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enfinblue's Bluey (credit to Fifi for the nickname!) Diaryland Diary

"I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart." -Vinc3nt V@n Gogh

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Oddly, for me, I can't even TELL you what I'm feeling. But I'm feeling so much. It's all muddled together...blue and red and pink and yellow and green...forming one big muddy puddle.

I just got home. I wrote a bunch of stuff on the plane but I am too tired to transcribe it.

Having said that, since it is 2 a.m. I have decided that after a busy weekend I am likely to not go to work tomorrow! How bad is that?

My boss was actually suggesting that I think about it. I kept on saying last week that I would be in. I'm always in. But I'm so tired and refreshing myself is likely a good idea.

We KNOW that the senior economist won't be in.

So these meetings were WEIRD. I want to say F-ed up, but that is not like me! PLease forgive me the profanity.

Basically, in a nutshell, I realized a few very useful things.

One of these useful things is that my standards are higher than most people's. Soo...I always wanted to be GREAT at everything that I do, and I realized that most people who do this stuff just DO it and don't mind being middling. Or maybe they don't know that they are middling. I could have finished my thesis and been middling, but fundamentally I didn't want to be middling.

Which is why I was actually doing a very good thesis, but the kind of thesis that takes you eight years as you collect your own data.

So, basically, I am an idiot.

But having said that, I did get the very, very warm and positive vibe from my former supervisors and professors that they respect me. I don't know exactly why that is. Maybe it's just that they like me. Try as I like to pretend that I am not likeable, I'm generally likeable. I don't know why that is, either.

Last night I was out with a bunch of people for a drink, and this girl was telling me about this guy who has a crush on me. And she was saying something about how he is really picky, about how he only likes really sweet girls.

And right away I said, "WAIT! I am not sweet!"

Sweet seems like such a wimpy term to call someone.

And she said, "You put on a firm and determined exterior but I'm sorry - you are just oozing sweetness."

UGH.

I don't want to be sweet!

That's my problem!

No wonder they all walk all over me!

Anyhow. I should be sweet - I ate FOUR cinnamon buns this morning.

I KNOW. Don't ask. And I'm sure that they were NOT wheat free.

:)

I really am hopeless.

On a more serious note, I DID really feel horrible about myself at this conference. I felt horrible because really I am a joke. All of my friends and colleagues have committed to things and just FINISHED. I on the other hand have never finished anything. Really. I have flitted from thing to thing. And now, instead of doing research that really really interests me - a little bit of that type exists in the world, believe it or not - I am doing a nothing, brainless, paper shuffling job at the LINE DANCE department.

It just blows my mind to think that this is what I've chosen for myself, that this is what the years are stretching out ahead of me to be. It's so sad. What a waste of a life. And how cavalier and wasteful and stupid I've been to just throw and throw and throw away until this is what things were pared away to.

I know that it's more complicated than that. I could blame my mother, if I believed in blame any longer. I have never had belief in myself because my mother has always told me that I can't do things, that I will fail. But I've turned off that radio now so that is OK.

Interestingly, some random colleague came up to me at the airport today and said out of the blue, "You should do your bilingualism bonus test. Your French is very good."

I really never would have thought that about my French at all.

I think I'm a bit like an anorexic - I have a very distorted view of my own performance. It is weird. This guy is not taken to exaggeration so I am going to call the French-ie coordinator lady and ask her to set up my test. If I fail, no worries - it's costless. And here's the thing - I KNOW objectively that that the bilingualism standard for the level that I would need is not high. I mean, you don't have to be Voltaire or anything. (Though I might like to be.)

Sigh. And of course I get a salary bonus if I pass, so why not?

I always have to be academically perfect before I'll venture into anything.

So many weaknesses! And I'm revealing them all.

OK. SO I have a final weakness to reveal to you. Wait for it.

Soooo...my graduate supervisor whom I dumped for the crazy female one...well he had been my Master's supervisor. This man is amazing.

Soooo...the confession is this: In another life I would absolutely want to be married to this man. He's incredible, and also deathly attractive. I mean, heartstoppingly sexy, horribly unfashionable, witty, impulsive, too kind for his own good, nearly falls out of a chair in excitement over the discovery of a new quantitative method geeky, tall, academic classic hot francophone man with an edge attractive. (He once stomped out of a room on me pouting, and then sheepishly apologized later. In a man way, I believe, mostly by not actually apologizing but making it clear that he was embarrassed. It was, sadly, very endearing, as was the time that I dropped into his office only to find him utterly sweaty in his work clothes and completely out of breath. Upon questioning he revealed that he'd had trouble thinking so he'd just taken off from his office and hiked up the mountain and back down again in the summer heat. I don't think that he could even see out of his glasses.))

And since he is long-married - I mean, since junior college or something ridiculous like that - and I am not THAT kind of girl, I always felt so uncomfortable meeting with him. He made me weak in the knees. Or at least he would have had I allowed myself to feel that way.

So when he told me that he was going on sabbatical just as I was starting my thesis, I considered seriously and thought that I would feel much less shy and uncomfortable were I to switch to the other person, with him for a bit of additional input in parts. TOugh to explain. SOOOO I was also trying to be ethical in a way.

Good luck, EB. Right?

Yeah. I'm really a wanker.

SO the point of this weekend being difficult is that SOOOO many people and places and experiences rushed back into my life. And then seeing this supervisor and chatting with him and this other prof of mine who is a close friend of his - and also mid-forties and deathly attractive and funny and charming - over wine and walking and personal subjects...well, just made me feel weird. I can't explain it. I just can't explain it. It was all bad. They invited me to take a cab with them to downtown...and needless to say I...turned it down. I just didn't want to be drunk with these men. I would have melted.

Unsettling, I know.

I'm really babbling here. Did I mention that I am not planning to go to work tomorrow? ACK! And I failed to mention the most important point: this supervisor guy is really, really good at what he does, enthusiastic...and so if I had just stuck with him he would have seen my thesis through to a good conclusion. It would have been wonderful. Who knows where I'd be now. But then that takes us back to the beginning: I don't really like economics that much. (Well, seeing Robert Mund2ll make jokes about Milton Fri3dman was worth the price of admission on Sat, but I digress. :))

(You also might have to ask why it is that I picked a good looking supervisor in the first place, thereby risking distraction? Well, please recall that my department was full of guys like the one who said, to my face, "I've always felt that you can't teach economics to women. (Chew chew)It's a matter of cognitive dissonance.")

OH! The other really terrible realization that I had as I was chatting with my deathly attractive former supervisor is that he looks startlingly like M. I'm not sure exactly what to take from that, but it was a shocking revelation to me.

Can a man be a leitmotif?

Hmmm....

Nevermind. Let's not talk about him anymore. Did I mention that in the first seminar at the conference one of the speakers concluded the following: "Oh I know, it's really *fashionable* now to talk about policies to counteract global warming...but we wouldn't want to screw ourselves (cough: economies) with those."

So I have to tell you why the hostel was a really dumb idea: The girls in my room who decided to party all night were visiting au pairs (nannies) from Seattle. They were very nice and everything, but just on a girls' weekend in Vancouver. So they were drinking until four a.m., and in and out of the dance club district. Not conducive to...sleep.

Oh, and the cleaning people took my towel on the second day - assuming perhaps that I had checked out - so the last two mornings I had to dry myself with a combination of my t-shirt and paper towels.

Yeah, I know.

Yeah...sigh...long weekend.

I'm not sure which end is up at the moment.

As usual. :)

|

2:04 a.m. - 2008-06-09

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