Monday, March 05, 2007

Il faut oublier tout peut s'oublier

Sigh. I'm not depressed at all, really. Just a little tired. But I'm feeling as if I should be depressed. Or horrified. Or mortified. Or something.

Instead, I start this day like any other, walking the five or six blocks through this town's Craftsman-populated "Upper East Side" to the bus stop. Zone out on the 101 and 217, arrive on campus at 7:45ish, walk to the office, eat the oatmeal, sip tea from the thermos, do at least a little bit of work and a little more fucking around on the internet, then wonder, "what the hell is there to write about."

I told my therapist on Friday that I've realized more than once in the past few years that I don't "see" anymore future to be excited about. That is, I feel like I once had plans for things that excited me: moving to Santa Barbara, getting a degree, studying abroad in Ghana. Those all involved long periods beforehand of planning, getting excited and scared at the same time, and anticipating.

For awhile now, it seems like the only thing I anticipate is whether I'll be putting the usual raisins in the oatmeal, or prunes for variety and excitement. Which is not to say I don't enjoy my life. It's just that it feels as though now that I'm weighed down by a Lily Bart-esque debt (though certainly far less than some friends of mine), all that's "on the horizon" is dragging myself to work to earn some money to try to make payments to whittle away (at a glacial pace) the financial monstrosity before me.

Which is not to say I don't enjoy my life. (Did I make myself clear? Shall I repeat that again to make sure I've you've got the message?) I'm amazed sometimes that I get to live where I live. I went for a walk late yesterday afternoon and I felt as if I were on vacation, even though I was within blocks of my apartment. I have friends with whom I frequently go to dinner and movies and coffee and have a great time. Why am I even thinking I need to enumerate all this stuff?

Does life need to be "exciting" the way it was when we were 22 or 23? Does the trajectory of life always need to be Citius! Altius! Fortius! in order for us to feel like we're "living up to our potential"? Is this a particularly American/Western obsession? I thought I cut through so much of that crap when I started "getting into the, like, Buddhism thing" of "Be Here Now" and all that. And yeah, all of that can be eyeroll-inducing, but I feel like the philosophy of Buddhism really helped me to enjoy what's happening now and not regret the past or overthink the future.

So why do I feel as though I'm killing time? Or, as a really wise peer told me at least ten years ago, "sitting in the Waiting Room."

Is it possible to self-actualize without a Trust Fund for educational expenses?

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On a lighter note, I was supremely entertained by the following quote from an article in Sunday's Los Angeles Times about cloned beef and some of the science used to perpetuate the genetic line of particulary hardy or desirable breeding stock (it was a really good article; I very seriously loathe food-technology Luddites, even though some of my bests friends are in that camp):
UC Davis animal geneticist Alison Van Eenennaam pulled out a photo of a
stout, jet-black Chianina bull from Canute, Okla., named Full Flush — one of the
most sought-after sires of recent times.

"He was not able to satiate the desire for his semen," Van Eenennaam
noted.

Sounds like a promo tagline for Treasure Island Media.

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