I think venting yesterday helped me feel a bit better. While it doesn’t necessarily solve the problem (and whether or not it’s a problem is another debate), the ability to stop brooding is a good one. For instance: after work, I came home and watched an episode of Doctor Who. I then puttered about on the Internet for about an hour (more than I meant to, I’ll admit). Once I’m done writing, I’ll watch some more of the Oplomachia DVD in an attempt to prep for fighter practice. That should leave me enough time to eat and make it to practice at a reasonable hour.

Part of my problem is that I tend to have trouble breaking projects down into manageable bits. I see the enormous pile (literal as well as physical) of things to do and just have no idea where to start. This has been the case in school as well as day-to-day life. Part of me always feels I should be able to DO ALL THE THINGS, paying no heed to causality or the limiting nature of time. After all, I want to do a bunch of stuff: why shouldn’t I be able to?

This is not the most rational train of thought, I will admit, but it’s what goes through my subconscious most of the time. As such, I’m usually thinking about what else I could be doing while I do something else. Add the fact that I hate making decisions (when a choice is made, all other options are closed off), and you’ve got quite the complex. Well, I have quite the complex, but you know what I mean.

But if I make myself do things I have to do at the expense of too many things I want to do, it just breeds resentment and encourages unproductivity in the long run. That’s why today was interesting: I made a point to do something I wanted (Doctor Who, webblagging the intartubez) before moving on to things I needed to do (writing, prepping for practice). I’ve been cautious about using this approach in the past, since I seem to lack the self-discipline to make decisions and timelines stick, but this time it seemed to work. Sure, I spent a bit more time surfing than I needed to, but I’m not going to split hairs: progress is progress.

So maybe if I can do a little bit of what I want each day I can feel like I’m making progress. It’s not like I have any deadlines (aside from the Big One) for most of it. And besides, isn’t the point of life to enjoy it? Who says everything I do needs to be productive? I do, apparently, but that part of me is dumb and wrong.

I will warn you now: this entry is going to be sappy. Like, pancreas-cringing levels of saccharine sweetness, well past the lethal dose in lab animals. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

One result of going through occasional Funks is that the times I feel genuinely happy can be few and far between. In fact, even when I’m not in the middle of a Funk, I generally go through life in a somewhat detached manner, often feeling like I am observing things from the outside. When asked how I feel, my answer is often truthfully “I don’t know.” It’s hard to describe this type of neutral existence, but if you’ve experienced it yourself, I’m sure you understand what I’m talking about.

But something happened to me Sunday night. I wasn’t doing anything special, just laying in bed next to my girlfriend, both of us reading (myself a book, her on her tablet). It was getting late, and well past time for me to be asleep given how early I would have to get up on Monday. But while I was lying there, I was overcome with an odd feeling: one of overwhelming bliss and happiness.

This normally doesn’t happen to me. Even when generally happy, it’s hard to turn off the part of my brain that worries about the past or future. But this time, even those voices couldn’t shake me out of my happiness groove. For a short time, I was utterly happy. I wasn’t worrying about my job search, the bills that go underpaid, my underemployment, or the multitude of old mistakes and “mistakes” my psyche holds on to to knock me down a peg every once in a while. I was doing something I enjoyed, and spending time with someone I loved. I rolled over and hugged my girlfriend, and just stayed that way for a bit, a smile on my face. For a moment, everything was right in the world.

There’s not really a point to this post, other than sharing an odd experience, as well as proof that I am occasionally happy. Now I’m going to go brush my teeth, before the sweetness gives me cavities.

I hadn’t planned on doing another one of these status check-ins until closer to my sixth month of blogging, but recent happenings have gotten me thinking, and it’s as good a time as any for some navel-gazing.

I will preface this by saying that this post is not meant to be a “poor me” type of angst-fest, another chance for me to be too hard on myself, or even a cathartic rant. I am merely trying to look at things in an objective manner. I don’t feel like I’m in the middle of a Funk right now, although things may be trending that way; this is one of my attempts to forestall that. When I write these posts, I write them mostly for myself; writing has a way of laying bare my innermost thoughts to my higher mind. Now, without further ado, let’s make the first incision.

