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.