We're not happy until you're not happy

My indefatigable dissertation chairperson saved her comments for Chapter 3 of my dissertation. Why am I surprised: She is a self-proclaimed methodologist, and Chapter 3 is the methodology chapter. It's the plan, the blueprint, the guideline of my study. She marked it up with the Word equivalent of red ink: Lots of purple balloon comments in the margin: Do this part over! Move this here! Call me if you want to talk!

Uh, no thanks.

I've been working on it off and on all weekend, checking my sources and my reference list, trying to make sure everything aligns, reviewing the university's exceptions to APA format to confirm that yes, Abstract and Table of Contents are not bold, but Introduction and References are. I'm tired. But I'm willing to slog onward.

I went online just now to look up “open-ended questions” and “unstructured interviews” in EBSCOhost and ProQuest. EBSCO refused to link to some articles: internal server error (their server, not mine), and ProQuest was down for maintenance. Can you believe it? On a Saturday night! How many graduate students are fuming right now, having stashed away a few hours to work on some obscure topic like interviewing cats about academic quality in for-profit Gainful Employment programs...

Just kidding. My cat has nothing to say about quality, academic or otherwise.

Too many hours to Saturday Night Live. My eyes feel like they've been weeping. I'd remember if I wept today, wouldn't I? I blame allergies. We had two days of sunshine and blue sky. Every leafless tree is quivering on the edge of bursting into bloom. White and purple crocuses and sunny daffodils decorate the rock gardens, and neglected winter flowerbeds are showing green sprouts: tulips, maybe?

It's beginning to look like Spring around here, and it's only mid-March. What the—? Is this global warming? Can't say I mind, really. The sun felt good, even though the air was cold. Well, cold-ish. Well, okay, warm, almost. Like, maybe 60°? Only for a few brief moments, and it was great, but I swear it was 45° in the shade, which is all I have in the Love Shack, lest you think I was basking in the glorious rays while I was editing my paper. Not hardly. I have the heat cranked. My feet are tucked in my homemade rice-filled foot warmer. I'm wearing fleece, a hat, fingerless gloves... the usual, and it will be like this until July 5.

We're not happy until you're not happy. (The best song title I've ever heard.) Sort of sums up the self-imposed plight of the chronic malcontent.

Last week I visited my naturopath, Dr. Tony. What a guy. He's got new stuff to try on me every time I see him. I feel like I'm in a Batman cartoon when I venture into his dinky little treatment room. Here, he said, turn over and lie on your stomach. Suddenly—Bam! He dropped the middle of the bench to realign my hips. I sat up, reeling a little. He gently hugged me, and then...crunch! He cracked my back. I flopped back, gaping like a beached trout. Then he grabbed my ankle and told me to hang on to the table. Uh-oh, I had time to think before he yanked my leg and popped my hip. Pow!

Then while I lay there trying to catch my breath, he gave me a remedy that seems to pretty much be targeted at curing whatever ails you. It's called spigelia, and it's potent stuff. Got heart palpitations? (Who doesn't?) Hey, no problem. Sinuses congested? We got it covered. Pesky intestinal parasites? (Yipes! Really?) Spigelia is your solution. Hmmmm. Why didn't he just give it to me when we first met? Why wait three years for the magical cure?

He dumped a few pellets onto my tongue, and of course it worked immediately, as homeopathic remedies often do (at least when Dr. Tony is standing there watching). Then he pushed on my arms a few more times.

“You know that stomach problems are caused by the emotions, right?”

We've had this talk before. I nodded. “So?”

“Think of someone who is upsetting you.”

I thumbed through my ancient dusty moth-eaten mental Rollodex. “I can't think of anybody,” I whined.

“Someone at work.”

“Uh.... maybe Teresa?” She's my shadow side, it's gotta be her if it's anyone. Dr. Tony grabbed my arm.

“No, not Teresa. It's a male.”

I mentally reviewed my student rosters. Who could it be...? There are so few men in my classes, I hardly know these people, certainly not enough to be upset by them... Ch-ch-chug, my brain slipped a gear and came up with a name. “Uh, would it be... Roger?”

Dr. Tony grabbed my arm again.

“Bingo,” he said triumphantly. “It's Roger.”

My mind was saying, oh for crying out loud, this is ridiculous. It can't be Roger. Roger is a young man with entrepreneurial aspirations. He's likable, smart, articulate (although he plans everything he says, it takes forever for him to spit out one sentence), and he's an optimist (another word for born-again Christian). I like Roger a lot. I think he might be one of the brightest students we've seen at the career college. He could do better than our crummy school. He plans to start his own business, and here's the part that gets me: he actually believes he will succeed.

As I thought about Roger, I began to think Dr. Tony was on to something. Roger has something I want, something I've always wanted: success at running my own business. I would quit this lousy teaching job if I could just figure out how to make self-employment work for me. But I'm scared to try. I throw up every obstacle under the sun as an excuse for why my entrepreneurial ideas won't work, while Roger just goes ahead and does it. He's the most annoying creature in the world of business: the naive fool who doesn't know something is impossible, so he just... does it! Argh!

So, my heart, my parasites, my sinuses... all Roger's fault. Maybe I should send him the bill.