I’ve missed a couple daily posts lately. When I started this blog, I had every intention of writing every day. I saw the opportunity for an outside motivator, one which could goad me on when my internal drive fell flat. But that hasn’t happened. I will say that most missed posts were not from malice or apathy (actively choosing not to write on a given day). Most of the time I’ve just forgotten at the end of a busy day, and by the time I remember I’m in bed trying to get to sleep. But while I’ve been posting almost every day, I haven’t been writing as regularly as I intended. When I have a buffer, I find myself drifting closer to apathy: “I don’t have to write today, I’ll just write two posts tomorrow.” Of course the second post doesn’t happen the next day, and any buffer I may manage to shore up doesn’t last long.

I also find myself less motivated to write, almost obligated, even. I will readily admit I didn’t have a plan for this blog at the start, but I had all sorts of grandiose things I could do: serial and short-form fiction, movie and game reviews, pithy commentary on the world we live in, et cetera. Instead, most of my posts seem to be venting, since those don’t take much effort to write. But even then, I find myself writing them as an afterthought: I’ll get home from work around 2, and by the time I get around to writing it’s after 3h30. Even then, I’ll postpone my “break” as long as possible, cranking out a post at the seemingly last minute. I did a similar thing in school, where my ego would use the excuse of a time limit to justify the lack of perfection.

These two things, the missed updates and the growing lack of motivation, seem to me to be signs of a potential burnout situation. I’ve burned out before: after taking 19 credits my first trimester of college (I switched from a dual science major to majoring in French); and almost again in grad school, I took 15 credits as well as worked full time my first semester (I have no idea how I did it). But that also means I’ve gotten better at reading the warning signs. In my opinion, something is going to have to give if I’m to keep my passion for writing.

And I think I know just the thing. The problem with writing every day is you don’t get any break (shocking, I know). As a result, I’ve come to worry too much about the production of writing that I don’t have any time or energy to worry about the craft; I’ve prioritized quantity (or regularity) over quality.

So I’m going to take a day or two off. According to my stats page, not many people read this blog on the weekends. That makes Saturday and/or Sunday the logical choices. From here on until I change my mind yet again, I will not be posting on weekends. If I feel the urge to write, those posts will go into the buffer, but I will not plan on writing during the weekend. I will endeavor to write every weekday. A regular time each day would be ideal, but I am reluctant to make an engagement I can’t keep.

Screw that. A regular time is ideal, so I will put it into writing: I will write at 2pm every weekday. That should give me time enough to get home from work, but would be before I start “decompressing” (read: surfing “t3h Int4rw3bz”), as the inertia of slacking is quite strong. I will try to write on weekends, but will not feel guilty if I don’t.

So say we all I.

Enough people have asked about my recent phone interview, I figured it might be advantageous to write an update, as well as some background info.

Back in June or so, one of my fencing friends brought to my attention the fact that her employer (a local university library) was going to post a job that she thought I would be especially qualified for. They were looking for a “digital media specialist,” someone to aid the digital and technology programs of the library (like a digital discovery wall and a maker space), provide A/V and computer support, and other things. So a lot of the kind of work I’ve done in the past (I worked as an A/V tech during college, and in a computer lab during grad school). My friend even thought my architecture background may come in handy, in regards to the library’s architectural planning committee. The more I heard, the better it sounded than working retail.

Due to the wonderfully efficient processes of academia, the job listing didn’t get posted until mid-July. I had applied by the end of the month, and basically stopped thinking about it; I have applied to quite a few long-shot jobs over the past year, and have learned it’s best to not get too attached lest I set myself up for disappointment.

Rumor has it there were several hundred applicants for this position. It was kind of a dream job, from my position, but I tired very hard to not get too attached. So I forgot about the job for a bit, and concentrated on not going crazy getting up before dawn to stock shelves. Eventually I got an email asking for a phone interview; apparently I had made it to the top eight!

The interview was only twenty minutes long, and consisted of answering a series of five questions for the four-person search committee. I think it went well, but I was nervous and adrenalized enough that I don’t remember much of what I said; I prefer to have time to thoroughly think through things ahead of time, and of course you can’t get that during an interview. I tried to sound excited, so hopefully I left a good impression. The questions were worded such that it was hard to infer the logic behind them. So I did my best with what I had, and hopefully that will be enough.

There will be one more round, with the final three being called in for on-site interviews. I haven’t heard anything yet about whether I made the cut or not. But I’ve been telling myself that the fact I made it as far as phone interviews, as well as the fact that people who know me well think I’m well-qualified for the job, should bode well.

My fingers are crossed. And if I good news, I will sure to sing it from the metaphorical mountaintops.

Ah the joys of speaking a foreign language.

