so my life continues to evolve

My posting has been slowing, as I've been losing my ability to write. Or maybe I haven't been able to write because I haven't been posting. Or maybe it's just that my mind has gone blank these last few months, and with only fleeting thoughts to occupy it for moments at a time, it's difficult to piece together sentences. Work has been so incredibly boring lately that I often spend the entire weekend trying to shake away the boredom with little success. I have a couple choices of work: repetitive, tedious, rearranging of numbers, or doing background reading so boring that I tend to choose the data-entry-like work. I come home after work completely drained, physically and mentally, that I can only bring myself to draw a hot bath and then attempt to numb away the boredom with a DVD.

one, two, three, weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

On approaching and then passing the one month mark since my last post, I’ve been meaning to post, but couldn’t seem to write. I had known that contentment (or general lack of morose) is bad for writing, but I’m discovering that it’s devastating. Hence my failure to post very often can be taken as a good sign. Or a very bad one. Like when I didn’t write for much of 2006…But things have been peaceful. So relaxed in fact that when I joked to a friend about my aspiring to retirement and he responded that I pretty much am retired except for the one small caveat that I work, I had to agree. Though I can always count on my innate lack of inner peace to keep me blogging.

a benign brain leak

To adhere to my self imposed post-at-least-once-a-month rule (to maintain the illusion that this blog is still active), I attempt to write. Despite my not being in a cynical enough mood to inspire decent writing. Since, well, work has improved. And so have other aspects of my life. The mechanical routine has been broken and fixed, and my faith in mankind restored. And there was even a brief period of excitement when an opportunity to go back to school part time this fall came up. And though it ultimately, and somewhat expectantly, fell through, the set back was minor, since it wasn't something I really wanted to do anyway, and more so, it made me feel smart, valued, and hopeful again that there is more than one path out of the cubicle...

After surviving my second quarter life crisis, just barely two years after the first, I've been determined to cut myself some slack. I take "well" days off from work, and not-so-well days off. I sleep in. I've taken up reading again. Devouring one or two books each week. And when I come home from work, if don't feel like doing anything, I don't. I'll delay making lunch until the morning. And I'll got to work a bit late. I try to develop hobbies, and make time for them, and even when I have lists of over-due things to do, I neglect the lists, and go watch a movie with my DH, or go for a walk, give complimentary photo shoots, spend hours sorting through the photos, and spend time with my family when they come to visit.

It's not that I aspire to be a slacker, but that because I imagine that many of the things I would like to pursue, are circumstantially on hold for now, I'm afraid if I instead devote the energy to a job I don't like and the set routine it demands, I'll crash. Or perhaps it's simply that living in a retirement community, I feel like, if I can't beat them, I may as well join them.

What color is your cubicle?

A trip across the globe provided somewhat of a reprieve from a mechanical routine that was beginning to strip me of any remaining sense of self and worth. But coming back, jet lag exacerbated what I left behind. What I wrote before the trip:

More of the same. Plus some. Every day a rush to get to work, only to count the hours to go home, and then hasten to pull together dinner, lunch for the next day, and other errands so that if I'm lucky I can find some time, an hour or even a few minutes, to read a book, or play with my camera, or take an extra long shower before going to bed... Things become routine, and I don't mind or at least notice for a while. But then I do. Becoming painfully aware that I am working to live (which begs the question of "and living to?"). And with this awareness, each day in the cube becomes increasingly more claustrophobic. And I can't chase the thought that this may be my destiny, for at least a year, probably five or ten, and very possibly twenty or a lifetime...I try not to think about it, and the surprise break in routine, a new obsession with photography, and my now weakened determination to remain positive, help, but not enough to allow me to prevail over the much stronger force of the cubicle draining me of all spirit. Seems a cruel twist of fate that all my dreaming and education and hard work have set me up in a cubicle trap in a far away land of peace, beauty, and geriatric neighbors...

But perhaps if I accept that for now my place is in the cubicle, I can hope of finding a way to counterbalance the lack of job satisfaction in my life, or if nothing else, if I work hard enough at it, maybe I can imagine that my job is something to live for.

devolving* into a small town working girl

Go to work, exercise (on most days), go home, shower, cook, happily greet ddh, eat with dh, gently remind dh about something or other, prepare lunch, go to bed. And when the routine gets unbearable, attempt to get out, only to find that there is nothing to do, or see within 40 miles of where we live (downtown Oxnard, downtown Ventura, and Ventura Harbor, were all horrible disappointments). And then we remember that the original plan when deciding to move to no-where-ville was that a drive to the city on weekends was worthwhile for the convenience of a short commute to school/work all week. So if we're not flying across the country to NY, we drive to a more populated region of the state for a party, to see friends, or for the weekend. And it's once again lovely to come home to peaceful and windy and beautiful Oxfart. And we talk of staying a while. Or at least another few months.