I'm not ready to be unemployed

After a hellish first week, the new term at the career college is.... I can't think of any words to describe how this new term might unfold. I can't say off to a rousing start. The word stumbling comes to mind, but that might apply more to me than the term. Not sure that is useful. As a descriptive term, I mean. Maybe the word hopeful applies: I think we may have more students, judging by the voices echoing down the halls. I wonder if any of our friendly, helpful admissions advisers told the new students that our campus would be moving to a new site in a few months.

To be honest, we still don't know if the move is happening. Rumor has it that the lease is up in April, but I suppose the management could decide to rent month-to-month until they found a suitable location. I'm not feeling all that positive about the possibility of moving. Last week I overheard two students say the reason why they chose our site was because it was near their homes. Location, location, location.

It occurs to me that anyone who hasn't read my blog before wouldn't have a clue what I'm talking about. I'm writing as if I'm narrating an ongoing soap opera for a devoted audience, when in actuality I know that my regular audience consists of a handful of people. I mean, I can count the number of you readers on one hand. The rest of you are drop-ins, looky-loos, accidental tourists traipsing through my blog on your way to someplace else. I can tell what you search for when I look in the stats, and I know you won't find it here. Sorry. Thanks for dropping by, though.

If you stick around, you'll get the whole sordid story of the dinky career college for which I work and its imminent demise. Although, now that I think about it, the demise has been imminent for the years. I guess that doesn't qualify as imminent anymore, does it? It's like going into hospice and outlasting your caregivers. People get a bit peeved. Enough already, just die, would you? Jeez.

I'm not ready to be unemployed. I tried to figure out how I would live if I had to work a minimum wage job. (Oregon minimum wage is $8.95.) My lifestyle would be severely impacted. Like my friend Bravadita, I would have to give up my car. I would have to find a house-share situation. I would have to stop eating organic. Any one of those outcomes would make me want to jump off the Fremont Bridge. I'm such a hothouse flower. I remember when I used to drive a school bus. I remember when I packed books in a warehouse for a two-week temp job. I'm too old for that now. And too damn well educated. No one would hire an aging, unemployed Ph.D. from a crummy for-profit online university to work in a warehouse.

I know what you are thinking. You are thinking, hey, where is that optimist that lurks inside you, Ms. Chronic Malcontent? Here's the deal on that. The Optimist is not chronic. She is both rare and shy. You may not see her very often around this blog, since the Malcontent is a bully. But maybe if you clap your hands three times and say I do believe in magic, I do, I do, I... well, no, maybe not. I don't know. I'm just writing drivel so I can move past my resentment and get on with writing Chapter 3 of my dissertation proposal. That, after all, is what I live for these days. Work is just that interval that comes between sleeping and writing. Maybe someday this will just be a bad dream, and I'll be able to just sleep and write.

And there she is—don't blink!—the shy Optimist, hovering by the water cooler, waving her tiny hand at us.

Feeling anything but safe

Today after my two morning classes, I dutifully joined an assembly of 40 or so faculty and staff in a two-hour safety session. I yawned my way through tales of perps and victims, disasters and catastrophes, told by two decrepit retired law enforcement officers, now criminal justice teachers. All their fear-mongering accelerated my heart rate, which I'm sure is the only thing that kept me awake. (I worked till 10:30 the night before, hence my walking-zombie condition.) I'd like to scoff and say compared to the Chronic Malcontent, these guys were rank amateurs, but actually they did a pretty good job of disseminating doom, with the main difference between them and me being that they actually believe they have some control over the disaster situation, and I am quite sure we don't. Hence my propensity to wring my hands and bemoan the hand-basket thing.

These two guys were almost old enough to be my fathers (ick), but they acted like kids, no, let me be clear, they acted like boys, telling their tales of blood, guts, and death, laughing about the time they blew up four sticks of dynamite in a hole, just to see what would happen. Giggling over the time they pepper-sprayed the engine of their colleagues' cop car. Describing with gusto the many times they had to slam a perp to the ground. My father was in law enforcement. I never heard him describe stories like these, but I know he was one of them, the brotherhood. Just like these two old has-beens, he never grew up. His jokes were juvenile, usually involving sex. His interests were narrow: family and football. His loyalty was clear: white and might make right.

I left the safety seminar feeling anything but safe. A three-hour nap restored me to my usual fugue state. I turned on my computer and took a desultory look at my dissertation proposal—the next course started on Monday. The chair responded to my literature review submission very positively. I don't think she read much of it, but most of it wasn't new. Next up, the introduction. I thought she'd be chewing on the lit review for a few days, but nope, it's back on my plate. Time to dig in to my topic again, time to grab it between my yellowing teeth and slam it to the ground. Maybe poke out its eyes and rip off its penis, and then spray it down with cayenne pepper, just to be on the safe side.

There's so much to do. We are coming up on finals week at the career college. I need a haircut. My laundry is piled to the rafters. I should call my mom. My sister's boyfriend is still missing in SE Asia. Bravadita is still down for the count with the flu bug from hell. The earthquake is coming. At least three of my students probably brought a gun to school in their cars. And we're all going to hell in a hand-basket.

