Sunday, Mar. 28, 2004 - 5:54 p.m.
Old wood floors lit by very late afternoon sun are the most beautiful thing I know of. And right now, if you stand at the right angle, you can�t even see the layer of pollen on the floors, the stereo, everything in my apartment. Even the cat has taken on a powdery yellowish-green cast this weekend, but she�s giving herself a bath right now and has temporarily reverted to gray. I refuse to close the windows, though. I am too in love with spring.
I�ve just finished rereading Emma, after doing the same with Pride and Prejudice, and I am overwhelmed by how good they are.
My mom always wanted me to read P&P when I was younger, and to this end she would check it out from the library several times a year. I, however, always refused to read it. I�d looked over the first few pages when I was eight or nine and found it so boring that I resolved never to read it, and certainly not at her urging. And I didn�t. I read not so much as a word of Jane Austen until I was required to for a college class. Maybe I first grew up when I had to admit to my mother how good Pride and Prejudice was.
Growing up is stalking me everywhere these days, the way any bout of self-awareness is always mirrored in the surrounding world. I�m working my way through the second season of Buffy, which (as much as L rolls his eyes over it) is all about duty and destiny and becoming an adult. And I�ve heard so many stories of college and job rejection in response to my own that I�m astounded it took me this long to have to deal with it. It�s because I never put myself out enough to be so firmly denied, I suppose. I applied to colleges and jobs I knew would accept me.
But my energy and positivity have returned with the azalea buds and the longer, warmer days, and I�m beginning to wonder if, even if I get into the school in Chicago, I even want to go there. The more I think long and earnestly about it, the more I realize that my reasons for wanting a PhD are not enough to sustain me through the certain hell to follow of fighting for tenure. I do love being part of academia, but more than that, I want a PhD because I want to be a person who has a PhD. I want to be Dr. Moore. Shitty reason, no? I also want summers and spring breaks off, and I want to continue to be unsupervised, alone for whole semesters, befuddling my students as I wish. Teaching is, in some ways, an awfully anti-social profession. I go for days without seeing colleagues, and though I do the best I can for the students� sake, I can hardly imagine how much I�d have to screw up for anybody to hear about it. But I�m not sure it�s good for me, this solitary plodding. My mind gets cut loose too easily, swirls and obsesses without regular nitpicky tasks to sharpen my claws on. I am lazy when left alone. I am not antisocial, but I end up that way if not forced to interact.
So I�m looking at copy editing, proofreading, editing, and even technical writing and copywriting jobs now. This has always been my Secret Backup Profession, and I have somehow managed to put together a sufficient number of experiences inside academia for an entry-level position somewhere, I hope. I hate the Career Advice industry, hate the word �resume� and instructions on networking and how to dress, but I�ve been wading through it all and am gratified by the seeming existence of other things I can be besides a scholar. I knew it was all out there, but I am considering it seriously and happily for the first time ever.
L and I watched one and a half episodes of �Mr. Show� last night and fell asleep long before midnight on the couch, he with his head back and mouth open and me with my head in his lap. I haven�t slept so soundly not in a bed in years. And when we finally did move to the bed, I had extraordinarily vivid dreams of being driven off a cliff thousands of feet up when a friend took a corner too quickly, everyone climbing out of the car as it fell and plummeting down to the valley floor while I managed to spread my pale green windbreaker like wings and steer myself towards the road running along the cliff, managed to slow my speed enough that when I hit the road I bruised my thigh badly but suffered no other injuries. A well-known author was driving down the road, and he stopped and took me with his family to a candy store a little further down. The store was in a tiny log building, and we all ate rock candy and stood around laughing. Falling dreams should always end so well.