Sleeping on It

I woke up in the middle of the night (4:30a.m.) when the cat in my room knocked over an empty birdcage. The birdcage was okay but my heart took a few minutes to get started again, and then a few minutes after that to start beating normally. Night terrors are really no way to get up in the morning, but it turns out that they are pretty good for keeping you awake after the initial shock. I couldn’t get back to bed, so I made breakfast, took a shower, and drove into school.

The funny thing about the morning class today was that the instructor spent about half of it talking about how wordpress was a such great blogging system for posting your photos. Sure, blogging is great (I’ve done it for four years now), but I think that the instructor oversold it a bit. He seemed to indicate that blogging was a great way to get your personal photos noticed by the general public. Over these four years, I have seen the kinds of hits I get from “the public,” and unless I do something to appear in the papers (like win the lottery), it seems very unlikely that my blog is going to get noticed more than by a handful of people a week, and those people are usually looking for something else.

Tomorrow morning, I go to court. I’ve got a traffic citation ($200!) that I need to get resolved somehow. I am hoping that I can get it reduced significantly because $200 bucks is a lot of money for someone who hardly has any. I was told by a classmate who has gone through the process before that the most the judge can reduce the fine by is 1/3rd, so it is still going to hurt, but hopefully not as much. I’ve never done anything like this before, so it will be interesting to see what happens, but right now, I really need to get to sleep so I can wake up and arrive to court on time.

Drawing upon Thought

Yesterday, I went to the first figure drawing class I am taking this term. I was initially nervous because I had heard that this particular instructor is a little demanding; and also, I felt somewhat nervous because I had been out of practice for some time, the type of classical practice a college art class seems to require. However, towards the end of the class, the instructor wandered over to where I was drawing and commented that my drawing was actually very good, the sort of compliment which makes me slightly embarrassed. I nervously smiled, laughed, and then tried to point out the drawings flaws: the composition wasn't very balanced, the model moved so the back look out of proportion, etc. The instructor countered each one, partly for encouragement.

Compliments, it seems, are always harder for me to take because I am always ready to receive criticism, deserved or not. And of course, criticism is always seems easier to believe, easier for me to mentally support, even if I know it is not necessarily rational. Not rational, just how it is. When I was ten years younger or so, I once overheard someone talking about receiving compliments and that it was generally considered polite to simply say "thank you" and leave it at that, advice which I remembered and took at this occasion.

Despite my various personal insecurities, I am looking forward to this class. It is not very often that I have the time (or, admittedly, the discipline) to explore my art in this way, a not-uncommon problem among artists and fellow art students. Plus, I am hoping to gain a few insights from the instructor about the larger context of the art business and world to somehow become more of a self-starter. I look around at the paintings that hang in the various small-time coffee shops and small galleries and have the thought, perhaps naive, that I could do something similar once I learned the "secret," learned the right techniques, and got introduced to "the scene."

In a connected way, I have been having a lot of thoughts about getting my master's degree in English again, to work towards becoming a college instructor. It is the other area in my life where I seem to have some ability, and have received enough compliments from others, mostly instructors, to make me think that I have serious potential. However, enough major obstacles remain to where these thoughts are not entirely developed: for example, I can't afford much more debt, the competition for those jobs are fierce, and the idea of facing 30 or so people per class is a little daunting, even if the students are all mostly young and have their own worries.

Anyway, these are the types of thoughts I have at night, when I am alone and the thoughts pour in like cool soaking water. I went to bed too early tonight (technically yesterday) because I was tired, so I woke up in the middle of the night and began to write this post. But I can feel the fingers of exhaustion slowly curving around my back muscles and crawling up to my neck. It's time for bed again. When I wake up, I begin work on my scholarship application. It is due by 5:00 p.m. and I still have personal statement to write. I highly doubt that much will come of this application because I already have a undergraduate degree. It is even possible that having that degree will automatically disqualify me for consideration, but there is nothing in the application that says it will for sure and I certainly won't get anything if I don't apply. Time for bed.

Notes about Nothing

It's been quite awhile since I have last posted here. I think that part of the reason is that I'm not sure what to write about anymore because, I guess, that the usual amount of whining I do on here is beginning to wear on even me. How many posts can I write where I talk about my daily difficulties in getting things done, or my being behind in due dates, or whatever?

I could write about 80's television because I spent my childhood devoted to it. I could write about books I have read, music I've heard, or art that I am doing but, the sad fact of the matter is: I am a lump. There, I said it. I am a lump. I've been spending most of my off time playing World of Warcraft, to the point where I am currently a level 57 paladin. The only reason I don't really blog about that is because I am a big enough nerd already; I don't want to put any more nails in that coffin, even though it is a certainty that the nerd question is probably already dead and buried. So, that leaves me with nothing really interesting to say. I'm pretty sure that, at some point, I may be able to turn that around, but right now, things on the interesting front look pretty bleak.

Conditions on the Ground

This morning, I woke up to about three inches of snow on my car. On a normal Tuesday, this would not have been a problem as class starts in the afternoon. By the afternoon, the temperature rises, the snow melts, and the plows have had a chance to go by the house. However, I had an 10:00 a.m. appointment that, clearly, I was not going to make. I gave it the "old college try," by which I mean I attempted to drive on the snow anyway. A few harrowing and unplanned slides in to the opposite lane convinced me that while I was still only a few hundred feet away from the house I should turn back. Utter terror behind the wheel can give one a clarity of mind and decisiveness like nothing else.