The chronic malcontent is feeling nasty, brutish, and short

I've known that I have obsessive compulsive tendencies for a long time. When I was in first grade, I looked down on classmates who ate crayons, but I repeatedly bit the hard little buttons on my cardigan sweaters until they cracked. As I got older, I fell into the habit of ripping my cuticles until they bled and tearing my fingernails down to the quick. In seventh grade I went through a period where I pulled out my eyelashes.

I always knew those behaviors were socially unacceptable and felt a pervasive sense of shame about them, but I was never able to control my obsession. My parents would chastise me—Stop picking!—but weren't inclined to discover what compelled me to engage in such obvious self-destruction.

Now I know I'm in good company. Dermatillomaniacs are legion. Just Google skin picking. You'll see forums full of shattering admissions from self-mutilators who are practically weeping with relief at finding out they are not alone in their insanity. Some of them have disfigured themselves by pulling out their hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes. Others have torn apart their fingers and endured life-threatening infections. As self-mutilators go, I'm not very high on the charts. On any given day, I may sport only one band-aid on a finger. In times of high stress, I may have two or rarely three.

These are times of high stress. As I get closer to finishing my dissertation, I think about disaster (shootings, volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis). I think about death (illness, injury, insanity). I think about old age, if I live that long (dementia, stroke, nursinghome). It's not enough to stop me from going to work or the store or the gas station. I forget about it while I'm not thinking about myself. (Hint, hint.)

How do you cope? Do you overeat? Do you drink? Do you cut yourself, or sleep too much, or bury yourself in video games? Why is it so excruciating to be present sometimes? Am I the only one? Do you ever feel too twitchy to inhabit your own skin?

Then something wacky happens, like my one and only niece goes and has a baby, a charming little fellow with a lively eye. Something changes. There's a flavor of something I hardly ever taste... could it be hope? Then I laugh, wondering what kinds of obsessions he will have, coming from this wacky family, and I can see the comical side of surviving in times of high stress. We do what we can. We do what we must. It might be nasty, brutish, and short but it's all we've got.

Happy one year anniversary to the Chronic Malcontent

It's been almost a year since I started blogging as the Chronic Malcontent. I began with no purpose in mind other than to share my writing and drawings in a public space. A few things have changed. I used to disclose my gender and age. Then I had a birthday and decided I didn't want to think about age anymore. I stopped claiming to be female, too. I've never been particularly attached to being female, and at times I've actually been quite resentful about it. Can you blame me? Considering the way women are treated in many parts of the world, it's not a quality that gladdens my heart. The only thing worse than being a woman is being a man. But I digress.

My fan base has more than tripled. How cool is that? Before you get too impressed, that means instead of just my sister reading my blog, now I also have two friends, maybe more, who regularly check in. Or so they say. Plus a whole lot of people from Russia who apparently drop in by accident. I won't tell you how many visitors I have received during the past year, because you will laugh and say, Why do you bother? For sure I don't get enough visitors to be able to sell ad space to Google. In the world of blogs, I'm not even a blip. It's sort of calming to realize I am just one blog in a sea of blogs, floating in the blogosphere like a baby planet nucleus a billion light years from the next blog. No pressure to perform, because no one knows I exist. Or how to reach me. My anonymity gives me the shelter to share myself with you.

One hundred-and-thirty-some-odd posts later, I can discern some patterns. It seems my musings are usually prompted by an event. Small or large, something happens that resonates with me, something tragic, something funny, something puzzling, and I feel compelled to discuss it. Poke at it. Whine about it. Weep over it. My topics have mostly focused on my endless journey to earn a Ph.D., my adventures teaching at a career college, and my occasional attendance at family events, but I do stray into other areas like an explorer who fears cannibals might be lurking behind the next tree. The overall theme is one of whining, true to the nature of chronic malcontentedness. (Which, by the way, Blogger does not recognize as a real word.)

I've mulled over the end of the world, the impending inevitable earthquake and tsunami, the contents of a bug-out bag, and the collapse of the financial system. My latest itch is the possible demise of the power grid by solar flares. (You can make an aluminum foil-covered box to store your electronic gear in, did you know that? But if the power grid goes down, lotta good it will do ya. And your car will be toast, in case you thought you could escape to the other side of the planet.) Say what you will, there is something comical about our fascination with the end of the world.

I've complained endlessly about higher education. I whine almost daily about my quest to finish the Ph.D. I started back in December of 2005. It's taken a year to beat my concept paper into a condition deemed acceptable for submitting to the Graduate School reviewers. (Still waiting for the verdict.) I whine about the career college I've worked at for the past nine years, how the students don't want to take responsibility for their learning, how I am too burned out to care, how tiring it is to drive 25 miles to Wilsonville in the wee dark hours of pre-dawn winter, how much I despise teaching keyboarding. Waaa, poor me, I have a job.

I've burned my neighbor in effigy for being too noisy. I've mentally trussed her dog to the wall with duct tape for pooping all over the path to my back door. I left the poop on her back step. I really did, I didn't just fantasize about it. I've welcomed spring, I've reveled in summer, I've dreaded fall, and now I'm enduring winter. I've mourned the loss of Davy Jones and 20 kids in Newtown. A lot of life under the bridge during the past year. I'm older, grayer, saggier... I wonder, am I snarkier? Am I more malcontented since I started this blog? Not sure. I'm more self-obsessed, I think. Whenever something happens to me these days, I think about how I can spin it for my next blog post. I'm becoming more conscious about telling the stories of my life.

