Catching up to myself

So, I suddenly live in a new city, and it still has a drive-in movie theatre, and Captain America is playing it at tonight. I’m not going there because it’s hard for me to see what the joy would be in sitting in my car with an open window in rather stifling humidity. But the concept is neat. I was in a drive-in theatre the last time to see Star Wars (the very first one, i.e., in the 1970s). Perhaps during the winter. The movie seems to be doing well: c. $143 million gross in 2.5 weeks. They’ve at least broken even now, and that total doesn’t count foreign gross.

I feel like if the blog is going to continue make sense I am going to have to say a little about what’s happened lately. I’d seen a few clear signs of malice toward me in May and June that made me think more anonymity would be a good thing, but my emotions are just a little too close to the surface right now for me to press them under constantly, and what I’ve learned from the blog and then the morning pages is that the writing one wants to do doesn’t get done when dealing with emotions takes all one’s conscious and subconscious energy. One only has so much energy to deal with the anxiety, and the only way to abate anxiety seems to be to express it. So bear with me — both for either TMI or things that I’m leaving a little vague.

I started writing this blog right around the point in time that I’d decided I wasn’t going to stay at my former institution. That decision coincided with what seemed to me like a decision to leave my profession — not a considered one, but one occasioned by utter breakdown. I’d been trying, unsuccessfully, to leave that job for at least five years. I could not make myself even look at job ads, let alone apply. The decision to give in to Armitagemania — which was really a decision to look closely at my fantasies and see what they were trying to tell me — thus fell roughly simultaneously with a decision not to force myself to do something I simply could no longer do. Both of these steps were huge for me. I prided myself on having an unusually sober glance at reality; and, until a few years ago I was always the person who could be counted on to do what needs to get done, no matter the cost. But the ongoing cynical instrumentalization of the things most important to me over years — my own decision to go along with my employer’s insistence that I exploit for reputation the things I held most dear — made me increasingly incapable of doing anything I wanted to do. All my life became focused on forcing myself to do the next thing I had to do, burning out both my willpower to do unpleasant things and my capacity for enjoyment of anything at all. I spent all my free time recovering from the pain of doing things I didn’t want to do and gearing up for the next occasion when I’d have to accomplish them. Paralysis and anhedonia were the linked results. Armitagemania offered the cure for both of those: I felt true pleasure again for the first time in years, and I was able to face the tasks I needed to do to leave. And I began writing the blog, another vote for pleasure and also a stab against paralysis.

The way the academic world works, decisions take a long time to play out. The job cycle for my profession in the U.S. starts in late August of one year and most people are hired in February or March of the next year to start in August or September. There are a few exceptions to this pattern, and the current economic situation adds a fair amount of chaos, but in general if you don’t apply in a particular cycle you risk unemployment for at least a year. I didn’t apply because I simply couldn’t. Last March something odd happened, and my feelings about the whole thing changed, partially because of the ongoing prayers for discernment, partially due to a weird accident. I still knew I couldn’t force myself to enter the market, but I decided that if something happened to me to keep me in the profession, I would accept it as providence. Four opportunities presented themselves with no initiative on my part. The first one primarily served as something for me to think about to avoid anxiety; the second was largely a pipe dream on the part of the person who sought it, and evaporated quickly — thankfully, as it would have been a hard pill to swallow; the third was the interview that made me want to vomit, and the fourth was the last second job offer, received after I’d long assumed the moment had passed, but / and only two days after I’d completed the move to my parents and was ready to start looking for a new life. After some consultation with my parents about the situation, and at their vehement urging, I took that job.

They regretted their urging almost immediately, but only after I’d signed the contract. Arrangements have been made. My mother’s physical health is much better than when we made the original plan for me to move back. I was worried about her emotional health, but two really awful days at the end of July made her realize that her insistence that she would “be just fine” was largely illusory. She saw that if I weren’t going to be around, she needed to take the initiative to help herself: she now has some of the logistical and emotional help she needs in place to keep her life going the way she wants to. My father’s physical health is no better, but there’s a neighbor who hangs around a lot, someone about my age, who’s a good friend. I can get back much more quickly from here if I need to: my new city has hourly flights to the closest airport hub to my home town, better than the three flights a day from my last residence.

So I remain ambivalent. I abandoned the plan that seemed right to me and most necessary to my family. I’m working again in a profession I had resolved to leave, doing a series of tasks about which I ended my last job feeling highly ambivalent, living far away from home in a city I’d never have dreamed of living in, in a climate that to me is more than unpleasant. The next point at which I could quit this job is January. At the same time, I never had an alternative plan that wasn’t vague. My need to leave was always born out of a rejection of continuing to participate in a system where I was in line to damage others in the same crippling ways that I’d been damaged, and out of the ever-present hum in my mind of a conviction that I was failing at everything — never out of a vision of something I wanted to do more, but only glimpses of what I might do. It seemed foolhardy, if not downright wasteful, to be unemployed intentionally in a situation where millions are unemployed against their will. This year, I hope in my optimistic moments, will be a chance to see more clearly what the problem was with the university for me, or a chance to formulate more fully an alternative plan: an extension of the time to pray for discernment, perhaps the chance to recover a sense of vocation or find one somewhere else. On a minute to minute basis, it’s unbelievably anxiety ridden, as I yet again encounter a new geography, new people, new contexts.

My Armitage-related fantasy life has again escalated beyond belief. Porter was on the bus with me today, Lucas in the human resources office, Harry at the parking office. But I am not going to beat up on myself for this: I am going to keep looking right at those fantasies and try to figure out what they are telling me about myself.

And yeah, there’ll be more Armitage analysis along the way. Because in some ways the recovery of my ability to think was a central moment of this blog, and I need to stay there if I’m going to continue to write at all.

Thanks for your patience. Back to the usual, soon.

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Happy Birthday month Richard Armitage! In honor of this event, consider donating your time, energy, and thoughts / prayers to an effort that’s meaningful to you. If you need a suggestion, here’s a link to Mr. Armitage’s recommended charities at JustGiving, as well as a link to means of generating a charity contribution on his behalf at RichardArmitageOnline.com, and a link to Act!onAid, a child sponsorship organization for which he recorded a voiceover in December 2010. Donate to Christchurch Earthquake Appeal here.

~ by Servetus on August 9, 2011.