For breakfast I had a hot cross bun: most excellent. I recently purchased a grater and have happily been using it to make zest for my baked goods. (I even used it to cut in the butter, creating a funny network of squiggly shortening.) The orange fruit from which I took the zest was lovely too: a complement to a vegan breakfast sandwich eaten at lunch. I made a small amount of tofu scramble, piled atop an onion cream cheese lathered English muffin, with a slice of breakfast sausage thrown in for good measure.
Late morning sunlight now streams into the apartment through the skylight, filtering through the sprawling house plant that Nora bought, reminding me this is the first weekend of spring. Our apartment is not well situated for the seasons. The windows are WNW meaning we get little direct sunlight in the winter and a withering blast in the summer. (In fact, on winter mornings I have to console myself with the sunlight reflected off the windows across the block.) But for now, the sunlight is glorious and welcome.
As I dab frosting into the crossed crevices of my vegan buns it strikes me as odd that we make treats inspired by a Roman method of torture and execution.
To provide a counterpoint to the previous entry, I do want to note some things that I have been happy and grateful for in the past five years. First, shacking up with Nora has been a great experience. Second, finding a Buddhist community and practice -- though long a topic of curiosity -- has been a blessing. Third, I'm proud and often happy with my efforts and time spent in the kitchen. This week alone I've made, from scratch, biscuits -- to go with Nora's soup; meatballs (or "beanballs"), gnocchi (surprisingly easy); and pound cake. All vegan, all delicious, if I say so myself.
It is times like this when I feel most uncomfortable. I've come to realize, and research indicates that I am not alone, that I am happiest when I anticipate the completion of a goal rather than at its achievement.
So I am left to reconcile my mood of melancholy with others' congratulations and expectations of happiness. And I'm not sure how to make sense of it. Of course, I can look to the past. Based on my two previous stints as a student I knew this might be difficult. And the irony is that while I love universities I never feel content as a student. I love being surrounded by smart people, libraries, cultural activities, and athletic facilities; it's everything one needs within a square mile. But it seems to me that life as a student is a costly exercise in evaluation and competition: paying a fortune to be continually judged. One thing I've been fortunate to experience in the work place is that one can be satisfied in the utility of a contribution and appreciated by one's peers, whereas academia is much more a winner-takes-all type scenario. I knew this, and that my own bookish and asocial tendencies might be further exaggerated in the long and a solitary exercise of writing a dissertation. All of this is why I think I enjoyed working at MIT more than being a student there. And why I've always felt a great affinity for the drop-out hanger-ons. While I'm happy to be called a geek, I don't self-identify as an intellectual and Cambridge's (fortunately) full of both.
Even so, I've always appreciated what I've learned as a student and thought of it as a stocking the cupboard with resources that would one day be useful to myself and -- hopefully -- others. Also, while a cliché, education opens doors: providing connections and pathways that simply would not be available otherwise.
So why then do I not feel a great sense of satisfaction? First, I concede that in the future I might: as the difficulties of the present fade I'll continue to accrue benefits from those three letters "PhD". Second, the dissertation is not really done. The reviews of my book proposal were generally positive but I appreciate that -- like any dissertation -- much work remains. However, on this note, I do feel some satisfaction in the actual work, and will be happy when I can share it with others.
But most importantly, and unlike when I got my Masters, I'm uncertain about the future. Both my voice and my shoulders hurt with more than 30 minutes of speaking or sitting at the computer. Chronic pain is a pain in the neck -- pun intended -- and not being able to work or pay the bills as I might like is a worry.
And I think this best explains my present state of mind. At some point I committed myself to finishing the dissertation, however much my shoulders hurt, my hands tremble, and my savings were spent. Surprisingly, this commitment at least shielded me from the anxiety of the question: what to do with my life? Is the forecast one of mostly pain and poverty? So I muscled through and thought to myself "just make it to March 5." And so I have, but the questions still remain.
The mornings are bright and cheery and the evening sun lingers. A great relief.
__
Copyright 2008 NrrrdBoy. All Rights Reserved. https://goatee.net/