So It's Still Not Done....

But I edge ever closer to being done. The problem today was that apparently I needed a day of rest, and so I didn't start working until like 6 PM. Not ideal. That said, I worked solidly and I addressed the most difficult part of the revisions that were suggested, so tomorrow is fairly smooth sailing with typing in changes, Doing the nit-picky once-over of the whole thing in which I also look at the bibliography and notes, and dealing with formatting stuff. I'll need to do one last close reading on Monday because I'm an idiot and I teach things that I research and so the book that I need is in my office. That said, I somehow managed a day that was both very productive and very relaxing.

Needless to say, my house is a STY. Which is the main reason why I've got to get this thing out of my hands, so that I can live like a human being again. You know, doing things like vacuuming and showering.

You know, it's times like these when I wish that my personal life were more... stable? figured out? That it existed in only one time zone? As much as I needed and wanted to be left alone all day today, right now I wish that I weren't alone. It's so easy for the work to be all-consuming, and if you don't have a person or people who take you out of that, well, I'm not sure that's entirely positive. I don't know. I don't know what I'm doing in my personal life.

I had thought, when I got this job, that my personal life would just be very different from what it is. I'd been living with a guy for three years and it was understood that when I was done with the PhD that we'd get married. That was how things were supposed to go. But when I got the job, he left. And so now here I am, with this life that I never thought I'd have. And I've done all of the things that you're supposed to do in order not to be a lonely person. I've done the online dating thing, I've done the going out thing, I've done the going to events that attract single people thing, and yet here I am, typing on a fucking blog at 11:40 on a Saturday night.

But what's weird, too, is that the blog has brought more new people into my life than any of the other shit I've done. Real people, with whom I have real relationships. The problem is, though, that as much as that's a good thing, it means that the real relationships I've developed are all elsewhere. And I don't want my life to be a long-distance life, ultimately.

Which, of course, is why with the final stages of the book I freaked out on FB yesterday, because the thing is, the last thing I've ever wanted is a long-distance relationship and yet I seem to find myself in one. One that is incredibly crazy and impractical and that is, in many respects, having trouble getting off the ground. And so now I'm at this breaking point with it, where it either needs to go further (terrifying) or just end (which isn't what I want). But it's all wrapped up in this job - the fact that I even know him, the fact that we're both so fucking retarded about it, the fact that I feel like he knows me better than most people I've dated in real life (including the guy that I lived with for three years) have ever known me. This profession makes it so fucking hard to just have a normal life. A lot of times I feel like my biggest problem is that I thought the personal life shit would just take care of itself once I had a job. But you know, getting a job only made that shit harder.

Because the thing is, the job is... rational. I know what I need to do both in the specific job I'm in so that I do well and in the wider field so that I gain in reputation. The steps are clear, concrete. It's all manageable. You just do a/b/c and then x/y/z happens. Or maybe y or z fall through, but still, you're on a path. And it's not unlike knowing the rules of how to do well in school. I've always been most comfortable in that area, and so it's the thing that I fall back on, the thing that makes sense even when nothing else makes any sense. Which then ultimately means that the job eats away at the personal life stuff, even though I want the personal life stuff to be a priority that actually comes before the job.

I think some people feel about relationships the way that I feel about the job - like it's the thing that makes sense to them even when nothing else does, like it's where they're most comfortable. Some people have spent their lives knowing how to "do" them. They don't have all of this fucked up static when it comes to them. My mom is like this. So is my friend A. But for me, that's always been the thing about which I've felt most clueless. And so when I've ended up in relationships, it's always felt like an accident. Kind of like a car accident - you are doing your best to avoid getting into one, but then suddenly, there you are exchanging insurance information. That's kind of how I feel about my personal life right now. Like ultimately I don't have any control over it and like I don't know what I need to do to get where I want to go, now that the wreck has happened.

And so my response to that is to put it all on FB - to make it so he needs to make a move. In part, he *does* need to make a move, but the way that I'm insisting on it has as much to do with my insecurity and feeling of just not knowing what the hell I'm doing as it does with the fact that it's his turn, so to speak. And so I know I'm not really being fair, but I don't know how to be fair. I don't know how to apply the determination and focus that I have in my work life to my personal life. I don't know how to be competent.

So why am I writing all of this here? You know, I'm not really sure. I think it's because I do feel a connection between Major Work Events for me and Personal Life Freak-Outs. The two always seem to go hand in hand. And I also think that I'm writing about this here because I wonder whether this is just me being fucked up or whether this really is related to some of the idiosyncrasies of this profession. I wonder if I'd be the same if, for example, I'd gone to law school and settled down in my hometown instead of choosing a profession that would fling me into an unknown location. I wonder if I'd be the same if I did a job that didn't demand that I analyze the fuck out of everything, because, you know, it's hard to turn that shit off. I wonder if I'd be the same if I didn't specifically choose to work on stuff that focuses on fucking sex. I mean, the fact that I spend all of this time thinking about relationships in books has to have something to do with the fact that I can't seem to manage them in my own life. I wonder if I'd be the same if I hadn't internalized quite so perfectly academia's demand to achieve at all costs.

So yes, these are my thoughts on this lonesome Saturday night. Oh, and also that the movie Failure to Launch is both entertaining and totally enraging at the same time.