*i.e., the opposite of "evolve."

metamorphosing into a creature of 1984

Week 3 (or 4?) of no real work at work. Aside from the utterly sapless background reading I was assigned, routine installation of software, weekly administrative tasks, and the too infrequent respite of water cooler chats with colleagues, I'm left to my own resources to keep from surrendering to the affliction of ultimate boredom. And I'm failing. I am encapsulated by boredom. It is flowing through my every vein, imprisoning me in a state of mind that takes hours to escape. Numbing me. And stripping me of any semblance of creativity. Or intelligence.

one year

A record low number of blogposts. More to say, yet also less, at least here. Time has definitely picked up from its snail pace of a little more than a year ago. And things have settled, though not everything. And certainly not us. The sentimentalist in me doesn't want to give up the newly-wed status quite yet. In a sense, it's a bit like not wanting to turn a year older on my birthday, though it's different, perhaps because though I don't want the year to end, I'm glad to be moving forward to the next.

worship of youth

A sign you're getting older (or at least think you are) is when it makes your day when people mistaken you for being younger. I used to get this all the time, and I never thought much of it. But today, when a woman mistook me for being much younger, it practically put me in a state of euphoria, perhaps because I haven't gotten this in a long time, leaving me to imagine that I dramatically aged over the last few years..

Conversation with random woman in the hall at work:

Woman: Are you visiting here?
Me: No, I work here.
Woman: Really, are you a intern?
Me: No...
Woman: No? You're not a student?
Me: No, I got my masters in June 2006.
Woman: Oh, wow! Well you look really young, I'd guess 17 or 18...

Daydream Achiever

Procrastination was no doubt the most lasting skill I acquired over my years at the Institute, but it seems that the government is building on that to much more quickly ingrain in me an even more practical skill. Since I started my latest job, day after day, I entertain, torment, and/or bore myself with fictionalizations of reality, memories of the past, romanticisms of the future, and fragments of thoughts, memories, and conversations. It's odd, since I’ve never really been much of a daydreamer. Possibly because I've always thought of myself as a person with a limited imagination, and unless in a bout of obsessiveness, I quickly bore of my thoughts. But lately, daydreaming has become so encapsulating so as to provide with enough distraction that I no longer need the internet to keep me from getting work done. Seems I may just adjust to working for a government conglomerate sooner than I thought I would...

If I write, and no one is reading, is my blog still there?

Picking up, moving, and starting a new job every few months has become practically routine that I'm almost taken aback when people express amazement and/or amusement at my insouciant attitude toward the whole ordeal. But perhaps I expend too much energy obsessing about the little things to be too concerned with possibly more significant things like moving. I've just moved for the 12th time in the last 32 months, and will begin my 4th new job since graduating from school. And reading that Bernard Malamud was more of a listmaker than myself ('My Father Is a Book: A Memoir of Bernard Malamud,' by Janna Malamud Smith),

"He wrote lists all the time on pieces of yellow newsprint, always had one on his desk of "things to do," often neatly subdivided: letters, telephone calls, class planning, social engagements, and so on. They were a preferred way of making order, and it wouldn't have been unlike him to write to soothe unmanageable feelings, to steady himself with words. Years later, close to death, he would attempt to quiet panic about his diseased heart by carefully listing symptoms."

I feel justified in listing my moves here:

1. may 2004 - home, brooklyn, ny
2. june 2004 - hbs housing, boston, ma
3. sept 2004 - house on bigelow, cambridge, ma
4. dec 2005 - s & p sublet, mit, cambridge, ma
5. feb 2005 - warehouse, mit, cambridge, ma
6. sept 2005 - church corner, cambridge, ma
7. june 2006 - home, brooklyn, ny
8. oct 2006 - uws, ny, ny
9. apr 2007 - homeless for 4 weeks
10. may 2007 - westwood, la, ca
11. aug 2007 - valley village, ca
12. feb 2008 - oxnard, ca

the extent of my writing (and reading) these days

Though I hope to find the time to write nonsense again, here or elsewhere, perhaps after we settle into our next, potentially slightly more permanent, temporary dwelling place. Since, though my blogging may seem like a stream of mostly negative balderdash, it often helps me put things in perspective, can occasionally inspire me to convert my cynicism into something slightly more constructive, and well can be thought of as a sort of "list" (to satisfy my need to create lists of nearly everything I can). However, for now, while in a state of disarray, I offer only a sample of the sort of writing I'm doing these days - an email correspondence from this morning following a frantic night of searching for lost items:

subject: contents of the car

the nalgene bottle (my apologies for once again accusing you of possibly leaving it behind - sorry!! i keep doing that...)
your ring (in case you forgot)
the papers i was looking for last night (with the number of that other condo for rent) - so no need to put an ad on craig's list

love,
your somewhat compulsive wife

subject: Re: contents of the car

Actually, I did forget that I put the ring in the car... :-)

Your absent minded husband...