The appointment that I missed, a meeting with the college career counselor, wasn't anything that was at the top of my list of things to do this day anyway. However, lately, (as if you couldn't tell from 90% of the other posts on this blog) I have been feeling some tension between my current career path as a graphic designer and my previous career path as a college writing/literature instructor. Even though I am not spending as much time reading Derrida, Lacan, or Barthes as I used to, I find that I still enjoy metaphor and analyzing creative works. (A recent trip to a major art gallery, and the corresponding paper that I had to write about it, helped me see that I am still talented in that regard. Instead of reporting on the mere anatomy of an artwork, doing tasks like identifying its overall color scheme or the describing the various kinds of colors that it used, I spent most of the time analyzing the theme and meaning of the work as a whole.) Anyway, I scheduled this appointment because I had got some advice that indicated seeing a career counselor would help me clarify these questions in some new way I can't yet foresee. I'll have to reschedule tomorrow or Thursday.

Once back inside the house, I settled in to wait things out. I spent most of the morning watching the snow pile up on the outside deck while painting on a school project. The lights went on and off about five times, which wasn't a problem as I was painting by the dining room window. It gave enough natural light to work by. Eventually though, enough snow had melted to where I was able to leave the house and get to school; and, fortunately, after a brief lunch break, I was able to make it to my class on time.

We spent the entirety of today's class learning how to retouch photos. It took quite some time to get through everything the instructor wanted to present. By the end of class, he had assigned a project in which you take an old, black and white photograph that had been ripped into pieces and clumsily glued back together and remove any evidence of rips or similar types of damage. I decided that it would be in my best interest to stay after class and do it right then, which I am glad to say, I finished. There was a lot more that I could catch up at school, but it was late, and I was hungry, so I left. I got home at about 7:00 p.m., which considering how I had worked all day, I felt was fairly long.

From everything I have heard, there is going to be even more snow tomorrow morning. And I've got a morning class then as well, so unlike today, I won't be able to wait around until conditions are more favorable. I am going to hope that it doesn't snow as much as they're saying, force myself into a determined sort of denial. It may only be foolish hope, but it is getting close to the end of the term, and I still have some work I need to catch up on. Less snow clogging up the roads mean more time spent buried in the computer lab working on homework. In any event, tomorrow brings what tomorrow will bring regardless of my wants and needs, so there's not too much use worrying about it. And right now, it's time for bed again.

Cities of the Past

Today, I made another one of my bi-weekly trips to my former college town. Enough said about why. Suffice it to say that, overall, I find I have been inexorably drifting towards a greater personal forgiveness for myself over the things that happened back then, and, gaining a clearer perspective, discovering the ability to go forward without the past unnecessarily holding me back. It seems so easy for me to escape into analysis of what went wrong back then or thoughts about what could have been done differently that I often neglect exerting the effort to simply move on. And while I do think it's good to visit the city of the past and entertain your previous mistakes in order to learn from them, at a certain point, you really do need to pack up your things and leave it behind.

During the later afternoon, I visited the University Bookstore there, the one I used to go to, and bought a 1GB compact flash card for a fifty dollar savings over what I had paid for my other one at the mall. I hadn't really planned on buying one, but I couldn't pass up a price like that. My initial reason for shopping there was to scope out the price and styles of drafting tables; the prices there have been the best I have seen anywhere for drafting tables. However, after much looking, I found that what I saw wasn't exactly what I had in mind. When I was in high school, I had a large, smooth door set up on cinder-blocks as a makeshift desk. And even though such a setup is extraordinarily cheap, something much more likely to appear in dank dorm rooms or depressing bachelor apartments, I must have really enjoyed the space it offered and its low relative height from the floor because I kept thinking how a long door on blocks would probably work way better than anything I could buy. But all of this may be moot since: a) I don't have room for either a long door or a drafting table, and b) I am not sure if having either one would improve my art at all, the only reason to get one.

After looking at the tables, I unconsciously meandered over towards the desktop Mac computers for sale. From everything I have heard, it seems that if I am going to be a serious freelance designer, a mac computer is practically a necessity. The cost of the iMac I found most appealing is a little over a thousand dollars. Add the price of the student version of Adobe Creative Suite to that and you have an overall investment of about two thousand dollars, nearly the same amount I used to get from previous financial aid checks in order to pay rent and buy groceries for three months. Yes, it is quite a lot of money relatively speaking. But, I can also save for it a little at a time I suppose, an idea that goes back to the idea of exerting effort rather than dwelling on obstacles.

In any event, after all the shopping and looking, I drove back to the college in which I am currently enrolled and worked in the Mac lab trying to complete a couple of assignments from the past week. Getting there was a pleasant enough drive in cloudy weather, and the picture above is from the parking lot of the taco bell where I had lunch. As for work in the lab, I may need to go back tomorrow and finish what I started. If all goes well, I am really going to try and post something on my comic blog soon too, maybe on Sunday. It will be interesting to see how the scanner works after a couple of months of neglect. I think it will be fine, but you can never tell with technology, right?

Struggles with Humility

Last night, I dreamt that I was back in my previous college town. I was talking to the last professor I had in graduate school explaining--in detail--the reason why I left and why I had not done well. It was a humbling experience, a little sad too, to recount the litany of failure I felt I had accumulated there, but it was also somewhat cathartic to know that the professor understood on a whole new level than before. (In real life, I had felt she was a bit mean and stubbornly obtuse. To my view, she seemed personally offended I was having problems keeping up, as other professors had not.) The reasons why my performance had been so poor, as I explained it, were not because I did not take the class seriously or was somehow not intelligent enough to do the work. No. Instead, it was an overwhelming amount of personal problems that were constantly pulling me under an invisible tide, one that nearly drowned me. She appeared sympathetic. On her own accord, she looked on the computer to see if I was somehow still "in the system," but perhaps under a slightly different name; maybe there was a paper that she could return to me. She found a name on an e-mail list that might have been a bureaucratic fouled-up version of my own last name resembling something like "shakey." Then, she called over to the Student Association across campus and asked if they could check for any of my unreturned papers. I left her office for the student building where my office used to be. I found my old office on the fourth floor, smaller than before, but more closely packed with current graduate students. Each was asking about where I had gone. They managed to find a couple of my papers, which had been placed in plastic sleeves, and gave them to me. I returned to the lobby before leaving without any fanfare.