For those of you who don’t know, in addition to speaking English (duh), I also speak French. In fact, I majored in French back in college (but that’s a different story), spending my junior year in Paris. But I had been learning French long before I went to college; I actually started learning it all the way back in elementary school, when my mom spearheaded a foreign language program at my school. Although I haven’t had to use it in years, I like to think that at my peak ability I was fairly fluent. And yes, I am willing to concede the relative uselessness of a French degree in the American Southwest; I’m qualified to say “Papier ou plastique?” But that’s not the point.

What I find interesting are the more subtle effects that knowing more than one language can have on a person. For instance (and no small source of amusement, I’m sure): pronouncing anglicized French words with anything but a French accent is psychologically painful for me. The reflex is so deeply ingrained that I have to make a conscious effort to keep my “R’s” flat and chop off any diacritics like they’re Marie Antoinette. Even then, I cringe internally: I should know better, and yet I sound like a Totally Witless American Tourist (or TWAT, if you prefer). Of course I cringe when other people deliberately mispronounce things, but that’s a different kind of twitch.

I also more or less lack the ability to pronounce a foreign word, no matter what the source language, with a French accent. Again, I can control this reflex, but it’s hard. It’s like my brain has two tracks: English and French, and everything must go down one or the other. So if it ain’t English, it must be French, right? Eh, not really.

But what’s really funny is when I use a word that I can’t remember which language it came from. This is of course exacerbated by the fact that a lot of English words came from French back in the day (merci, Guillaume le Conquérant). So while there’s a chance that a word may be present in both languages, it’s meaning may be completely different. For instance: my girlfriend and I were having a conversation last night, and I was trying to describe someone’s personality as slightly abrasive, sometimes blunt. But I wanted a word that summed up all those qualities (we’re all about efficiency here at Kart Before the H0rs3 [except when we’re not {like now}]). The word I was coming up with was “brusque,” which I pronounced “broosk.” But as soon as I said it, and felt the tickle of the guttural French “R” at the back of my throat, I had to pause and think. It took me a moment, and then I asked the question in this post’s title. Luckily the answer was a positive one, even if most Americans pronounce it as “brusk.”

And that isn’t the first time that’s happened to me. Part of me is amazed that it still happens so long after my days of regularly using my French. It’s a testament to how deeply ingrained the languages we learn as children can be.

I still won’t pass up an opportunity to poke fun at the French, though.

At about one in the morning last night I rolled over and woke up (probably because my nose was all snotted up from the cold my lovely girlfriend shared with me). I looked at the clock and realized I had forgotten to write a post.

Oops.

Continue reading →

So I have a phone interview tomorrow. Needless to say, I’m both excited and nervous. A friend tipped me off to this job opportunity, and I’ve apparently made it from a huge pool of a coupe hundred applicants to the top 10 or so candidates.

It’s an interesting situation, one that forces me to really challenge my self image and level of accomplishment. Obviously, if I’ve made it as far as the phone interview stage there must me something there the search committee feels is worthwhile, even if I have trouble seeing it myself.

But as you can probably tell, I’m not the most objective when it comes to self-analysis. So this puts me in an odd place: multiple people think I’m qualified, and I’m worried that I’m not.

Compounding the stress is the fact that this is a really awesome opportunity, one that would let me use my diverse range of skills, to say nothing of the fact that I’d be making more than I’ve ever made before. And of course, it would let me get out of the soul-sucking hole of retail employment that I’ve been stuck in since I finished grad school.

But like a shelter animal, I’m overly wary. I’ve been excited about job opportunities before, just to have them fall through (or not pan out). I often get so excited and attached (to the point of fantasizing about being able to give my two-week notice) that I’m absolutely devastated when nothing happens. Usually this has the consequence of driving me directly into a Funk. It’s like you’re treading water, barely able to keep your head afloat, when you spy a life preserver. You swim over to it, using precious amounts of energy, only to have it snatched away at the last second. If you believed in that sort of thing, you’d be convinced the universe was laughing at you.

So am I nervous? Of course, understandably so. I’m also cautious, since you have to grow attached to something to feel excited about it. But I am also trying to account for my personal biases; pretty much everyone else thinks I’m awesomely qualified for this position, so maybe my brain is the one that’s wrong. I’m doing my best to prepare, as well: researching the institution and their recent innovations, looking up buzzwords from the application, and overall giving myself enough to to so that I don’t panic. After all, this is only a phone interview. Assuming I make the cut (fingers crossed), there would still be an in-person interview to weather.

Here’s hoping I’ll have good news for you in the near future.