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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Hotter than hades in my apartment.

Oh dudes...

Not a great day. Like I needed to tell you that.

Thanks to Fifi and Anna for their lovely, comforting notes!!

Kind!

I think it's going to take me a while to disentangle all of the reasons that today and this silly decision to go to an interview were so fraught, but whatever.

I just couldn't go.

Maybe it's because this option has been "open" in my head for a long time.

I worked for that department in my 20s, as you know.

At the time, I didn't want to be a diplom@t. But I always held it as an option, "for later."

I think that it might harken back to when I was growing up. As you know, I have never received much respect from my grandfather. Nor from my uncles.

Except one.

One of the professors in the lot, my mother's youngest brother, a very accomplished entomologist and photographer, once said to my mother, "It's EB in the family who is going to do something important."

My grandparents wanted me to be a diplomat.

My uncle thought that that would be appropriate.

My mother desperately wanted it.

So perhaps I felt as though this was my last chance to live up to the expectations that I've disappointed so many times. Really, since I dropped out of my Ph.D., I haven't heard once from my grandfather or any of my other uncles. Nor from my aunt. No one. I don't exist.

So I felt a bit like I was unloading myself of hat baggage today.

I just hope that it wasn't about fear (I feel full of it at the moment), or about giving them the finger, or whatever.

I don't like the way that I feel right now.

What I did do though was make a list of pros and cons.

The pros were about living in interesting cities, working on interesting files, maybe advancing some critical cause somehow.

The cons though were interesting. One was that I wouldn't have a chance to see if I could build a stable life in one place, maybe have a long relationship. That's very difficult for a woman in that job.

The other things were the less-predictable things. For example, I imagined myself twenty years from now feeling regret that I didn't get to do anything more seriously academic again, like finishing that Ph.D. thesis (in History, in Britghton! :)), or taking a year and doing something completely crazy like taking an M.A. in Art History at the Court@ld Institute.

I don't know. Maybe writing history books like I'd always planned. And painting, of course. I want to draw and paint. I want to break the stupid fear that I have about diving into these things and being myself.

So I don't know which side is right. For now, one mysterious, unfinished side won out.

What I thought to myself as I was sitting at my computer at work this evening, neither able to work nor able to leave, was that I hope most of all that this is a leap into faith in the unknown in some way, that somehow what I need most will be coming my way.

OK. I just ate a log of brie with baguette. I have no alcohol in the house, as I've not been drinking lately. I think I deserve a drink tonight though, don't you think? I'm off to the liquor store. :)

A big XO. Hope that your days were not so fraught and instead full of glorious certainties. Well, you know what i mean.

8:39 p.m. - 2009-08-13

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