I think the dream accurately portrays my struggles lately in trying to place the graduate school experience in perspective. I suppose I am not entirely happy with how things stand. And the classic old behavior, a habit that reflects on my desires for acceptance--the damned need to explain myself--is still deeply felt. I think there is a fair amount of nostalgia in there as well, as my current motivation to excel in the school I am currently enrolled has been significantly dampened. While I'd like to excel in my current classes, the feeling of having done all of this once before prevents me from putting in that extra effort to impress instructors. To have reached graduate school as an English scholar, only to start over again as a freshman Graphic Design student can be a little surreal. Every once in a while, I see the students struggling with what I struggled with, and then overcame, years ago.

In my current art class, I have a paper to write. The last paper I wrote for one of my art classes, I wrote in the twenty minutes before class in one straight sitting: with hardly any revision, absolutely no planning, and a not really a careful analysis of the subject. I got an A-plus with the instructor commenting that he would have liked to have heard more of my interesting analysis of the art I was critiquing. Most instructors grade papers the same way, which more often than not is partly based on their biases about writing (which are often wrong) and an off-hand general opinion of the student and not the paper. Despite the effort I put into the work for this art class, I do not usually get anything more than a B." I have a strong suspicion that no matter how well I may do on the paper, I am going to be stuck with a "B." Not really a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but also not an accurate assessment in my opinion. And, if I were more like my fellow design freshman, I would be happy with a "B." But, in a manner of speaking, I have seen behind the curtain: I've graded numerous freshman papers, took several classes on teaching and pedagogy, and even taught a few college classes myself. It makes accepting these types of circumstances just a bit more difficult.

This morning, the challenge will be to write the paper anyway and catch up on all of my other assignments as best I can. I've been feeling tired much of the time as of late, and that makes putting in the effort just that much harder. I see a nap in my future.

Thoughts about the Future

Tonight, I made a few minor clothing purchases at Walmart, which I suppose is the same as admitting defeat in the fashion world. Nothing big, just a blue t-shirt, a black sweater-shirt, and a belt. The shopping trip was a whim really, as I hadn't planned on making any purchases. I have nearly no money, and I haven't been working as much as I should be, so paychecks are minuscule. But, as my clothing is beginning to wear out a little, I figured that I would check for some bargains.

But aside from that, on my evening drive home from school today, I was thinking about how the way things stand in my life currently isn't exactly what I would have chosen for myself. For one thing, I am not sure I have sorted out what I want to do for a career, and as a mid-thirty-year-old, time is always getting shorter. Occasionally, I see professional people on television, like business-people, firemen, or teachers and I notice that not a few of them are my age. There was a time not too long ago when that wasn't the case. And conversely, there are not many people my age left in college anymore; they have already passed through, and in some cases, more than ten years ago. It can be an odd feeling sometimes, a feeling that tends to crop up in the quieter moments during classes. While everyone is busy taking notes or listening to the instructor, I'll look up--not at the teacher, but at the other students--and think things like, "what am I still doing here; am I learning things that will help me get where I want to be; couldn't I find a decent paying job with the things I know already?" Depending on mood, the answers for these questions change with fluctuating subtleties. The last question about getting a job with what I know already often feels like defeat, a way of giving up.

But, I wasn't just mulling over my life as it pertains to career. There were thoughts about my personal life as well, with the main problem being not having many people in life to whom I can relate. Because I'm an easy-going guy, laid-back, with a strong tendency to believe in fate, I don't do much other than feel out of sorts about my condition. And, the feeling can seep slowly into my consciousness like cold water after days where the only people I talk to are my parents, and not even them for very long.

Of course, I didn't come up with any solutions to these problems, but I did think it would help to write out a list of goals and ways I think I could get there. I hate the idea of writing things out because it sounds too much like something from a self-help book, or the detestable prophets of motivation and improvement that infest television. But, I do believe in writing as a way to think, and I tend to be a visual person, so a list is what I have resorted to. I used to think that my main problem was that I simply wasn't self-disciplined enough to get whatever I wanted done, but maybe the problem is also that I am just not sure where or what I really want to do. For example, do I sign up for more student loans and make a second attempt at graduate school and an eventual academic career, or do I continue to try for a new career in graphic design or illustration? I can come up with strong arguments for and against both. It is true that I have talents for both, but I have a lot more training for the academic life. I will not get, and it is unlikely I will ever get, as much education in graphic design as, say, an individual who has gone to Art School for four years and has a Fine Arts degree. Then again, my instructor, a professional designer has a degree in Chemistry, and he says that the chances for a designer with an associates degree in design has a fair chance to get a good job as long as you have a strong portfolio.

I am not sure what I will actually do about any of this, and there is a lot more that has been going on internally than I could ever express. I gave up thinking about it in the car when I reached Walmart. Still, I know I must do something, and I am very sure I will continue to think about these subjects for a long time to come.

Tuesday Transitions

I managed to exercise today for about a half hour, but then I wrecked any minuscule benefit by having a fast food dinner. I thought about going somewhere that serves real vegetables instead of something fried, but I couldn't justify spending 10 dollars or more on a meal that would only be marginally better. Overall, I think that I am making some small changes in the right directions, but I've got a ways to go. Plainly stated, I am sick of hamburgers.