So, after a year, what do you think? Should I focus on one topic? Sooner or later the dissertation will be behind me. Sooner or later I will leave the chains of keyboarding in the dust. Winter will pass, spring will sneak up on us, and summer will make life worth living again. What is the point of it all? I ask you. No, really, tell me if you know what the point of it all is. Some might say to serve god. Some might say to have fun. Some might say there is no point, no meaning to life except what we give it.

That's all I can think of right now. Looks like I've written myself into a corner. I'll stop now and just say, Happy new year from the Chronic Malcontent.

Many happy returns on the last day of the world

I don't consider myself a Christian. That means I am not inclined to be cheery during the Christmas season. In fact I can hardly stand it. There's no other time of the year that is so pervasive, intrusive, and all-around annoying. (Did you think I would have something good to say about Christmas? Hey, I'm the chronic malcontent; I have nothing good to say about anything.) I lay low and try to hibernate through the season, emerging during the dog days before New Years to re-stock my fridge and re-new the wards on my apartment. Wards? You know, the juju rituals I do to keep away the sights, sounds, and smells of the Christmas season. It works. Come over and you will see no twinkly lights festooning the place, no dead evergreen wilting in a pot of fetid water, hear no Andy Williams or Bing Crosby crooning on the radio, and smell no stinky mulberry candles guttering in the corners. This is a yuletide free zone. Vive le grinch.

Here's something maybe you can help me understand. Yesterday at work, I ran into a teacher I don't know well. She's an energetic adjunct, one of those who takes her job way too seriously (in my opinion). She speaks in exclamation marks. I can't come close to matching her energy. It's exhausting to be around her for a rabid introvert like me.

She rushed off the elevator, dragging her wheely-bag behind her. “Hi! Merry Christmas!” she caroled at me as she trundled by on her way to the office.

I grunted something, heading for the stairs. Suddenly she stopped and turned back. I could practically see her brain whirring as she tried to calculate whether or not she should speak. It took probably a full second for her to say, “Oh, hey! I have something for you!”

I stopped. She dug into her wheely-bag and came up with an object wrapped in white tissue paper and tied with gold ribbon. I could feel my face pulling sideways into a kayla maroney.

“Oh, really, not necessary...” I began. She thrust the thing into my hand.

My brain leaped off the cliff: I don't even know you, why are you doing this, it's probably a candle, I don't need more crap, who can I regift this to?, I didn't get her anything, I didn't get anyone anything, I'm such a scrooge, everyone is drinking mulled cider and they didn't invite me, bah humbug, I don't care, I hate Christmas. Eventually I pulled my lips back into a grimace, said thank you, and went on my way.

After class, I opened the thing, mildly curious, a little apprehensive, and found a clear glass candle holder with an etched inscription: You have a special place in my heart. 

What? Really? Who knew I meant so much to her? I pictured her scanning the shelves at Michael's Art Store, muttering to herself: What can I give my colleagues to make them feel special and appreciated during these dark times? Really? Naw. I don't believe it for one second. She probably got a deal on those etched candle holders. Why didn't she put a candle in there, is what I want to know. If I really had such a special place in her heart and all.

The other thing that perplexes me about this season is the whole Christmas card thing. Some of the coolest people send the lamest cards. I don't want to think that my cool edgy friends are actually closet Christians. Is that too harsh? Maybe they are so cool and edgy that their cards are actually intended to be ironic commentaries on our sad reliance upon organized religion. Maybe I'm not cool and edgy enough to get the joke. I fear in the case of one particular card (nativity scene), my erstwhile cool and edgy friend has gone over to the dark side: she's handwritten a quote into the card, something about how hard it is to keep the season holy. Whatever.

On another card, a girl with with glittery angel wings holds a little gift in her hands (and the glitter is rubbing off all over everything on my desk). On another card, glittery fir trees hold up an enormous star and a huge fat white bird—I guess that is the white dove of peace? I can't ask the person who sent it to me, because I can't read the signature on the card. Two holiday cards sport a snowman theme: charming. But isn't it a tiny bit creepy to imagine snow creatures dressed up in human clothes coming to life? Brrrr. One friend sent a card with a photo of her and her husband. They look happy. I love that it might actually be true. My favorite card is from my colleague Sheryl (not her real name). The card has a picture of a stoic old white-haired gal who is clearly not impressed by the season. The message says: It's Christmas. Try to contain your enthusiasm. Now that's a Christmas card for a chronic malcontent!

Looking at all these cards spread out in front of me, even the one with a goofy nativity scene on the front, is making me realize that even the chronic malcontent has friends. Awwww. It's been a rough couple weeks for everyone. In this holiday season of mixed feelings, I confess I am grateful for simple things: friends, oatmeal bath salts, and the fact that the world appears to have survived another day. I'm thankful for the footwarmer I made myself out of an old pillow case and some white rice (just say microwave!).

