Life is (is not?) a movie

I always feel this way deep down inside, but occasionally it occurs to me in a more straight-forward way that I view my life as if it were a movie. So I do what my character would, think like I assume he would think, and feel as though I'm supposed to act in this role. Then when I diverge from this role, anxiety comes crashing in. This, I suppose, was what Sartre was trying to tell us, and also Heidegger before him for that matter. We are all just playing roles, filling time, avoiding or filling the void. Knowing this provides little comfort. We still have to live here after all. Anyway, the movie thing. It is difficult to know what I should be doing in my current situation. Grad school (do I go next year at the end of my deferral? do I move on without it?) seems like this foe to be vanquished, a mountain to be climbed, a metaphor involving overcoming overwhelming odds. In the movies, my character is supposed to throw himself into the challenge, and we, as the audience, want him to because we have, at most, 2 hours invested in the struggle. Even if it is a failure, it is over soon and we can get up and leave the theater. But in real life, that failure carries enormous weight. So do the successes, though they, unlike in the movie, are not finite. Life unfolds further, presenting more and more of these kinds of choices, and before we are dead and gone, we will have faced so many of them that they blur together and become the history of our lives. What's my point? I think it is this: a friend of mine was listening to me struggle with my decision about going on to my PhD program and she told me that I sounded like I was living in a movie. "You are not in a movie," she said. "You don't have to slay the dragons or conquer the enemy or whatever. Do what feels right, not what you think you should do just because it is the hard thing." More or less. It seems to me that if one did not feel like they were in some kind of biopic about themselves, they would be far less likely to "act" as if they were being watched.

Yesterday I began to apply for jobs and internships. So far, I have applied to the SEIU as a researcher, and as an intern of some kind at an east bay company that works as teachers for supernaturally intelligent kids, the Doogie Howsers of the world. It is apparently a form of special education, which is interesting, because it just shows that our industrialized school system has few ways of dealing with kids on either side of the median intelligence line. I have also arranged for classroom observation at a local private high school, will be observing a humanities seminar. Think about that: a humanities seminar for high school kids.

I learned while tailoring my C.V. to each position, and while writing cover letters to each place that, by god, grad school has taught me some incredibly useful skills. I mean, after reading my cover letters alone, I would hire me. Writing, researching, editing, data organization, communication, teaching--all of this seems practical. To the point that I question those who finish M.A.s and Ph.Ds and then complain that they have learned nothing useful.

Finally, a little cultural side note. Margaret and I saw Woody Allen's You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stanger at the Kabuki Tuesday night. How that man can do so much with basically the same story over and over and over again is astounding. Married man meets younger woman. Married woman meets interesting man. Monogamy is questioned, attacked. Affairs help nothing. We are all still crazy. I love that man.

So much to say so much to say so much to say

There's a little Dave Matthews Band there for you. I'm blogging again after spending a few years away from the sport. I just re-read almost all of my old posts from "What Have I Done?" and I came to two conclusions: that was a great fucking blog; and I was a terribly clunky writer. I think reading Dave Eggers everyday may have had something to do with the latter, a condition that has been effectively treated by the rigors of earning a graduate degree in history. Which, of course, is the ostensible theme of this blog--on a meta level at least. Life without grad school. When I wrote the first post, I assumed that that was a permanent condition. But, mercifully, I was awarded an un-asked-for deferral for (hopefully) a year. This should allow me time to live as a non-student, address some powerful neuroses that have, for lack of a better term, "wrecked shop" in the most important parts of the decision-making control centers of my brain, and at least afford me some kind of opportunity to see what...else...is...out...there. That sentence was so frightening to type that I had to drag it out--evidence that there is much work to be done. And by work I mean very expensive therapy sessions which will hopefully show me that life exists outside the twin confines of grad school and bartending. Though I assume there are an infinite array of other possibilities in between these two poles, having yet to grab hold of them weakens the mind's willingness to admit of their existence. That is the project this blogs attempts to chronicle.


In short, I hope to regularly (ha!) comment on San Francisco, and politics, and sports, and food, and bartending.

Please join me won't you?