I spent most of the early evening in the MAC lab at school finishing up some homework that is due on Thursday. Using Adobe's Photoshop and Indesign, I laid out nine photos of vases that we took the week before. I then printed it out on the fancy professional printer that probably costs a couple of thousand dollars. Hardly anything when you think about the print industry as a whole, but way, way, way more than I could afford.

I have to say that my photography is getting a little better. I've discovered that I have a shutter finger made of heavy marble, so when I click the shutter button, I jostle the camera just a little bit which, of course, makes the image blurry. That, and the fact that I couldn't get the internal sensors to focus on the part of the vase I wanted, made today's assignment really hard. We were also supposed to adjust the images using "levels" to approximate with the camera what we actually saw with our eyes. You can't imagine how fussy a process that is; and, the patience I had for overcoming teeny changes in tones in the original photographs that were slightly out of focus to begin with drained away quickly. Still, I know my way around the camera a lot better than I did three weeks ago.

By the way, the picture above is not one of the recent ones from class. I really haven't had much time to play around with the scanner or any other digital imaging programs on my laptop. Maybe I can do something on one of these weekends, but right now I feel a little drained of creative energy. My confidence in my artistic capabilities is waning somewhat.

Registering for Classes

There are about 40 people trying to get into a photography class in which there is only room for 20 students. And, I am one of the unlucky half that is not registered. The instructor spent most of this first class assuring everyone that if forty people truly want to take the class, he will be able to open up a second section. Then, he went on to explain how everyone will need to buy a new camera that will cost upwards of 300 dollars, or for the students enrolled in the visual communications program: 600 dollars. He further delineated all the tick-tacky accessories that one will need in addition to all of that. I could tell a wave of uneasiness swept through my fellow students. The consequence of his lecture on costs mean that several students will drop out, so there isn't likely to be a second class after all. And that may mean that despite the pleasant talk of everyone being able to get into the class, everyone probably won't. Personally, I think my chances of being able to get in are pretty good because I spoke with the instructor back in the beginning of December, but I won't know for sure until next week.

Once I got on campus today, which was about noon, I was expecting to stay well into the evening. The computer lab is normally open until 9:00 p.m., and I had some computer homework I needed to finish on one of the Macs. After all, even though I have been lucky in being able to afford most of these school expenses, I am still not rich enough to afford the $1500 it would take to buy an adequate Mac and the necessary software. I can get by using the computers at school. Or so I thought. After a dinner off campus, I was surprised to discover that the computer lab was closed because the work-study student who runs the labs in the evening did not show up. Disappointed, I waited around for a bit before accepting the fact that my homework is going to be late tomorrow.

It worked out in the end because, once I was home, I spent the rest of the evening cleaning out my room. Too many books, a messy cat, and a few piles of dirty clothes were starting to take over, and it was getting rather difficult to maneuver without stepping on something. The biggest accomplishment of the day, however, was not cleaning things up, but the fact that I called in a refill for my medication. It's not good to run out of the stuff because one can build up a resistance to it, or even become immune to it (so I have been told), and if that happens, it does me no good.

I also spent part of the day thinking about life back in the apartment and city back where (and when) I was attending graduate school. These beginning design courses can be so mind numbingly boring sometimes because concepts that are easily grasped are bluntly and repetitively hammered home, apparently in order to ensure that the beginning college students get it. Nothing like the free form discussions of theory in the small graduate courses I attended just a year and half ago. Yes, those classes were pretentious sometimes, and yes, some of the graduate students could be completely clueless or slightly snobbish, but the information was always interesting and challenging, and above all--the assignments were more self-directed which is something I enjoyed. That is: when I had the ability to do those assignments. My mood has been a little low lately, but I have to remember the days when it was struggle to get out of bed.

Clearing of Vision

The cord on my power supply for my laptop is internally weak, so I have to adjust the cord "just so" in order for the computer to get power. It takes a delicate hand, much like balancing a quarter on its edge. The battery I use for it is the original, at least over three years old, which means that it doesn't hold charge for very long. It is not anything that is terribly bothersome, only disappointing in that I may have to purchase yet another power supply, a power supply that will be the fourth one for this computer. Money used to come more easily, but now it seems harder to hold on to than normal.

On Monday, school begins again. I've signed up for three classes, one of which is digital photography. I'm looking forward to that class because I would like my photographs to be more artistic, more compositionally sound--if that makes sense. My mood has been somewhat below normal in that I am still grappling with the consequences of losing the previous graduate school opportunity, fighting to remember to take my pills on a regular schedule. The solution to the second part of that problem is to program my cell phone alarm to go off every day at the same time, a reminder to take my medicine.

The solution to the first part of that problem--my low mood--is quite a bit harder to resolve because everything I think about, every consideration I have, even the solutions to my mood problem, has an extra film of negativity on it, a cold and sticky layer that effortlessly coats my thoughts. Sometimes that film is slight, and sometimes heavy. And, honestly, I see it and counter it every time I can. But it all takes added effort, an extra step that is hard to take. And it must be nearly impossible for anyone to understand how sticky and cold this mood can be unless they themselves have felt it for some time and become comfortable with its presence.

In college, I often studied people and the culture of the nineteenth century, and just as often, one would read about the lives of notable people during that period--how they failed to achieve something important to them and could never come back to that, how that failure became a central part of their lives even as they lived beyond that moment of failure and established new lives afterwards. Those lives lived after failure, to some degree, have a feeling of superfluousness to them. In a sense, they are second lives, additional lives that exist side by side to the life before.

