem kicks in, and I ain't scared to admit it anymore. Because it seems like all the people in my life are freaking out, and as usual, I don't get a turn but am expected to keep running things as normal, I get quite resentful. I can plug along just fine for a while, but when it seems like people aren't trying but they expect me to keep doing, I get really...pissed. On top of that, when I have to start jerking people's strings to make things happen, it really ramps up that feeling of resentfulness. I am quite good at manipulating people. I don't care to admit it. Even though the connotations from that are probably immediately negative, it shouldn't necessarily be that way. I can "handle" D/B in a way that nobody else can, because I understand most of what makes her work; I know what she'll respond to. I'm very good at figuring out what makes people tick. I use that information to help smooth situations over, to make business run more efficiently, to nuance people into doing or trying things they wouldn't have thought of or considered before. Any good human resource manager is a manipulator. Anybody who is a "people-person" is a manipulator. It's just a question of whether they use their powers for good or for evil. But sometimes I get tired of dangling strings. I hate being so goddamn subtle all the time, just because it's good for everybody else. When I get resentful, my capabilities with other people make me start to feel superior to them. I start feeling like a puppet master instead of an engaged friend, or whatever.

I'm at that point now. So stage two has happened already. All that's left is stage three, which I don't talk about much, but here's the breakdown of how it happens. About this time, I start to feel like a caged animal--I can't explain it any better than that. Think of a lion prowling a cage back and forth. That's the way I feel. I need to blow off steam right about now. An opportunity usually offers itself in the form of going out for a while. I don't normally create these opportunities, they're presented to me while I'm in stage two mindsets. As in, "Hey, let's go out and have a few beers." And why not? It's usually towards the weekend. There has usually been a hell of a past two weeks going on. I need a beer and a bitch session. I don't have a lot of play buddies, so it's not like opportunities to go out and do things happen every night for me. I usually try to grab them when they're there (the opportunities, not the play buddies!). And it's not like I get a lot of choices, either, or that there's an alternative plan waiting for me. This pisses me off, too, but that's another blog for another day. Long story short, one beer turns into more beers and the bitch session doesn't blow off steam, it creates rage. So then usually manipulation starts happening again--only it's not in the best interests of all people involved. It's usually destructive. Or potentially so. And I'm very, very good at it. I could create so much drama for myself that I could win my own Tony award. Most of the time I catch myself before serious crap happens. But I'm always afraid that really serious lapse is just around the corner.

And really, it always is, because I feel entitled to my lapses. That's the real problem. I don't want to feel superior to people. I think that's a Very Bad Thing that can only breed trouble. But I can't help the way I feel sometimes. Honestly, it's just a form of running away where literal escape isn't yet possible. Dr. Ian was really pushing me to come up with alternatives so that I can have them in place and not be so susceptible to the knocking a few back and raising hell method I've come to prefer. I couldn't come up with any. This disturbed him, because he thinks I'm pretty close to having a retaliatory reaction. I agree. I just don't know what the answer is.

So I'm keeping really close tabs on me. Looks like I am my own keeper for the time being. When do I get a handler? Because I seriously fucking need one.

-- Virgil