Passion

We've moved into an apartment we're calling Shoebox Palace. Some of you  may have seen pictures of it on Google+; it is very very small and very very expensive, but we actually love it. It gets tons of sunlight, and the vaulted ceiling gives us acres of wallspace for our extremely nerdy art (cutaway pictures of Firefly, posters of the Ladies of Firefly, umpteen framed dragon art pieces, a horrible parody of Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day, etc), so we are now once again surrounded by things that make us feel at home. The living area is actually pretty spacious, and who needs a dining area anyway? We don't miss having one. A dishwasher would be nice, as would our own washer/dryer, but you can't have everything, right?

There is a little market about a block away. The safest way to get there is to avoid the main road to our right and instead go down the dark alleyway through the center of the block. I am not even kidding. I am pretty sure that if I walk along the big road by myself I will get raped. By contrast, the alley is populated by people who are probably homeless and maybe a little crazy, but not one of them has tried to talk to me or touch me, which is in sharp contrast to the big road. Anyway, the market itself is fabulous. It is half produce section and one third meat section, and everything they sell is incredibly cheap. Avocados are three for $1. Plantains are $0.79/lb. A giant bundle of cilantro is $0.79. I've made two batches of guacamole in the last week (WHOEVER GAVE US THE CUISINART, I DON'T KNOW WHO YOU ARE BUT I LOVE YOU), and each time it's lasted for a couple days and has cost under $2. This is wonderful considering Jim has still not received a paycheck.

He at least has a job, and has been working since we got back from Dragon*Con (which was amazing, just like last year, and we already have our tickets for next year), but his company is incredibly disorganized and tends not to know where he is, or what cargo he's picking up, or whether the clients he's dealing with are actually open (hint, if it's a Sunday, they probably aren't. good job, company.). I am beginning to fear that they are going to come out and claim that Jim was never actually hired, and thus not pay him a single cent. Or worse, pay him for the last three weeks and the entire thing will be like $300.  Uuuuuggghh.

My dad is trying to get a housing voucher from the VA to live in San Francisco, so he's been around a lot lately, which has been really good. He is incredibly insecure, so I've been trying to reassure him that I do love him and that the distance I keep from him is because I'm married and just moved and got a new job and omg my life is busy. But Jim suggested we have my dad over for dinner, so we did on Saturday, and it was awesome. It went really well, and they are getting along just fine, and it was an enjoyable evening. I look forward to doing that again and forming a normal bond with my dad. Plus, he wants to teach both Jim and me everything he knows about leatherworking, which will be AWESOME. My dad uses his leather skills mostly to make belts and guitar straps and stuff for other people, mainly things with like football logos or mustang heads or whatever on them. Jim and I will use these skills to make leather armor and costume steampunk gear. We are excited.

I got to see my mom a couple weekends ago for the Reno Balloon Races, which was fun. We took my little sister (now 6.5yo), who had never been before. She was more interested in going to look for frogs in the pond than she was in the hot air balloons. Seriously, this child and I have nothing in common. She's a bright kid though, so that's good. And seeing my mom was awesome. I'm hoping to entice her over to the city to go to operas and plays and stuff - as soon as Jim starts getting a paycheck and we can afford to do that kind of thing.

I've been playing an online writing game. I think the technical description is "play-by-post online role-playing game". It started in February and has really been picking up lately; I just finished running a giant event that seems to have brought back some inactive people and drawn in some new ones, which is awesome. The world we play in is mostly based off the Dragonriders of Pern series, with some Dune influence thrown in. It's been cool to work on writing lately; it's a hobby I've had for ages but haven't been able to indulge in much in the last half-decade or so. I still don't think I'll do NaNoWriMo again, as I have no lingering desire to write a novel, but I AM really enjoying spending a lot of my free time writing little scenes with the handful of characters I've created.

We went to a Ren Faire last weekend. I got my hair braided. It was awesome.

All in all, things are much much much MUCH better than they were in August. I'd say we're very nearly settled now, and I might even be re-developing a fondness for San Francisco, though I'm wary now. City, you have burned me, and you must earn my renewed affection!

 I've managed to write in my paper journal almost every day for the last ten days.  I didn't write over the weekend, while Jim was home, but it's surprisingly easy to stay up an extra ten minutes each weeknight to make myself write down the day and date.  That's pretty much all I'm committing myself to--I just have to open the journal, write the day of the week and the date, and then I have fulfilled my goal.  Of course, by that time I always figure I might as well write a sentence, and so far that first sentence has always led to at least one full page.  It ended up resulting in two pages last night, when I really did think for a few minutes all I was going to get written was the date.