I think about these people often and compare myself to them. The classic story is about the unhappy child of an educated, well-to-do family that, try as he might, can never become the lawyer or doctor he aspires to be. Of course, the individuals one reads about manages through their special genius to succeed in other ways. They are extraordinary, so their lives are deemed worthy enough to be written down and preserved. But for every one extraordinary person who succeeds, there must be an army of the ordinary, the merely mediocre, who don't, or can achieve what they aspire to be. And these lives are not written down. They fade in history and evaporate.

I worry that I won't meet the demands of my ambitions: the ability to pay my debts, to comfortably earn a living or collect a savings ample enough to provide for friends and family, that I won't ever feel completely self-possessed, secure, and moderately happy. Perhaps these things are too much to ask for, a little too selfish or even the wrong thing altogether. But then again, perhaps not. Honestly, I don't really know, so I spend a lot of time thinking about it, going back and forth until I am tired out from my own internal questioning and just want to lose myself in a mindless television program or a handful of junk food. Tonight, that program is Star Trek. I'll be going to bed as soon as it's over, which is in about fifteen minutes.

My plans for the future seem somewhat simple: practice my art as best I can on a regular basis, try to do my best in school and finish as quickly as I can, develop better self-discipline which includes eating better foods and exercising regularly, and live life a day at time until I can develop a complicated new plan for the future that is not so deeply rooted in the previous plan of graduate school.

Days of Change

Taking an inventory of my trajectory through life, it would be accurate to say that where I am right now is precisely not what I thought I might be doing at this point. I feel like a messy closet overfilled with out-of-date clothing with a tumble of brown shoes spilling out the bottom. As an earnest and naive youth, I had been planning a little arc through the changes that I was working for and expected to occur. Really, "planned" conveys something too deliberate--it was more of my actively "supposing" where I might be because I also pessimistically and unconscious believed in fate, a type of monolithic stone golem. I accepted it as a reality, but I also tried to ally myself to it in order to lull it into going my way.

But I am not sure if pure randomness, my own mistakes, or a combination of several things, but something happened, and something did happen, to where what I thought and what occurred became like alienated lovers, intense longing between the two that cannot be realized with simple companionship. And the stupidity of this process, this living with what you want but can't have, is something that I know happens to nearly everyone. You can be warned again and again everyone goes through this process, but until it happens you can't really believe it, not really. It's an evolutionary denial rooted in the soil of self.

So, in the larger sense of "right now," I would be comleting my PhD thesis and in my third year of teaching freshman composition, if things had gone my way. I can even picture the afternoon classroom filled with nervous students, roughly half eager to learn the material, the other half already bored. In the larger building across campus is an office desk filled with drab books, "texts" in this official world of theory, books maybe only twenty people have ever read. In ratty folder or notebook are loose-leaf papers filled with half written research paragraphs filled with awkward sentences auditioning for the final work. On this detached and unreal stage of academia, I would be actively perfecting the role of professor. And, as pretentious and arrogant as that world can be, as shaped by cultural expectations as much as actual job requirements, I miss it.

Instead, I have nearly no money and am trying build up my life to a place where I can hang a wholly new, but similarly complex, set of expectations of a future life actively supposed. I am blessed to have a family and a support system left to help me start over as I know many don't. In a parallel universe, with the same circumstances but the absence of family, I would be living on the street, or a tent in the woods, perhaps near the edges of an urban shelter. And I am learning how to be healthier, a difficult process of trying build a meager but actively practiced wisdom. But it is a difficult process, a process that I hope will put me back on the rails of a stable life that is a bit more protected from the random chances and my own mistakes.

Pointless Ads with Silver Linings

It looks like some kind of jerk is putting comment spam in my blog. I hate that. And of course, they have hidden the spam in one of the posts made during the past three years, so in order to delete it, I need to sort through all my previous posts to find it first. Thank goodness I have my blog set to e-mail me with any comments people make, otherwise I would have never known about it. I just wish the e-mail would have had an indication which post received the spam so I could delete it. Maybe, I will try to moderate comments from here on out, but I would hate to do that because I don't want to make it any more difficult for people to comment anonymously. I don't mind anonymity; I don't mind negative comments; I do mind pointless advertising, which to my way of thinking, is much like vandalism.

The silver lining of searching through my blog posts to find repugnant spam is re-discovering how interesting and creative some of my previous posts are. Much of what I have written I had forgotten about. I found that I used to include many more hyperlinks than I do now: I may return to that again. I also used to set off blocks of quoted text to illustrate things that I was talking about. If I am going to do more of that, I am going to need to review some basic HTML tags. Like the blockquote tag, duh!

But most intriguing to me is noticing how my writing voice may have changed. Obviously, when I was in graduate school reading article after article, book after book, a more creative and advanced writing style was easier to create. That sort of voice came naturally. Now, nearly a year after things really began to fall apart in grad school, my blog has drifted into a more bland direction, mostly as a result of my personal problems and corresponding loss of motivation. The bloom is off the rose.

But maybe this just means that my blog, as a little writing project, has matured into something else, something that it was going to be anyway. I could improve it by writing more often and practicing more. Although my life has been significantly changing direction too, so it would make sense that my blog would change as well. One thing that is worth noting is that I started this blog while in college full-time, and for the most part, that has changed. Technically, I am still in college, but it is not like it was; it never can be.

Checking In Again

The end of school is fast approaching for the year. Finals are on Monday, and I think I am going to do very well and get A's in all my courses. Unlike the graduate school fiasco, I am getting the work done. Of course, the work is intellectually less challenging, and I find that is something that I miss (but just a little). And what the work lacks in the intellectual challenge, it makes up with it's demands on creativity. Once I really get my feel around the software programs--Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator--I think I will really be able to do something striking.

Getting work done outside of school has been a bit more of a challenge, but I am doing my best. Of course, I haven't really been able to do anything with my comic. Not only is it hard to figure out what to do next with the story-lines, finding the time and the motivation to do it, even a bad one that wouldn't require much effort, has been waning. But, part of me still wants to keep going with it, so I will.