Some years ago I strung some dinky white lights around a favorite painting. One moment. Please stand by. Ok, I'm back. In honor of this blog, I just turned them on. They don't blink, but in my dark cave of a workspace, they do look rather festive. Now for the... how do you say it, the coup de grace? No, that's a deathblow, not quite what I'm looking for. Fois de gras? No, isn't that some kind of liver pate? Coup d'etat? No, no overthrows going on here. How about...the piece de resistance! (Spoken with all the appropriate glottal mucus. And sorry all the accents are missing. It's too hard to go look them all up, it's all I can do to remember the code for the Fahrenheit degree symbol.) What was I saying? Oh yeah: the penultimate, The Christmas Stick.

The Christmas Stick is an old dead stick stuck in a vase of rocks and hung with a few old faded ornaments. It spends the year gathering dust on a high shelf in my kitchen. It's jolly in a rather sparse, dusty sort of way. I put it by the string of little white lights. Hmm. It's a Chronic Malcontent Christmas.

Thanks for the cards. Thanks for the gifts. Thanks for shaming me into a holiday mood. But don't get your hopes up. I donated all my disposable income to charity. You won't be getting any cards or presents from me this year. Merry ho ho ho to you, too.

A reflection on the sordid reality of a career college teacher's schedule

My work life is lived in chunks of time. Day to day, week to week, term to term. Year to year. I suppose most people live on some kind of schedule, unless they are retired and can drift through their days according to their own sense of time. My idea of the perfect life has always been to be master of my own time, to live liberated from the obligation of an externally imposed schedule. It's not surprising. From childhood we mind the clock. We rebel at first, don't we? But eventually we learn to accept and even embrace the clock. We lose our personal sense of rhythm and march with the throng to the same boring beat.

Even though I work in the for-profit career college sector, generally considered the bottom feeder of higher education, I still benefit from its nebulous association with academia. That is, I am lucky enough to work (mostly) a 4-day week, Monday through Thursday, with most Fridays off (the sacred teacher prep day). Except when we make up holidays, but that's another story. It's fantastic working a four-day week. Two days a week I work just 3 to 6 hours and have the rest of the day off. How cool is that?

The trade-off is, the other two days a week I work a split shift. That means I essentially have two work days in one. I get up, fix breakfast, and go to work for six hours. Then I go home, go to bed, get up, fix dinner, and go to work for five more hours. So it's like I work six days a week. And then I have a 3-day weekend to catch up on my sleep, my homework, my laundry, my relationships. You might say, wow, if you love your job, that is a great schedule. On the other hand, if you are tired and burned out, it is an endless grind. Guess which category I fall into.

The long days are grueling, especially if I have to be teaching the whole time. The hours telescope into eternity. There are few things more bleak than sitting in a dim computer lab at 10:15 on a winter night waiting for my one or two students to figure out how to save their work and eject the flashdrives they will lose tomorrow. The short days are deceptively liberating. I always assume I will have time to run errands, see friends, go shopping, have some fun, but I'm always too tired to do much beyond the essentials: buy food. The short days are for recuperation and resting up for the next 14-hour day.

As a consequence of this unbalanced work schedule, I've learned to sleep in chunks of time during the week. Six hours at night, two hours during the day. I make up the deficit on the weekend. The schedule drives my meal times, too. I eat twice a day, before work and between work. I get hungry sometimes, while I'm sitting in that computer lab. I try not to think about it.

Day after day, week after week, I follow the lopsided schedule, showing up for a 10-week term. After nine years, I'm just starting to understand the arc of a term. Ten weeks, 20 days, a few inches forward, a few more grams of knowledge shoved into their rigid and weary minds. After every term I'm left with a few memorable moments to carry with me: a card from the student who cried during the first week of the term, thanking me for helping her believe in herself enough to not give up. A new graduate, walking with a bit of a swagger and tossing back a huge grin over her shoulder as she shouldered her backpack one last time. Little moments, big moments.

It's not enough to inspire me to stop whining. I try to notice and embrace those special moments, but they don't motivate me. They just make me tired. Those little shining moments aren't enough payoff for all the hours spent sitting in a lab with only one student, or listening to a student tell me why he can't turn in his assignment today, or discovering that a cabal of paralegals cheated on their keyboarding transcriptions. All the hours on-stage, all the hours when I should have been sleeping, all the hours spent crafting creative assignments for students who had the nerve to catch up on their sleep during my classes... why should I bother to care? Said the burned out teacher.

Tomorrow is the first day of the new term. I must leave by 6:30 a.m. to drive the 25 miles to Wilsonville in rush hour traffic to get to my first class by 7:50. I'm not well-loved in Wilsonville. (Chronic malcontents tend to be pot-stirring troublemakers. And burned out teachers tend to lack compassion for slackers.) I don't care. My hope is that by this time next year I will be someplace else doing something else (hopefully someplace and something better). I refuse to give up on the dream of creating a new relationship with time. In the meantime, I live for my next nap.

How to be thankful for an annoying neighbor

Hi, how was your Thanksgiving? Mine was awesome, thanks for asking. As you might expect, I am not a big fan of the holiday season. It's loud, smelly, inconvenient, and crowded, clearly not designed with the needs of a chronic malcontent in mind. However, I was thankful for a few things last Thursday. One was that I got to spend the day alone. How cool is that! I didn't even go outside of my apartment. The triplex was silent: no big parties going on at the Love Shack. I luxuriated in my solitude, like a happy speck of bacteria in a delicious petri dish. Yum.

