so, as is often the case, i overreached in my excitement, updating my blog a hundred billion times in the first two weeks or so of all the new writing, recording, etc. and then things sort of petered out a bit. i expected this, so if it surprised anyone else, shame on you for not having anticipated my mercurial nature injecting itself into my blog kingdom. actually, it's probably a misnomer to refer to a cancer as "mercurial". the essential meaning of the word fits, but the word itself not so much.
it sounds a hell of a lot better than "moony" though, which is the only cancer-specific adjective i can current summon.
anyway, my "work 10 hours a day and then be super-creative and prolific 8 hours a day" thing lasted like 2 weeks, and then i spent pretty much this entire past weekend playing video games and sleeping 10 hours a night. it was necessary. thinking that i could keep writing 3 songs a day, recording 20-30 hours every weekend, keep up on my travel journal every day, was ridiculous. maybe i could do one of those things regularly in addition to teaching, but not all of them, along with all the normal stuff i have to do like buy groceries, walk everywhere, study up on being a giraffe whisperer, and at least keep decent attendance at my crocheting astronauts club.
so i crashed. as usual. such great heights and all that. blah blah blah.
anyway, it was great to do little to nothing for a few days. i felt guilty at first because i had a whole wide open weekend and i wasn't wailing away on one of my three current recording projects, but the fact is i really can't expect to have time to treat recording like my job when i already have a job. it has to be a hobby, for better or worse. for sanity's sake if nothing else. i mean, even if you have the most interesting, attractive ladyfriend in the world, spending all your free time around her will make you want to kill her (at least if you're me). it's essentially the same principle at work here. i don't derive the meaning of life from any one thing, so to essentially center everything around that one thing will eventually lead to disillusionment. and apparently buying three boxes of instant oatmeal and eating most of them.
well, after my convalescence (sp?) i came back on monday spoiling for a fight and ready to work my ass off on being a super-excellent composition teacher and generally smart person. and then i found out yesterday that i didn't get into WSU's grad program for next year. i'm still dealing with the implications of this (and odds are i will be for awhile yet), so i don't really know what i'm going to do about it. i'm a little in shock at the same time. i would never go so far as to say i thought i was sure to get in, because that would take an assumption of superiority i'm really not capable of, but it really did feel like it was my time in some sort of cosmic sense, like that was what was supposed to happen. as in like "WSU, my density has bought me to you". and it feels really, really strange and really, really bad to have that suddenly yanked out from under me. that, combined a bit with this feeling (similar to last year, but worse) that maybe i've actually reached the pinnacle of my educational accomplishments. like maybe this is as far as it goes. it's frustrating to think that i've spent the last 8 years or so going to school in this sort of assumptive progression of bachelor's > master's > ph.d (or other terminal degree), and now suddenly someone's saying "well hey, you really can't do that". i wish i had known 8 years ago. i could have just gotten a normal job i hate like everyone else and been at least slightly rich by now, and then used the money to stave off the bitterness and cynicism.
i still have a few applications i haven't heard back about, but i'm not holding out much hope. for now the plan is...that there is no plan. i have no car, no job after may, no savings (i should have just enough including my tax refund to evade getting evicted before my lease runs out). unless something shockingly fortuitous happens, i'll probably be trying to grab a shitty job in pullman over the summer, then teaching english somewhere on the globe (maybe here, maybe back east, maybe somewhere overseas where i'll get shot by foreign nationals and be able to write a great story about it) and reapplying for the whole shebang next year.
at the moment, i really just need to sit around for a day or two and mourn the passing of my awesome-as-fuck dissertation at WSU dream. then i'll figure something out, because i always do. and i'll do that thing, and eventually i'll do more things. i'm not giving up on the doctorate thing; i'll keep trying until i'm 50 if i have to, just because i'm annoying like that. but for the moment i have to foster the illusion that there's no hope because the idea of hoping again is frankly a little exhausting.
but i'll get right back on that ASAP. this bag of cookies in my lap should help.
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