In many ways, I feel (on a personal life assessment level) like I am back where I was when I first embarked on the whole college path ten years ago. My life is about the same, and it is hard to tell if I am making any progress with it. Yes, it is true I have learned many important life lessons. And yes, I have had some experiences that some people in this world never will have. Still, there is an emptiness of everyday life that grinds with a whisper on the edges of my consciousness. I am not sure it will help, but I am going to try and discipline myself to achieve some goals: eating better, exercising regularly, balancing work, school, and relaxing in healthy amounts. The improvement in health should assist with mood.

Grueling

Today was a rather grueling day. I spent about ten hours at school working on projects and assignments. I am still not done with them, but I managed to finish at least three and start on a fourth. I pretty much stayed in the computer lab until they closed it at 9:00 p.m.

The biggest challenge of the day was trying to reproduce a Rolex ad from a high-end magazine; this assignment involved my photographing a watch, adjusting it in photoshop, laying out all the graphic elements, choosing the right type to get it to match EXACTLY, and laying out the text correctly. I never knew that adjusting all of the various minutiae of type was so onerous, but it overwhelmingly is. Even though the only physical exertion invloved moving a computer mouse around, I felt like I had been pulled through a knothole backwards when I was done. People who enjoy this kind of adjustment of type are odd people indeed.

I took an hour dinner break around 5:00 p.m. I figured I could best relax browsing books at Borders. I couldn't afford to buy anything, even a measly cup of coffee, but I did enjoy looking. I'd rather buy used books anyway seeing as how all the worthwhile books can be had for much, much cheaper elsewhere. Speaking of worthwhile books, I did see a book of contemporary poetry that I thought I would enjoy. And as I was in the poetry section, I looked through a couple of Emily Dickinson poems. Her portrait on one of the bookcovers was striking because of her extreme skinniness and slightly odd appearance. However, as I was standing there reading, I was struck how most successful poets seem to be reaching for something beyond themselves and more substantial than the various superficial masks that their contemporary culture can offer them. I also briefly read a few poems by Lorca, Neruda, and Elizabeth Bishop.

The drive back home was uneventful. A few bites of some leftover Chinese food and a couple of mindless television programs capped off the day. Now, it is time for bed. I'm not going to work quite as hard tomorrow, but I still have a lot on my proverbial plate.

Checking in Again

It is an hour past midnight, and I should be asleep already, but I felt I needed to post something. It looks like I am averaging about two or three posts a months, and in that regard, it looks like I am a little behind for the month of November. There hasn't been much of note lately that is worth a blog entry, but maybe that's a good thing seeing as the last few posts have been me focusing on what has been lost. The lack of things to talk about might force a little creativity.

I suppose I could mention some of the things that I have been working on lately. For example, in school, I am developing my skills in Adobe Illustrator, especially how to use the pen tool. The instructor says that the pen tool is the most powerful tool in the program and that he never uses the pencil tool. It's admittedly tricky to figure out, but I think I am getting the hang of it. Of course, this has necessitated my spending more and more time in the computer lab. Tonight, there was a bit of wind and rain storm (minor one), and the lights were off in half of the town. This meant that some of the street lights were also off. It made for slow going when I was driving home. It's always odd to see familiar places which are normally lighted in total darkness.

Frankly, that's most of what has been the focus of my attention for the last three weeks: doing well at school. One thing today that has consumed some thought is the dream I had the night before. I was searching through a series of elaborately furnished rooms for Emily Dickinson. Even when it had been pointed out to me by some faceless presence that she had been dead for a very long time, I continued to look for her ignoring the obvious. The fact that she had been dead made it seem more important that I find her. And, I actually did find her. I turned around and she was just there. She didn't say anything, but as I felt so relieved at finding her, I gave her a hug. I know dreams usually have some kind of an emotional logic, an unconscious reason of sorts, but this one has me completely stumped. It was something I occasionally thought about in between classes, eating lunch, or while driving home.

In any event, I will try to post something a bit more frequently than twice a month. That is still my goal. Whether or not I manage to achieve that goal is another thing entirely, but it is a goal nonetheless. Until then.

Consequences of Grad School

I've been doing a lot of thinking about my life in graduate school, especially as it seems that several months after having left I have returned to square one, square one in this case being community college. In fact, this happens to be the very same community college where I began my crawl upwards out of the dreary clutches of a medieval-like factory job that threatened squeeze the spirit and vitality out of my life and my outlook on it. However, as grateful as I am for that first community college experience ten years ago, I am almost equally ambivalent about my current one. Really, I think I want to predict the future. I would like nothing more than the ability to know, for a certainty, that the work I am putting in now at school will have some kind of payoff. The graduate school payoff I was looking for didn't happen, and I am still struggling emotionally with the consequences of it.

Throughout my life, I have had a tendency to be depressed. I could try to hide it, but everyone in my life already knows about it. Especially during some tumultuous teenage years, I was apt to take to bed and try to sleep away most of my problems. Mostly overcoming that to a degree once the pressures of high school eased, I was relatively unafflicted by extreme emotional lows for a few years. I had a job and was able to put myself through college, eventually earning an undergraduate degree. But, the depression returned with a vengeance during graduate school (some of the reasons for that are still a bit unclear, and some of the others are known but will remain unspoken). In any event, the returning depression made it difficult to keep up with my work. I could attend classes, keep up with discussions, and even read all of abstruse--and sometimes boring--materials, but when it came to writing papers, two things were happening.

