notes from underground

this may or may not come as a surprise to you, but I simply did not do any work this week. I last blogged on Monday, a day that was completely devoted to useless introspection and worrying about not doing any work. The maxim of the day was:

1. Write a crap thesis
2. Edit it

After blogging about it and washing some dishes, I called [GERTRUDE STEIN] and broke down, hysterically returning to "I'm a confused young child and I need my mother" mode. [GERTRUDE STEIN] is a professor with many misguided students of her own, but she was a little taken aback upon discovering that I have no "goal for the future." Oh well. We set up a meeting. I went out drinking in Nashua and saw some good live music.

On Tuesday I slept late, accosted [MARV ALBERT] and told him about my dilemma. He left me with the following:

Motivation does not cause production, production causes motivation.

Seemed like a good idea at the time. Then I had my meeting with [GERTRUDE STEIN], who assigned me a single task to be completed by the next day:

Make a list of things to do.

I made the list, divided the tasks into four categories of difficulty and time-consumption, and got ready to tell [JOSEPH STIGLITZ] that I had decided not to finish on time. He was, to say the least, not pleased. It was very awkward, I think he felt like has done all he can and failed. Of course, I'm the one who sucks, but I think deep down he knows that.

I went home, took a long scalding shower, went out drinking in Cambridge, and saw some good live music.

On Wednesday I slept late, and [GERTRUDE STEIN] stopped by my house to see my list of things to do. I showed it to her and we decided on some deadlines for things I should get done by our next meeting. She gave me some money and a foot-bath-thingy that she bought for my dead grandmother. Then I went up to Salem, dropped my vacuum cleaner off to be fixed, and went to the music store to see about my guitar. It would cost $150 to fix, a big expense considering I paid $25 for the guitar, so it's back to sandpaper and wood glue for me and my axe. The music store dude also tried to help me find a 4-track cassette deck with pitch control to slow down my interviews with, the cheapest used one was $180. I said to the dude,

I just don't have enough money to fix all of my problems in life.

When I got home I smoked a little [PLAIN OLD TOBACCO] and started rereading Notes From Underground. Let me tell you, there could not have been a worse time for me to get [PLAIN OLD TOBACCO] and read a narrative about inertia and alienation. The Underground Man said:

Oh, if I had done nothing simply from laziness! Heavens, how I should have respected myself, then. I should have respected myself because I should at least have been capable of being lazy; there would at least have been one quality, as it were, positive in me, in which I could have believed myself.

So yeah, that was depressing. On Thursday I woke up early and got a phone call from my friend [JUDY BLUME], whose anti-procrastination advice seems to have failed both of us. I went to school and picked up the readings for the conference paper, put them in my bag, and proceeded along with my time-wasting. I did some emailing, checked out some phrenology charts, and considered doing radical brain surgery on myself.

[DOSTOEVSKY HIMSELF] approached me and asked how things were going. I told him exactly how things were going... He said that in the 13 years it took him to write his dissertation, the best advice he ever got was accept his own unique writing process, as different and/or crazy as it might seem to others. He told me he has noticed that I get myself worked up so much before I even begin writing, and that certainly adds to the amount of time it takes me to produce. A lot of people think that's my 'problem' because they can just sit down and write something. He told me:

Getting overwhelmed is the first step of your process, always. But in a way, you MUST work yourself up, so don't beat yourself up over it. Recognize that you do get overwhelmed, that you will get overwhelmed, and accept it as a part of your writing process.

That was some of the most sensible advice I've gotten so far. Everyone tells me to stop 'being hard on myself,' but it seems much more useful to frame it as accepting something I do and working with myself, rather than fixing something I do (or don't do) and trying to change myself. I also tend to believe that I ought to be hard on myself, considering that myself is a person who does very little work. Anyhow, that made me feel better and gave me the energy I needed to get through the rest of the day.

I TA'ed my butt off for the hour or two left before class, sharing some sage-ish advice about the group projects, while simultaneously trying to do the reading that all the actual 'students' had finished days before. Whatever.

To make a long story short, my thesis is no closer to finished than it was two weeks ago. But I got a slew of [hopefully] good advice nuggets in my travels, I have a dozen new articles to read and a new paper to write, and I did a lot of yoga, drinking, and live-music-listening. Now I have to go make some lentil stew, lest I lose my not-writing-my-thesis momentum.

urbane renewal

I have a lot of catching up to do. To all three of you people who actually read my narcissistic ramblings, I hope you haven't been crying yourself to sleep every night, asking The Lord why He has not answered your prayers for more blogging from me. I also hope that my lack of blogging hasn't caused anyone to get more work done while at work. As you know, people died so that we could slack off and read blogs at work.

Now then, where to begin? Let's go back, way back in the day to Christmas. It was good. I decided that "finishing my final papers" was a pipe dream, asked my kindly professor for an extension, packed up my most festive belongings, and went to Worcester. Only one of my Woo peeps was around so I was forced to spend a lot of quality time with my family. They have recently given up hoping that I'll get married and resigned themselves to Single Anne in some very interesting ways. Case in point:

Yes, that's me with the awesome set of Tupperware my parents got me for Christmas. Their line of reasoning, as my mother so tactfully explained, is that normal people get Tupperware (et al) as wedding gifts because they are "setting up house." Since I won't be getting married anytime soon, it logically follows that I won't be getting any wedding gifts. I do, however, need Tupperware just as much as a married person might. Despite many key differences, I have a few things in common with married people, namely that I Cook Food, Eat Food, and Put Food In The Refrigerator. Other notable presents included a nice set of Pyrex, a cookbook, and a double boiler. My brother got games and money and other fun stuff, but I'm not bitter.