What's that you say? I'm a dysfunctional, antisocial wackjob? Aw shucks. You only say that because you have an expectation of what Thanksgiving is for. For you (I'm guessing), Thanksgiving means warm connection and interaction with family and friends, maybe over a ritual meal involving a cooked bird whose butt is stuffed with mushy croutons. If you are really lucky you have alcohol flowing, and after the requisite gorging on pumpkin or pecan pie, you can loll around on the couch complaining about how much you ate while you watch Netflix on a big screen TV. SO much to be thankful for.

I, on the hand, having experienced many years of similar rituals (minus the warm connections and big screen TV), am utterly and fervently grateful that I don't have to do that anymore. For the record, let me just say in my defense, I was willing to take my mother out to eat, fighting the crowd at one of the more festive McMenamin's like we usually do. But good old mom was under the weather, so for my demonstration of willingness (I called her on the phone), I was given dispensation by the universe to spend the day as I pleased. And so I did. I spent the day revising my paper, and it was excellent.

I have good news to report on the status of my dissertation concept paper. A few more revisions and it might be ready to send on to the committee. Does that sound familiar? I think I've written those words before. I think what we are doing now is called polishing. My sister buoyed my spirits by reminding me that every time my chairperson returns my paper for more revisions, it does not mean my paper has been rejected. On the contrary, it means I am in the process of working with a competent editor to make the paper the best it can be.

It's so hard to focus. My neighbor is home. I feel like she's in my home. The air vibrates with the bass of her music. She stomps from one part of the place to another. Maybe she is dancing. Some kind of dance involving stomping. Maybe she's dancing like no one is watching. No, I think she may be rearranging her furniture. Well, who can blame her. That is one of the top ten most fun things to do. I can't do it now, because I'm packed in like a gasping sardine with all my books and binders, but I remember how much pleasure I used to get from a fresh room configuration. Now if I could just do that with my life.

Now she is sneezing. The roar comes through the wall, loud enough for me to feel compelled to say Gesundheit! Next will come the nose-blowing. It's classic Three Stooges nose-blowing, like a foghorn. I hear it best when she is in her tile-lined bathroom, where the echo is truly impressive. I fear for her brains.

I think she is in her bedroom closet now, just on the other side of where I sit at my computer. I hear thumping, shuffling, shoving, punctuated by sneezes. Wow, she must be stirring up a lot of dust. I can relate: That is how I react whenever I clean. Maybe she's doing her annual housecleaning. (Jeez, woman. Cover your mouth!) It's weird—even though I resent the hell out of her stomping and loud music, and even though I'd like to squash her wretched little pooping machine of a dog, I feel a strange sense of kinship with this vigorous young neighbor. Looks like we have something in common. I sneeze, too.

And there you have it, how to be thankful for annoying neighbors. Find the one minute, trivial thing you have in common and forget about all the reasons why you want to kill them. You can certainly be thankful you aren't in jail for beating them to death with their own stompy shoes. And if you do happen to be in jail for that crime or something similar, well, a roof, a bed, and three squares is a blessing some people would trade their citizenship for. So no more complaining about annoying neighbors! My new approach will be to bless her journey with love and kindness. I'm good with that. As long as I don't have to interact with her face-to-face.

My slip is showing again

It's been too long since my last confession, uh, I mean, post. I'm not Catholic, I don't know why I said that. I'm not anything religious, but that is another topic. What is on my mind today is—dare I say it, yes! I'll dare to say it. It's the wretched, beastly concept paper! This maggot-infested zombie of a travesty that simply will not lay down in its fetid grave and die, already. Argh! Now I know why people don't finish their fricking doctorates! The glacial pace of feedback, the millimeter per year of forward movement... I feel like the San Andreas. We all know what lack of movement leads to, and I'm not talking about constipation. Earthquake!

I have felt on the edge of something for a few weeks now. In strange moments of delirious tedium I find myself lurking at the back of the computer lab, doing deep knee bends while I watch my students pound on the keyboards. Maybe it's just a cold, but I suspect it is another bout of chronic malcontentedness, urping up from my depths like the cold roasted beets I had for lunch. I now associate inching through the term with inching through my concept paper. Interminable, endless monotony. I generally walk around wanting to scream. It's beyond malcontentedness now and into the spontaneously combustible zone. Don't get too close, you wouldn't want this to get on you when it blows.

Har har. Just kidding. I think. TGIF. I've spent the day blearily replacing my too-ancient (2006-2008) sources with shiny new ones, making sure all my sources are squeaky-clean (peer-reviewed), updating my annotated bibliography, and generally polishing this half-assed excuse for an academic paper to the bone, hoping it will finally pass muster. I've got two weeks.

Now I'm taking a break from the monotony to step back and engage in a well known teaching ritual, namely reflection. Look at me go, look at me reflect. It's not my normal state, self-introspection. Usually I don't like being that close to myself. I guess I fear I'll catch my own cooties if I peek around inside my brain too much. And I might rile up the evil dwarves that lurk in my mental caverns, who will then poke me with pick-axes, thereby reminding me of the excruciating painfulness of being alive. Poor me, I'm alive.