So I dunno about updating here, but I really am making an effort to start writing and thinking again. I use writing as a way to get my mind working, and to sort through problems in my life and in my head.  This journal has sort of come to feel like a way to keep distant friends and family alerted as to what I'm up to, but I've never been very good at correspondance, and it seems hard sometimes to write an update on goings-on when I don't even know if anyone is still reading.  So I guess the point is that if I'm going to write in this journal again (and I don't ever want this journal to fully die--I really do like the livejournal format, and I have some good contacts solely here), I need to stop thinking of it as a blog designed to keep a record of my activities, and more as a forum for discussion about major concerns.

I think I knew all that already, but it helps to write it out.  (See!! Case in point.)

I had a meeting with my boss on Monday to have my annual review.  I don't think I've ever had an annual review before (well, I've never had a real job before...), so it was pretty terrifying.  But it went really, really well. He is giving me a (very small) raise, and thinks I'm doing well, except for a few small points I was already aware of (like the fact that I tend not to do things he asks me to do if I think they're unimportant).  So I'll try to shore up those points.  I also managed to find the guts to tell him I'll be looking for a new job within the next year (though I did take a slightly balls-less (what word am I thinking of that means balls-less? I'm drawing a blank) approach to it and say it would be a California job), which he took really well.  He is a pretty good boss, and seems to understand that employees eventually move on.
Hopefully I will actually be able to find something.  I would like to find a lab job somewhere.

I still have no idea what I want to do with my life.  This is greatly unsettling to me.  I used to have everything figured out, and I still feel like I'm drifting and directionless, and I don't know what to do about it.  Are there exercises you go through?  "Eat 3 ounces of mustard, stab yourself with a sewing needle in your third toe on your left foot, dance around in a clockwise circle outside while wearing something green, and then the meaning of your life will be revealed to you."
Meanwhile I am only able to compile a list of closed doors, and that gets disheartening, even when I've willingly closed them myself.

Okay, back to work--I've been unable to focus all day today, and was hoping writing would help get me back into a productive state of mind.  Time to go try it out.

For the last week or so I've been writing BRILLIANT lj entries in my head and walking around editing them and making them sound fantastic, and somehow I just never get around to typing them out when I sit down at the computer. I mean, I'm holding on to classic phrases like, "And that's when I realized the 4-year-old was better at Mario Kart than I was" and "I was finally able to use Flames of Phlegethos, after weeks of rolling fours." But now that I look back over the rough drafts in my head, it's not worth backing up a week to write up a whole entry just so I can talk about how a little girl pwned me at Mario Kart.

Claire is chewing on EVERYTHING. Including... the wall??

I've been working at the silly university bookstore for the last week, waking up at the unholy hour of 6am to trudge through the dark and the cold and the snow to earn a few measly dollars each day. It's actually not so bad, except that I got sick over the weekend, and trying to be friendly and upbeat and efficient when all you want to do is curl up in a ball and whimper made today's work... unpleasant. And tomorrow's shift is longer. So. We'll see. Maybe I'll just shoot myself and have done with the whole thing.

I emailed a few random science editors over the holidays and got some nice replies back, so I've been networking (calling the phone numbers each successive person gives me) and making a few nice long Word documents with helpful hints and tips about where to look and how to get my name out there.

Anyway. I totally had an awesome post written up in my head when I sat down to write this ten minutes ago, and of course now for the life of me I can't remember a single thing I actually wanted to say. I was hoping that babbling for three paragraphs would help, but it hasn't.

So yeah.

Good times.

Things are going extremely well. Life is settling more and more now that quals are over, and I feel like I'm getting to be myself a bit again.

My date on Wednesday went extremely well, so I had another one on Saturday. Things are very very good at the moment, and I'm trying as hard as I can to just go with the flow and enjoy the happiness as long as it's choosing to keep sneaking up on me unexpectedly, as it's been doing for the last five days. The surprise smiles are the best kind--the ones where you find yourself looking at something mundane like a box of pipet tips and suddenly you're smiling about something that happened three days ago. The beginning stages of a relationship are a lot more fun than I remembered. I hope it keeps up like this.

Lab isn't going quite as swimmingly, so I'm starting over with my tagging AGAIN. So for most of today I'm just waiting for a PCR to run. I should really have started it last night so it would be ready this morning, but frankly I was just too lazy. Also, I had to pick up Em at the airport in Hartford, so I spent my evening driving instead of coming into lab.

Anyway.

Also, I completely failed at NaNoWriMo, predictably. I wrote not a single word. I think starting is going to be the hardest part for me. *sigh* Maybe next year. Maybe over Christmas break I'll write a short story or something. Maybe I should just focus on making myself write in my journals more often.

Or maybe I should stop writing and go do my homework. Blah.

I've been thinking a lot lately. This is probably a bad thing, and is likely a product of me not being in lab and class all day long. Luckily my normal hectic life resumes tomorrow, and I become a prisoner of science once again....

