-So. Compared to previous breaks, this one hasn't been too bad (overall). Thank God I've been working every day; I would have been miserable otherwise. As it is, I've done a fair amount of reading (mostly personal stuff without much application), but it's felt more or less productive.
There were even a few periods where I genuinely felt "good." Or, at least, like things were going alright. I had some solid plans, I had confidence in those plans, I felt like I could do what needed to get done. But, as I go along, I gradually get eaten away by doubts and fears and then I'm back to thinking I'm good at nothing, have no basis to hope for better things, and I should, in essence, give up. Sad clowns playing violins or something, I don't know.
There are times when I don't. There are times when I feel that I should pursue what I want instead of what makes sense. And, as I've alluded to, I'm starting to do that a bit. I'm still stuck in paralysis very often. I still lack confidence and faith. I still spiral into pretty painful places because I lose that hope, that faith that everything will get better, that I can do what I need to do to be able to do what I want to do (that is one hell of a sentence right there). But I also have some better periods, too, where all of that is restored. And that's, at least, a marked improvement.
-Higher education increasingly seems to be better suited for me. I (and many others) always figured it probably was, but, naturally, my lack of confidence in my abilities has held me back. That, and my fear of research, which I might even be fairly good at.
But I want my ideas and conceptions to be challenged a lot more than they are now. I feel like higher education is a better fit to my pace/style. I'm going to try to do things much differently next semester for my classes, but even then, I feel like I want to try... more before time runs out. I can always go back to teaching, but the more time passes, the harder I think a PhD will be.
Of no small relevance, I had dinner with a former professor and a cadre of her past students. I got along rather well with the woman I sat across, an MFA teaching film at a college in Michigan in her early 30s. It was one of the first times I've been attracted to someone significantly older than myself, in a real, immediate sense. I don't know how she felt about me; we talked for awhile, which I imagine is a good sign. She asked some of us out to a bar afterwards, but since I don't drink and I'm too shy as is (I was also intimidated by my own attraction, if you can understand that) I deferred. It was somewhat... encouraging, though. And I imagine academia is the place where I can meet many more people who can challenge me in the way she did. Which is not to say that those around me aren't engaging. I just think we're interested in different things. Maybe that's a sign, I dunno.
I was discouraged, too, though, because I still felt somewhat distant. I ask questions well, but I don't... invest myself in conversations as well as I probably should. Which leads me too...
-My counselor asked me to do an experiment the last time we met. She asked me how I would see myself if I was trying to objectively look at myself. And, honestly, it was practically impossible for me to do. My mind immediately rebelled against the notion, practically viscerally. I couldn't do it. I didn't want to do it. The very concept made me very uncomfortable.
And it resonated with something else she mentioned, that, at least according to the way I was describing myself in social situations, it was "as if [I] wasn't really there." It's kind of frightening to think about. It used to undoubtedly be true; I would try to make people laugh or ask them questions instead of being genuinely expressive with them. I think I've gotten a lot better at it. I feel like I'm honest, like I express myself. I've been told I'm rather sincere, which has always struck me as pleasantly ironic.
But I'm still not good at talking about myself. I'm just... bad at it. My stories aren't good, my expressions of my feelings seem whiny and without direction, my ideas are jumbled. I have to react to something, to probe, to question, to talk about it to really come alive. I can't, in and of myself, be myself comfortably.
That is, if I have a self to be. I have some ideas of who I'd like to be (don't we all, heh), but I don't have a very good idea as to how I come off to others. Part of depression is a skewed perception of reality, and, although I objected to my counselor that everyone has an inherently skewed perspective (that what perspective is), I recognize that mine is probably more negative and darker. So I don't know how people regard me. For all my introspection, I don't rightly know how I would regard myself because I can't divorce my hopes from my failures to meet them; they're constantly in flux, and so am I. I've even considered starting to flat out ask people to characterize me, as honestly as possible, good and bad. Maybe it would be worth a try.
There were even a few periods where I genuinely felt "good." Or, at least, like things were going alright. I had some solid plans, I had confidence in those plans, I felt like I could do what needed to get done. But, as I go along, I gradually get eaten away by doubts and fears and then I'm back to thinking I'm good at nothing, have no basis to hope for better things, and I should, in essence, give up. Sad clowns playing violins or something, I don't know.
There are times when I don't. There are times when I feel that I should pursue what I want instead of what makes sense. And, as I've alluded to, I'm starting to do that a bit. I'm still stuck in paralysis very often. I still lack confidence and faith. I still spiral into pretty painful places because I lose that hope, that faith that everything will get better, that I can do what I need to do to be able to do what I want to do (that is one hell of a sentence right there). But I also have some better periods, too, where all of that is restored. And that's, at least, a marked improvement.
-Higher education increasingly seems to be better suited for me. I (and many others) always figured it probably was, but, naturally, my lack of confidence in my abilities has held me back. That, and my fear of research, which I might even be fairly good at.
But I want my ideas and conceptions to be challenged a lot more than they are now. I feel like higher education is a better fit to my pace/style. I'm going to try to do things much differently next semester for my classes, but even then, I feel like I want to try... more before time runs out. I can always go back to teaching, but the more time passes, the harder I think a PhD will be.
Of no small relevance, I had dinner with a former professor and a cadre of her past students. I got along rather well with the woman I sat across, an MFA teaching film at a college in Michigan in her early 30s. It was one of the first times I've been attracted to someone significantly older than myself, in a real, immediate sense. I don't know how she felt about me; we talked for awhile, which I imagine is a good sign. She asked some of us out to a bar afterwards, but since I don't drink and I'm too shy as is (I was also intimidated by my own attraction, if you can understand that) I deferred. It was somewhat... encouraging, though. And I imagine academia is the place where I can meet many more people who can challenge me in the way she did. Which is not to say that those around me aren't engaging. I just think we're interested in different things. Maybe that's a sign, I dunno.
I was discouraged, too, though, because I still felt somewhat distant. I ask questions well, but I don't... invest myself in conversations as well as I probably should. Which leads me too...
-My counselor asked me to do an experiment the last time we met. She asked me how I would see myself if I was trying to objectively look at myself. And, honestly, it was practically impossible for me to do. My mind immediately rebelled against the notion, practically viscerally. I couldn't do it. I didn't want to do it. The very concept made me very uncomfortable.
And it resonated with something else she mentioned, that, at least according to the way I was describing myself in social situations, it was "as if [I] wasn't really there." It's kind of frightening to think about. It used to undoubtedly be true; I would try to make people laugh or ask them questions instead of being genuinely expressive with them. I think I've gotten a lot better at it. I feel like I'm honest, like I express myself. I've been told I'm rather sincere, which has always struck me as pleasantly ironic.
But I'm still not good at talking about myself. I'm just... bad at it. My stories aren't good, my expressions of my feelings seem whiny and without direction, my ideas are jumbled. I have to react to something, to probe, to question, to talk about it to really come alive. I can't, in and of myself, be myself comfortably.
That is, if I have a self to be. I have some ideas of who I'd like to be (don't we all, heh), but I don't have a very good idea as to how I come off to others. Part of depression is a skewed perception of reality, and, although I objected to my counselor that everyone has an inherently skewed perspective (that what perspective is), I recognize that mine is probably more negative and darker. So I don't know how people regard me. For all my introspection, I don't rightly know how I would regard myself because I can't divorce my hopes from my failures to meet them; they're constantly in flux, and so am I. I've even considered starting to flat out ask people to characterize me, as honestly as possible, good and bad. Maybe it would be worth a try.
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