I am old friends with this feeling of frustration. This is nothing new. Every job I've ever had imploded because of this feeling. After nine years at the career college, I thought I'd escaped the meltdown, but it seems to have caught up with me at last. The only difference between then and now is that I was a lot younger then. My job prospects weren't nil ten years ago. Now I'm moving into the crone stage—you know, where my skin gets all thin and papery, and I can see the veins in my hands under the brown spots. Even more than the physical decrepitude is the mental yawning, the utter disinterest in pursuing anyone's dream but my own. The sure sense of entitlement that says, I'm old, I've earned it, so back the F off. Yep. Crone. And so what, you ask? Let me translate: One word: Unemployable.

I'm balancing on a sharp edge. If I slip, I die. Slipping looks like not finishing this degree. Slipping looks like being fired from my job. Slipping looks like living in my parents' basement—except dad is gone and mom doesn't have a basement anymore, so slipping looks like living in my car, which will be really hard because it is an old Ford Focus hatchback. Slipping is unacceptable. I can't slip. But if I do, what then? Freefall? Or freedom? Hmm.

The committee is AWOL: I didn't cause it, I can't control it, and I sure can't cure it

Despite the gloomy fact that it is pouring rain outside, and despite the equally gloomy fact that the pouring rain feels completely normal to me even after over three months of glorious sunshine, I have some good news to report. Some. Not a whole lot, but then, what would it take to make the chronic malcontent truly happy? I really can't say. Anyway, my chairperson gave me some good feedback on my concept paper. That was the good news. The bad news—you knew that had to be coming, didn't you—is that apparently my dissertation committee is AWOL. My chairperson said the “issue” is being addressed. I have no idea who the committee members are, so I cannot help to track them down and wrangle them back into the fold, as it were. So, as gratifying as it is to get some good feedback from my chairperson, the comments from the anonymous AWOL committee are still hanging out there. I fear any one of them has the power to quash my concept and send me back to the drawing board.

My sister admonished me to find out who the committee members are. She said at the doctoral level, there should be no veil of secrecy, no cloak of anonymity. We are colleagues, practically. It's unprofessional to claim the role of anonymous reviewer, when one's job is to support and mentor the doctoral candidate. Based on my sister's admonishment, I think I will ask my chairperson if she will reveal the names of the committee members.

In the meantime, I will make the changes the chairperson has suggested. Progress of sorts. This dissertation course ends in a couple weeks. If the past procedure holds, I will be granted a two week hiatus, call it a vacation, before the next course begins. I am now officially into extension territory. In December of 2005 when I started this ridiculous endeavor, I anticipated that I would be finished—phinished!—by the end of October 2012. Now, almost seven years later, I'm so tired of the process I don't have the energy to muster an increased sense of disappointment. I'm already at max disappointment. But who cares. When you get on the Ph.D. ride, you are on it for the duration, no matter how long it takes, no matter how many times your concept is rejected by nameless, faceless mentors who after rejecting your concept drag up and disappear.

It's ok, really. I'm disappointed, but I'm not angry. If I could do it over, I'd probably choose something else, but it hasn't been wasted time and money. I've learned a lot about a lot of things, including myself. Priceless.

Let the season of complaining begin

As a chronic malcontent, my natural inclination is to focus on the dark side. You could say it's a habit. Some would say it is a failing. I claim it is an art. It takes talent to play devil's advocate 24/7. I'm not to that level yet: I still have moments where I smile, or break out in a whistle, or feel like skipping. Brief moments, to be sure, but I'm painstakingly working on eradicating them, so I can be the best chronic malcontent that I can be. Or the worst. Whatever.

The most obvious thing to complain about is the change of season. It's fall. I can tell because I feel like going back to bed, even after I've just got up. But what's with all this weird sunshine? Things are definitely not normal here in the rainy city. Rain... I remember what rain is, that wet stuff that falls from the sky? Haven't seen any to speak of for three months. My mother is trying to move a rose bush: She says the ground is rock-solid. I say wait till it rains. “That could be weeks!” she replied. What could I do but agree? When you are 84, it's better not to postpone things. You may not have the weeks that younger people take for granted.

And while I wouldn't say it is warm, exactly, it's not precisely cold either. But it is definitely fall. The east wind has been scouring our backside for a few days now, bringing smoke from Washington and cold air from Canada. Leaves are starting to pile up in odd corners. I find the wind unsettling. The air is on the move, and it's noisy. In the park, the tall forest roars. Oak branches whip above my head. I regress to my pre-primate ancestry, scurrying the trails, seeking a warm quiet burrow to hide in until spring. And this is just the beginning.

Complaining about the weather is a regional pastime in the Pacific Northwest. Everybody does it. Some people actually like the fall, though. I overheard a student saying how she looked forward to feeling the crisp, cold air. I shuddered. Even when it is 70° outside, it's 60° inside. Whether at home or at work, I can't get warm. My hands are stiff with cold. My feet ache. Every year I swear I will buy electric socks. Hmmmm. Maybe not this year. I just googled electric socks. The options don't look promising. Although I found an interesting website whose authors claimed that I can force my hands and feet to warm up in about three minutes by reducing the amount of oxygen I breathe in. Yeah, that oughta do it.