First, I was telling myself (with outside encouragement from various professors) that every paper had to be absolutely perfect. My goal was to write near-genius essays of remarkable criticism that would exceed everyone's expectations and have the potential to be published in top academic journals. Well, okay, maybe just the mid-level ones. Anyway, it was not entirely unreasonable to have this thought as the professors would occasionally remark how this or that past graduate student managed to do just that. Unfortunately, in my mind, I built up the task of writing papers to such a monolithic impossibility that no-one, not even the professors, could possibly do it in the time allotted. Ten weeks to write perfection? I think not.

Second, my emotional resources were simply drained all away. On the worst days, I would spend hours, maybe even half a day, marshalling the courage to get out of bed and go to class. It was a chore to eat a simple dinner every day, let alone spend hours in the library doing research. Why? Partially, it was because I was afraid of what my professors thought, what I would say to them, or how I would simultaneously work with other graduate students to get what I needed, but excel far beyond them in what I imagined to be the constant evaluating eyes of the professors. On my best days, I would simply worry about how I was going to get the mounting backlog of work done. I could even allow myself a slight, if naive, optimism.

During the last couple of months, I was starting to come out of the darker corners of depression. I was getting better--and I felt I was actually making real progress in my academic life, not merely wishing that I was making progress and somehow convincing myself of it--but by then it was too late. The damage was done. It was hurtful to leave; and as I was in denial about leaving, the hurt was extended for longer than it probably would have been otherwise. The meetings I attended that last week of school were sad for a number of reasons.

The weeks between the end of my graduate school career and my eventual move out of student housing and that town altogether were unusual and a bit surreal. Relieved I didn't have to worry about overdue schoolwork, I really hadn't considered all of the harsh consequences of leaving. Academically, I had been trained to think theoretically about things that didn't seem all that close to me. Perhaps this theoretically way of thinking was why I was able to develop a plan B: a return my old community college to begin a new direction in a new field.

As depression is an illness, albeit a mental one, it is sometimes compared to other illnesses. Depression is supposedly a problem with a brain chemical imbalance. Therefore, since depression has a physical cause, why should it be considered different from other types of illnesses that also physical causes like cancer. They say that--bottom line--I had gotten an illness, the consequences of which meant I couldn't finish grad school. However, sometimes, when I consider how much things have changed in the last few months, it still feels like a personal failure.

This Way or That

Two weeks into the graphic design program and I am still not sure if this program is the right fit for me or not. It's true that I am learning some skills about how to use certain design programs and getting information about the business in general. However, there is a lot of information that I don't really need. For example, today in class we spent twenty minutes talking about how to make our *two* page research paper conform to MLA format. Good Lord. Aside from the fact that I could teach an entire class about MLA format, I can't remember when I EVER wrote a two page research paper. The study skills counselor also visited our class and talked about study strategies to be a successful student. I listened attentively and was polite and patient, but I felt very bored and just a little insulted. Money is the major obstacle here. If I had lottery winnings to spend, or more intestinal fortitude to endure the existence of a few thousand dollars more debt, I would try to enroll in a graduate level art program. But, the affordability of my current classes outweighs all the minor been-there-done-that-a-thousand-times issues I face.

And then, I think about my English Degree and the graduate courses I took. Aside from the personal problems I struggled with during graduate school, I excelled at all those English type things: analyzing texts, writing research papers, and reading and researching abstruse journal topics. Am I giving all that up to start over again in a new direction? Is there a way to use and combine my graphic design aspirations with my previous English training? Or should I give up trying to get all of these degrees, stop spending the money, and figure out a way to earn money with an English degree. I suppose I could try some kind of writing career (likely freelance), but I'm not sure I could really pull it off. Bottom line: I am a little confused about where I am headed or where I should go.

Today, I broke my glasses. They were getting weak at the bridge and finally snapped this morning. I took them to the local jewelry shop to get it soldered, and then to the eye clinic to get the nylon strand that holds the lenses in the frame repaired. I spent fifteen bucks for the soldering job which is no big deal. However, since I haven't seen the optometrist for several years, it seemed reasonable and convenient to make an appointment to have my eyes examined. Of course, that will cost me $106, and since my last paycheck was about $200, I'm beginning to feel a few sharp shooting pains in my wallet. I knew I would be poor when I got out of graduate school, but I didn't realize I would be this poor.

Anyway, I am trying to maintain my equanimity about the whole career and life situation. I'm not spending as much time as I used to being depressed about where my life was headed. For example, a few months ago, a thing like my glasses breaking would have been the catalyst for my having a more upsetting day than I actually had. I suppose you could call that progress, even though nothing has really been resolved in any major way. I'm sure I will come to some conclusion eventually. At least I hope so.

Stalled Engine

So tomorrow is the first day of the new career training whatever. I'm still not entirely sure what to call it, what name to give it when I describe it to myself. Regarding my general life transition, of which this school thing is just a part, I discover I alternate between moments of a sort of muted malaise about the whole deal to moments of feeling adrift at sea. Emotionally, I feel like one of those cold rainless but cloudy days where everything is tinged with grey. I feel like I should somehow be doing something that yields more fertile results, accomplishes something I can look back on with satisfaction. Which is not at all to say that I have been unproductive. I've actually done some important things at work. I've even been reading a couple of novels at home, Graham Greene's The Quiet American for one. But, for the most part, life feels like it has stalled.

Perhaps this school thing will start the engine again. Today, I worked the Sunday shift down at the shop and continued on my assigned writing project. I've been researching the concept of business models and how to implement or refine them. After work, I wound up helping my dad hang some new shelves for the garage area. The longest part of that particular job is figuring out how to get the stinking doors to hang perfectly, and believe me, unless you have tried to do it yourself, you can't imagine how hard that actually is. While we were steadily working on those doors, four deer stepped out of the darkness, walked through the driveway, and stepped back into it again. It was sort of neat to see. The crazy cat, who I'm going to call "Bonkers" for the time being, decided that she would attempt to chase them. The functioning half of her brain apparently decided against a chase once she saw how large the deer were. That's it for now. Time to get to bed at a somewhat decent hour in order to be prepared for tomorrow.