Before I get into all the thinkingness, I just wanted to mention that I had a really good spring break, despite being bitterly lonely for most of it. I don't know when I became a social creature; the transformation seems to have snuck up on me. I used to be so antisocial and so afraid of other people. It seems weird that these days I'm so dependent on the company of others. But I did have a good break, and the solitude allowed me to some things I hadn't been able to do in all the hubbub of grad school academic and social life. I watched The Chronicles of Narnia, which made me cry. Such a good movie.... I finished knitting the Cascade 220 bag I've been working on forever, and have learned 1) that it really does matter how long the cable is on circular needles and 2) you really can't felt something in the bathroom sink unless you're a lot more patient than I am. I shall have to bribe a friend with a washing machine. I've also read about half of the second book of the Bridei Chronicles, which I bought about a week ago. I love Juliet Marillier. Her books are amazing. They seem to take hold somewhere inside my heart and then proceed to pull out all of my most secret inner longings about love and life and honor and strength. Her stories speak to me in a strange way that most other stories don't. Then again, I cry at commercials, so maybe I'm giving her too much credit. But this book is amazing, and it makes me wish I had the first one here in Connecticut so I could read it again, since I don't remember most of the minor characters, and Ms. Marillier has a nasty way of making her sequels about minor characters instead of about major ones.
Also, I saw 300 on IMAX the other day, and it had a weird way of actually making me feel violent. Actually violent. I got into the bloodthirstiness of the Spartan killing tactic, and I WANTED the Persians to die. And when the Queen (all right, I won't say anything for those of you who haven't seen it; I don't want to spoil it) does that awesome thing she does, I relished the violence of the moment. It felt good. This led me to realize that I am, in fact, withholding a great deal of anger. This, again, is probably a bad thing. I think I need an outlet for all of this anger, or something really bad is gonna happen.

Anyway.

I've been thinking a lot about my life and what I want out of it. What I want to do with it, who I want to become, where I want to live, how I want to make my living. I listened to last week's This American Life last night, and they sang "California," and for some reason the song hit home in such a strong way that I actually stopped knitting so I could stare out my teeny tiny cell window. I felt like ice. I felt like I had this huge, momentous decision before me, and I knew the way I was supposed to choose, and I knew the way I would choose, and they were different. I'm supposed to go home to California and be something else, do something else, follow some other life path. But it's easier to take no action, to continue following a course already set out, and that's what I've chosen to do. Besides, what kind of other life would I lead? There seem to be so many options, and all of them are terrible, or at least depressingly difficult.

1) Stay here, follow current path, do postdoc in California, etc. Be geneticist.
2) Re-apply to grad schools this coming fall, transfer to UCSF, Berkeley, or Stanford. Be scientist.
3) Move to California (or, more realistically, Reno) and buy a flower shop. In Reno, I bet you anything I could talk my mom into helping me do this, because she tried to about three years ago, and would have succeeded if someone hadn't outbid her on the shop she was trying to buy.
4) Throw a ton of money at a really nice camera, and somehow fight my way into the realm of respectable photography. I could then either be a travel photographer (and writer, there's no way I could travel and not write), or photograph weird inner-city wildlife like deformed pigeons and tame rats. I have no idea where this idea came from, but my dark and twisty brain really likes it. Photography would be so much fun.
5) Re-apply to grad schools, except this time for marine biology. Like Woods Hole and Scripps. Be scientist. Study whales, like I planned in the second grade.
6) Stay here and work on PhD and write a novel. Publish novel, become horribly rich, drop out. Become writer.

Most of these options seem to be horribly flawed in at least one way. Several of them, I know, are completely inviolate (that's a word, right? too lazy to look it up).

In the end, I don't even know why I bother updating about this sort of thing. I know in my heart that, even if being here is utterly wrong for me, I'm too weak to take any action on that decision. I've made my choice in coming here, and am too terrified of being left alone and starving in the cold to leave my current career path. I have no money and so much debt as it is; how could I possibly end the only income I've ever had to throw myself at a dream that may turn out to fail horribly? Or that I may turn out to be bored with? Perhaps I underestimate myself, and I'd be bored to tears as a florist or photographer. I know that spring break is boring me to tears....

I can't help but wonder if all of this insanity and upheaval over HIM is because I'm really all insane and upheaved about ME. I think I'm projecting. I think my own life is a crazy mixed-up confusing mess right now, and I'm living something I'm not sure I believe in (haven't I always yelled at people who don't follow their dreams?), and I'm transferring all of that upsetness over to him so that I'll have something concrete to be frustrated at.

I'm angry. I want to throw things. Unfortunately I'm pretty sure I'm mad at myself. I shouldn't have made the decision to come here, and once I did I should have given myself over to it completely. And since I haven't, I should make up my damn mind about what I want to do, and then I should have the balls to follow through with it and DO something about my misery. I'm so mad at my own unwillingness to help myself. That's a quality I despise in other people, and it makes me livid to see it in myself. AAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHH.