Blogging it as it comes

[sorry, this is not the most cheerful post. feel free to disregard. you do not need to cheer me up.]

From Free Will Astrology. I usually read these over a beer on Thursday nights right before bed, at the Best Bar on the Planet, but I got early notice of them this week. First, there’s this; no comment:

And then there’s mine, which is just bizarrely accurate, and probably even more stunning if you know that Scarlett O’Hara is a personal role model of mine in certain respects. (No, I’m not that much of a flirt, nor a gambler, nor an adventuress, nor do I do things to provoke people on purpose just to see how they will react. Also, I have never said “fiddle dee dee.” Do people actually say that?) As I’ve said several times on blog, her line after Rhett Butler walks out on her is a key life insight for me. “I’ll think about it tomorrow,” when the events of today are too much. Totally a coincidence that the astrologer picked Scarlett to reference.

I’ve never seen myself as Rhett. But why not? I’m not a profiteer — but I spend a lot of time trying to put people back together when I can. I love things, hopelessly, that will never love me back and have never really cared what it costs. The question for Rhett was: when do you walk away?

***

On the whole, I’m not a walker away. Cf: Scarlett O’Hara is a personal hero. It’s been a very exasperating week at work. Lots of metaphorical chickens coming home to roost. Cf. “sunk cost fallacy.” So. much. anger.

On the office level, I’m the “omnicompetent individual” which leads to problems. On the personal level, I am the person who will listen. At 5:00, after a thirty minute phone call with someone haranguing me for something I didn’t do and had no control over (cf. “low level administrator, watching the wheels go round and round, didn’t want the responsibility of being a professor anymore”) I said, quite firmly, “I’ve told you who you need to call, I can’t do anything to alter this situation, you’ll have to address it with [him],” and when he didn’t back off, I said, “I’m sorry, I need to leave,” and hung up.

I have worked 30 years to get to this point, to be able to recognize the point at which nothing is to be won, to be in a position to disengage unilaterally — and to do so.

Even so, last night I had two greasy kosher hotdogs for dinner. There are starting to be days now — middle age is a bitch — when I can’t eat enough to eat all of my feelings. I think the four year break shrunk my stomach.

***

As I said to someone this morning, every time I reanimate my Richard Armitage tulpa, @RCArmitage comes along and kicks him in the balls.

***

I was in a meeting this week where I was trying to learn (with a group of people) the twisty protocols for placing a petition for reinstatement to the university after academic dismissal, and someone said to me, after I had confessed I didn’t know something, “You know, you don’t always have to admit everything right away, if you were quieter, people would think you were smarter,” and I said, “Yes, I do, because I grew up in the Midwest,” and she said,” See, that’s what I thought, you’re just like Rose on the Golden Girls.”

I don’t look like Betty White; it’s not the most obvious simile; maybe it’s better than either Rhett Butler or Scarlett O’Hara; and it’s definitely not the worst comparison anyone’s ever made about me. I could have gone to St. Olaf. I tell obscure stories about odd things that happened in my childhood. People think my background quaint, picturesque, and weird.

***

 This was the week I had to renew the domain names I’m roosting on in conjunction with this blog, and it came down to the wire, but I did it. See above, sunk cost fallacy.

Or is it? How many foolish things have I done since 2006?

***

I got my student evaluations today. It’s going to be hard to live them down.

***

I’ve been hit on at the Best Bar on the Planet twice in the last three weeks. No sexual contact since Black Hat. I have a deal with the bartenders to hep fend these guys off when it happens — no, it’s not all that often — and they’ve been doing their job. Am I giving of some kind of weird hormone all of a sudden? Does the universe want me to get my ashes hauled before it’s too late?

***

I hate it when my mind is in neutral and I think and can’t stop and turn around and around in my thoughts without any gear engaging.

***

I’d rather be writing. It’s hard to write while I’m watching the tulpa gasp for breath. In situations like this I used to write spoofs, but since Cybersmile I have no idea, anymore, what kind of joke might even be permissible. Maybe I should publish my current list of plausible spoof topics so at least someone else can write them.

***

I hate it when I can’t pull myself out of a bad mood.

***

I can’t escape the feeling that — as per the entire shtick of this blog all along — that putting the broken thing back together is somehow enmeshed with putting myself back together.

***

I don’t know how to mend this type of thing very well.

~ by Servetus on July 16, 2015.