Summer is here for me, and it has become something of a little tradition of mine to pick up a new hobby every year at around this time. This summer, I think I will try and get back into drawing. Once upon a time, I was a pimpled faced, snotty nosed art student with promise and a scholarship to the Art Institute in Dallas, which I declined to pursue a more down to earth career as a chemist. I haven't touched a charcoal pencil since my first year in college, and now there's a part of me that is thinking what if. What I sorely lack is inspiration, for I have found that responsibility and a serious line of study has all but buried my propensity toward artistic imagination. While I still maintain the creative writing I picked up the summer of '99, there is at least in my mind a difference between writing and art. Subtle, but different enough to prevent me from grabbing a pencil and taking off. Thus, I need to first find my inspiration.
So, what better thing to do than to procrastinate. I still can claim my obsession with the gym as the hobby of '04 if this venture doesn't work out. For more realistic reasons, I will be moving out of my apartment into a duplex with some friends come July, and one month will give me ample time to start planning my studio. During that time, I will look to finding that inspiration.
Until then, I still have the car repair manuals from the summer of '01, the electric sander and varnish from the summer of furniture repair, circa '02, and last year's trunk of camera equipment and accessories (for that hobby, I had decided to go digital, which will take me another year to gather the equipment for). And of course, there's the gym and the promise I made to myself to start taking people up on their invites. My future still is in that PhD, but I can meander a little in the meantime. At least that's what I keep telling myself.
It's now about two weeks after Judgment Day and things are almost normal again. I use normal sparingly as per the ambiguous nature of the word. The students had finals this week and it was slightly more hectic getting into work and finding a decent spot, but as always, our fearless protagonist managed. Because I no longer take classes nor teach them, finals has no other meaning to me than this. I do have to contend with getting a summer parking permit and working around the summer hours of the facilities, but that's a small price to pay for a guaranteed parking spot any time of the day. As with most college towns, this one is dead during summer.
I actually looked up some demographic information about this town, which was somewhat interesting. I'll share it here for lack of anything better to talk about. The population is about 68k, and the student enrollment is hovering at 45k, meaning this town is composed of 2/3 students. It says here that the average age in the city is 22, which explains why i'm always complaining about how old I feel. It also explains the number of god awful drivers out and about, which I always attributed to my overly high standards associated with automobile navigation. We had two murders last year. The biggest crime as far as amount is, perhaps no surprise, rape.
It's a nice place to visit is a good phrase for this place. I don't see myself hitting keggars and dance clubs when i'm 30, though for now it's interesting enough to hold some attention. Which is why I think it's a good idea to always keep moving in the course of your life, either physically or mentally. After all, only dead fish swim with the current.
Friday April 30th, 2004 will forever be burned in the sloshy grey goo in my head. That was the day I woke up.
There are two pivotal moments in graduate school: the preliminary examination and the final defense. Friday, I passed my prelim, and all the stress and pinned up crap that swam around inside me just up and vanished that night when I sat in front of a frozen margarita. So this entry is going to be light on sarcasm and wit. They tell you it's hell, but that's what they're supposed to do. You see, it's a rite of passage to have to sit in front of a committee of professors and defend your proposal. And while I do believe for many it's a hellish moment in their otherwise painful graduate career, mine was almost pleasant. Mine lasted 3 hours, which is not uncommon. There's no rules really. They tell you to go in and give a half hour presentation on your proposed research and then allow an undetermined amount of time at the end to answer questions. I was five minutes into my talk and the questions started. My shirt was damp with sweat from the Texas humidity and I stared out into a dark room through the projector lights and saw nothing. It was just a voice--a question, and in some deeply programmed state, I began to answer with both hands, a piece of broken chalk and full use of all the space granted to me in the five or so feet from the front row to the board. I was in a daze, because even now there are memories that are just coming to me. Every day since December it was in my thoughts: the day that would decide the rest of my life. It was dubbed "Judgement Day" by a group member on my dry erase board. The numbers beneath slowly counted down day by day, and on that decisive morning I stared at the number 0 and thought "I'm not ready for this." But I was, and I did, and all is good in the world again.
That was why I left the MUD. As stated before, I had creativity withdrawal, and came back a little early to get my fix. The day after, I was back in full swing. So what does this mean for our fearless protagonist? Superficially, I am guaranteed a chance at that phd, but deep down that little voice which said well enough was good enough is no longer speaking to me. Instead, another more assertive voice calls from within, saying do not leave well enough alone when perfection is just around the corner. So that's how I feel at this point and time as I sit here at my desk with a cool breeze blowing from the open window and the sounds of birds singing and some girl calling her dog...it's not perfect. It's the way it is.
The MUD now will commence to take a large part of my internet time, but rest assured that I will not neglect this blog for too long of a time while I am busy with not leaving well enough alone. After all, here and there are mutually exclusive things. Having the cake bears no influence on eating it.
To offer a brief snapshot of my here and now:
I sleep in on the weekdays, mainly because I can.
The alarm sounds at around 8 a.m. and I crawl out of bed by 9 (yes that's sleeping in!)
Most days I end up catching the shuttle. After all, the early bird gets the good parking spots. Thursdays and Fridays are deemed skip school days by the students, so usually those are the days I can drive in to work.
My drive lasts all of 10 minutes. I listen to perhaps two tracks off of a randomly selected CD from my collection which I bought four months prior and only recent have taken the liberty to remove the shrink wrap. The windows down and the amp up to just under the threshold for smoking speakers. Sometimes I play a game of road rage.
By bus or car, I make it into my little cube by 10 a.m. and check email and any little post it notes that appear randomly about my desk. I then start planning out my day and shooting the shit with my fellow group members. We can easily keep it up until lunch.
By 11:30 i'm asking a group mate when (or where) we want to catch lunch (asked in perfect Mandarin as is my now chosen language to learn). Mondays and Wednesdays are designated bring lunch days, so Sundays I get to hone my cooking skills. Either way, we usually are out the door by noon.
After lunch (and running errands if we opt to walk to the strip of bars and restaurants lining the uni) I settle back into work and spend a few hours running about aimlessly from place to place. This is about the time everyone who needs something from me finds me. During the course of the chaos, I usually find my way back into lab and tinker a while. This is when I'm most productive.
5 rolls around and people start shuffling out the door. I take another half hour to check news and more emails and then run to catch the shuttle home before it switches to the night route at 6. If I drove, I still run out by 6.
Dinner at home and more errands. By 8, most everything that needed to be done is done, and I either a) goof off at home or b) go back to work. Usually this is the time to get calls.
If it's a Tuesday or Thursday, we're at the gym by 10 p.m. and by midnight i'm back home eating another dinner.
I then burn a few more hours doing whatever I can find to do and call it a day around 2 or 3 a.m. Shake and repeat. I'll save weekends for another post.