The Way I Am

Frivolous, that's how I feel, looking back over the last couple of months of my weblog. It's all about food, *NSYNC, and weekends weekends weekends. I can't say I'm really all that perturbed by it, to tell the truth, but I do feel like there's a certain levity to my writing lately that doesn't quite match with some of the things I used to write about here.

It's not that I'm not thinking about things. This horrible incident with Daniel Pearl? Believe me, I'm thinking about it. I just really don't know what to say. Sometimes I look at the horror in the world and just find myself speechless these days. Since last fall I haven't much felt like writing about anything serious. The journal has fallen by the wayside. The weblog has become mostly about things that strike me as funny or silly. I still read the New York Times on Saturday and Sunday mornings, but then I just spend the rest of the day recovering from it rather than writing anything about the news I find there.

My personal life is running in parallel to this trend on the web page, in a way. There's the stuff I talk about and the stuff I think about, and then there's the stuff underneath that I just don't much feel like talking or thinking about. It's not very far under the surface. The doctors, the insurance company, my job, the negativity that I seem to run into every day at work and in the world. And sure, people have a right to be negative, we all do. I can be negative with the best of them. But sometimes I can't take the thought of dealing with one more person with a chip on their shoulder or a disapproving frown or a bad attitude about whatever. Give me a break.

Of course it's not all my personal darkness. I still think about September 11 at the strangest times. The other morning I was powering up my computer at work and thinking about getting Chinese food for lunch, and suddenly I was wondering whether any of those people who died in the WTC were thinking about having Chinese food for lunch on 9/11. Yeah, I'm sure they were. In the last six months I've visited the WTC site three times, seeing it from three different vantage points. I don't even know what to say about it. It's still horrifying. It's still there.

I don't know what to do with that darkness.

I think in response to that, I spend a lot of time indulging myself these days. Writing fanfiction, watching movies with Marty, doing lots of stuff with friends, hunting for bargains at Filene's, making plans to go to *NSYNC concerts. Like I said, indulging myself. That may not always be a good thing, necessarily. But I do what I want to do, mostly. I just need to find a way to want to do the things that need to get done.

In a way this reminds me of my last few years of grad school. I spent a lot of time focusing my attention elsewhere so I wouldn't have to realize just how unhappy I was with my work and my future. In the end I did figure it out, and I got out before it killed me, but I spent years just trying to ignore the hugeness of my depression.

These days I don't feel depressed in that same way. But even if I did, I understand a lot better how to deal with it than I did back then. Start by not hating myself for it, right? Still, I admit that my mood is extremely variable. Up and down, and it's touched off by the damnedest things. Some things you'd expect, and some things you wouldn't. Political bullshit at work irritates me, makes me mad, but I can usually keep from taking it personally or taking it home. It does build up after awhile, though. Relationship stuff is always a challenge to me, and no matter how much I grow up, my mood still seems to be affected by the normal ups and downs of close relationships. And all these pregnant people and people with new babies... it doesn't matter how happy for them I am, how genuinely happy I am, at some point (like maybe after the sixth or seventh one I find out about in a week) I start feeling a little snarly inside.

And maybe then I want to listen to some Eminem. So what? After that I come back with a smile on my face and I'm feeling tolerant again. Maybe it's not the same for everyone, but it works for me.

Well, whatever. I guess I'm just saying this is where I am right now, the way I am right now. I don't know that I like all the changes I see on Raspberry World, or the parallel changes in my own life, but I'm doing all I can do at the moment and I feel okay about that. And if I seem self-absorbed or internally focused, well, I probably am. And that's my business.

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