I was thinking of the beautiful light, the January sky, the clear winter days when you can have the windows open.
I was thinking of some people I know who do not converse. People for whom every conversation is a battle, and whose sentences are pre-emptive strikes against an imagined enemy. How they defend unhappiness like a fortress, this is how I want to be, I do not like it, but I want it. I was thinking about how unusual it appears to be, at least in some circles, to change the things one does not like.
I was thinking of my financial situation, the energy it takes to manage and the degree of denial I have to maintain in order to keep disabling and justified anxiety away.
I was thinking of my father struggling along as he walks, and how he is not actually required to take that path. I was thinking about how similar it is to walk here, where the paths are so few.
I was thinking of how a seer told me that the reason I was not happy as an academic was the drudgery.
(I later noticed that this had to do with following directions too much, not disagreeing enough with readers of my research, not asserting myself enough on teaching, but I had my reasons, although they were bad reasons.)
I was thinking about how true the comment on drudgery was. I was thinking about how to combat this.
I was thinking about how the dangerous path I have taken, in which I assert my authority, really is the only viable answer now.
I thought again of the sunlight, and was coherent enough to start working by around noon.
If your having done your degree was considered an attack upon those who did not do one; if your having received any funding at all was considered to be proof that you are unworthy because you did not “do it all yourself;” if your being trained to think was said to mean you were “unfeeling” and perhaps fundamentally damaged, and perhaps deserving of ongoing torment so that you might finally feel certain things some people considered it appropriate to feel; if your decision to do something else, that you would “do all yourself” was then called abandonment and betrayal; if you finally gave up everything you wanted or dreamed of so that someone else could be satisfied, then you are also where I am now — and those are only some of the things, only some of the sentences I would like to clear from me.
“The greatest profession in the world.” If you have one of the good jobs, or if you are actually interested in the others; and if you have access to a second income. Otherwise, no, or at least, not for a talented person. Or, only if you are a very conventional type, which I am not.
#OccupyHE
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 