So while at my parents' house, one of my traditional favorite activities is to go through the drawers and closet in my old room, scrounging for stuff that may be useful to me now that I'm a starving Rad Student. I found some good books that I never read when they were assigned, some shoes I'll probably never wear, some age-old chocolate that I totally ate anyways, and... my old diary in the drawer of my nightstand...

Now, finding an old diary could be considered a happy occasion - it's fun to look back and remember all the crazy shit you did when you were younger. Reading my old diary, however, my nostalgic giddiness was soon replaced by a feeling of extreme panic. This diary, chronicling my last year of high school and first year of college, had been laying around in a drawer in my room for seven years. About two years ago, my mother began sleeping in my room occasionally because my father snores loudly. About five years ago, my parents began moving random crap (the Nordic-Track, appliances, etc.) into my room. Most importantly, about twenty-five years ago my parents began going through my stuff at will. I'd be very naive to assume they never happened upon this old diary, and I'd be even more naive to assume that if they found it they'd say "Oh, look, it's Anne's old diary. We'd love to see what's inside... But no, we have the utmost respect for my daughter's privacy, as well as the utmost faith that there's nothing in there that she wouldn't have already told us! We're walking away now, bye-bye Anne's diary!"

It's pretty likely that given a whole seven years they've read that thing at least once or twice, and I am officially mortified. My only hope is that they got distracted by a phone call or fire alarm right before they reached the deflowering episode. Needless to say I put that thing right into my overnight bag and brought it back to Lowell, where it can't do any more harm than it's already done.

Well, I'm not doing a very good job of catching up here, but I have a Grad Student Association meeting to go to. I love being part of an organization whose members are so f-ing cool that they meet on Fridays from 5-7pm. Peace!

christmas, yay.

every christmas eve eve I hear this weird ominous music in my head.














it's coming...

Thanksgiving

"That was horrible.  If you want to end war and stuff you got
to sing loud.  I've been singing this song now for twenty five
minutes. I could sing it for another twenty five minutes.  I'm
not proud... or tired.

So we'll wait till it comes around again, and this time with
four part harmony and feeling.

We're just waitin' for it to come around is what we're doing.

All right now.

You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
(Excepting Alice)
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant"

I have no idea why, but hearing this song on Thanksgiving
always makes me cry like a freakin' baby.  Seriously, I don't
know what comes over me.  I wish I had the kind of family that
sat down and listened to it all together, because there are
families that do that.  My family, on the other hand, went to
a restaurant for Thanksgiving, which I consider to be the
gravest possible Thanksgiving sin.  So I was forced to hear my
Alice's Restaurant in the car on the way to the restaurant. 
Then I got lucky and heard it twice on the way home.  Then
I got home and made the mistake of turning on NPR, and now
I'm seriously depressed.

I was all aggravated that I had to go to Worcester to spend
Thanksgiving with my family.  This is the first year since
college that I have been home for Thanksgiving, and I would
have much preferred to spend the holiday working at the
restaurant as I've done in past years.  I would bust my ass
all day from 11am to 11pm or later, never stopping for more
than thirty seconds to stuff a roll in my mouth, gulp down
some gingerale and bitters (Thanksgiving Eve what what) or
smoke half a cigarette in a single drag.

At the end of the marathon we were all sweaty, filthy, and
so beyond tired that our arms and legs felt more tingly than
achy when they finally stopped moving.  We had mint jelly in
our hair, gravy in our shoes, and pecan pie encrusted our
shirt cuffs.  But at the end of it all, after we all served
our last seated parties, the chefs started to dole out the
little styrofoam boxes - turkey, ham, or lamb with creamed
peas and onions, mashed potatoes, squash, and all the rest. 
They always ran out of ham before the restaurant closed, but
the chefs always managed to pull one out of some mystery
location for me. 

We were like people who had been stranded in the desert
getting our first taste of water in a year.  We all ate
standing up in the kitchen, styrofoam boxes spread out on
every available surface, bread board, salad bar, ice chest,
cardboard box.  We barely talked, but looked at each other
as if sharing the happiest secret - it was almost over.
Even though we inhaled our food in a matter of minutes,
having to go back to check on tables or give checks or
whatever, that was the closest thing to a family Thanksgiving
I ever felt. 

Earlier in the day we had fought with each other tooth and
nail for forks, and screamed that someone had taken the
wrong drinks or bumped into someone.  Some of us cracked
under all the pressure, some of us broke down because of evil
customers, some of us cried because we got boiling water
dumped on us.  In fact, one waiter organized a trifecta bet
every holiday, in which people picked the three waitstaff
most likely to break down first.  At the end of it all,
though, we were all on the same team and knew that none of
us would make it through the day without everyone else.

I missed those little styrofoam box Thanksgiving dinners
this year, and the people I used to stand around eating
them with.