A Character from a Thomas Mann Novel

Today, I managed to get up earlier than usual, so after making myself breakfast and taking a shower, I was able to feel like I was "up" for the day. There is a kind of lethargy that overtakes me after I eat breakfast: definitely a bad habit that I need to break. I resisted the urge to go back to bed.

The major accomplishment of today was getting ready for the new round of classes on Monday. This is going to be a career change, somewhat unwanted, that has all of the attendant fears and regrets that go along with an unwanted career change.

Let me explain a little bit. Last night, I watched a long PBS documentary about Andy Warhol. I liked it, but I really got involved with the description of Valerie Solanas' near fatal shooting of Andy shortly after his Silver Factory days (1968). I had watched the movie I Shot Andy Warhol on television awhile ago, and consequently I was sort of interested in the whole shooting episode, looking forward to a more documentary and less narrativizing approach. (The movie was good on its own terms, but I don't think it really portrayed the extent of Solanas' mental illness.) In any event, the documentary made a point to note how even though Warhol's near death had a brutal and devastating impact on him, he pressed forward with his art anyway. It appeared to be the only thing that he could do. To me, it seemed he had a simple choice after surviving the gunshot wounds: to either accept death and die quietly at home or to go forward and live life the only way he knew how. My circumstances are nowhere near as dramatic, but I have definitely felt a tremendous emotional impact (read: grief) over my late problems. But, the lesson here is that even in the worst moments of life, there is only really one choice: to let life's setbacks smash you in the face and stop you cold or to continue to move forward as best you can. Dogged determination to take tentative steps forward and another and then another even though you feel you're steadily losing ground. I am taking these kind of steps forward, even though I would prefer the impossible: to somehow go back in time and fix my earlier problems and lessen their impact. (Actually, as time does go forward, I am feeling less intense regret about the loss of my previous career path and more mild sadness. Thoughts of time travel occur with much less frequency.)

So, I went to campus to made the usual pre-class rituals--buy books, pay for classes, pay for the parking permit, etc. After several years of school, I'm no longer anxious about the first day like I used to be. In fact, standing in all of the usual lines which go with the college experience, I'm beginning to feel somewhat old. A few years ago, I could pretend I was just an old pro in the student world, but now I'm starting to feel vaguely ridiculous. Most of the other "students" are now nearly half my age. Despite this, I am hoping to do well in the upcoming term. I have a perfectionist streak and a bucket full of good intentions that sometimes make it difficult to not crack under pressure. The grand total of these college expenses are approximately $625, all of which is now on my new credit card. Monday is the first day. The first day of which I hope is the start of a new career path.

Frustrations

There is something magically compelling about the keyboard of my laptop to the cat. For some reason, despite the several square feet of sitting and sleeping space that abounds around her, she really only wants to sit on the few square inches of my fragile keyboard. Perhaps there is something about the static electricity in her fur that aligns her with expensive electronics, or maybe she just harbors a grudge against me and amuses herself by this petulant behavior. She sees my reaching to move her away from the computer as an invitation to play. Consequently, my right hand has more than a few scratches and bites. I suppose I should see this as some kind of subtle hint to spend less time on the computer as I tend to waste a lot of my time with it.

Aside from the somewhat comical struggles I've had with the cat, I've been having more serious frustrations on a number of fronts lately. I'm not entirely sure if I've followed the roots of all these frustrations to their ultimate source, but if I had to guess, I think they stem from my transition from my previous career path as an English scholar to a new and more uncertain one as a Graphic Artist. As crazy as it may sound to some, I really enjoyed reading obscure novels and abstruse literary theory, writing long papers, and generally thinking critically about those aforesaid things. Most of my personal relationships have suffered because I can't keep control of these frustrations all of the time, or because I can't express them as eloquently as I would like.

Today, I spent most of my time in bed researching for some projects at work. I couldn't motivate myself to take a shower or go into town. I've had a few headaches and been a little more fatigued than usual, both of which could be a result of my forgetting to take my medicine on a regular schedule. Tomorrow (well, technically today after a night's sleep), I am going to be in my previous college town for most of the day. I am not 100% sure what I am going to do, but I will probably take some time to look around maybe even see a movie.

Yesterday, I drove into the capitol and I picked up my portfolio from the Visual Communications department. For some unsupported reason, I was expecting to receive feedback about my portfolio submissions, at least some indication of where my strengths/weaknesses were, but there was nothing. I'm not too disappointed, especially the director of the program indicated she would be out of town for awhile during the overview session I attended last month. I logged into the registration website and signed up for a couple of classes today. In a couple more weeks, I should have a report about what they are like and what I expect to get out of them. I am looking forward to learning about the vector illustration software they use. I hope this will be challenging enough to be worth the money and time investment.

In any event, on the personal level, I am going to start seriously working on how to keep my frustrations in order so they don't overwhelm me. (By the way, it should be said that these frustrations aren't the daily minor ones that everyone faces every day, but major ones that grow out of life's regrets and failings.) I used to ignore these kinds of bothersome things by saying to myself that whatever was irritating me didn't really matter all that much in the long run, or that my frustration was somehow a personal failure to interact properly with the person who was involved in the bad emotion. And maybe there still is some use to this type of coping as long as it doesn't develop into full blown denial. But really, I think I need to figure out how to accept these frustrations and move on without causing some kind of havoc in my life and the lives of those around me. I've (inadvertently) caused enough havoc today.