The temperature gadget on my computer desktop says it is 63° in the Rose City. (And 85° in Palm Springs, sigh.) Hell, I remember last spring when I rejoiced that the temperature finally cracked 60°. As I write this, I'm wearing fingerless gloves (formerly known as socks), a stocking cap, two t-shirts and a fleece vest, fleece pants, heavy socks, and fleece-lined slippers. I have the afghan my mother knitted draped over my knees and wrapped around my feet. This is just the beginning. It's fall. It all goes down from here—the mercury, the leaves, the rain, the mood.

Oh, man. To top it all off, my neighbor Joy is stomping around on her wooden floors wearing what must be wooden clogs. Really? Why doesn't she just come over here and bludgeon me to death with them. It would be a mercy killing. What, is she dancing? Does the woman own no slippers? Is this hell on earth? Bright side, bright side: She is probably getting ready to go out. It's Friday night. Yes! I think I just heard her front door slam. There is a god. Oh, whoops, just had a slip there. Dark side, dark side. Well, she'll be back, along about last call, staggering across her wooden floor in her clogs. Whew, almost fell into optimism there. But no, the chronic malcontent wins again.

The chronic malcontent suffers a bout of misophonia

Lots of noise in the apartment next door. At first I thought the Love Shack had been invaded by an elephant. I couldn't believe my landlords would rent to an elephant. But they've rented to nutcases and wackjobs, so why not elephants? Ok, whatever. When I finally laid eyes on the new tenant, I was surprised to see a young, not overly large female. She just sounds like an elephant. Which is so weird, because she has a tiny little poodle who is completely silent.

So far, the new neighbor, ironically named Joy, is bringing no joy into my life. She stomps around on her hardwood floors with what sounds like careless, reckless abandon, early in the morning, late at night. She has no rugs. And she plays her stereo. Oh my gosh, her stereo. The thumping bass vibrates the air in my apartment. I don't hear the song, just the bass. It's like the subwoofer on a teenager's car stereo...you can feel it from half a mile away, even if you can't hear the music. I can't get away from it, the pounding of my neighbor's bass. In the tub, on the john, in my bed, at my computer, the thumping is everywhere. Argh.

I met her briefly by chance in the parking lot.

“By the way,” I said, after we had introduced ourselves and after I had greeted Bismark, the silent black poodle, “the walls in our place are paper thin. I can hear the bass on your stereo sometimes. Do you think you could turn the bass down?”

She made some noises that indicated to me either she didn't know how, or she didn't care, or perhaps both. I didn't have a good feeling about it.

Sure enough, since then she's continued to be noisy. Plus, she lets her dog poop in the backyard in the dark. And she left her laundry in the dryer (well, to be honest, I do that too, and so has every other tenant in the nine years I've lived here. I guess I'll forgive her that transgression. But she didn't clean the lint trap!) To top it all off, she sneezes incessantly (does she know the Willamette Valley is the grass seed and hayfever capital of the world?), and then she blows her nose like a trumpet. Sneeze, blow, repeat. Did I mention she stomps? And she plays her damn stereo. In other words, she's alive.

Tonight I was trying to write my zombie concept paper, you know, that stupid paper that won't lay down and die. Stomp, stomp, bang, crash. Ok, she's got a zest for life, I thought to myself. One can hardly fault a girl named Joy for living enthusiastically. Then the stereo came on. I felt rage well up within me. It was too early to pound on the wall—I figure after 10:00 pm I'm within my rights to pound on the wall, three warnings and then I call the cops. But it was only 7:30 pm. The air vibrated with the bass. And I vibrated with fury.

So I did what any passive aggressive worth her salt would do. I turned on my stereo, set the bass to MAX, and let it rip. New Order crashed through the place like a tidal wave, surprising even me. (I hardly ever turn up the volume.) The cat left the room. I sat there for a minute, savoring the assault. Take that, you... you, loud neighbor, you! I couldn't write with that racket going on, so I got up and jogged in place for a couple minutes until I felt my frustration ebb away. Wow, I have a pretty good stereo system. That thing was loud.

Eventually I couldn't take it, and I turned it down. Naturally, the bass of her stereo was still throbbing under the bass of my stereo. Dueling stereos. Defeated, I turned the thing off and plugged in the headphones of my mp3 player. I knew she would win. I have misophonia. I'm at a disadvantage. I could turn it up full blast, and she probably wouldn't care. She probably can sleep through anything. She probably doesn't mind if someone chews gum near her, or eats an apple, or crunches crunchy snacks in her classroom, or unwraps a crackly candy wrapper.... no, I bet none of those things drive her insane. Me, I'm a basket case, a cranky, snippy, snarky chronic malcontent. No wonder people think I'm a misanthrope. I don't hate you, really. I just can't stand the noise you make.

Where can I go where it's quiet? Sometimes I want to puncture my ear drums. But I'd still feel it, the relentless pounding of her stereo. Someday I'll find my cave, my desert shack, my battered RV, my little piece of peace and quiet. And if sweet Joy suddenly turns up dead, stuffed in the dryer, well, all I can say is, I wasn't in my right mind, and anyway, she deserved it.

Hi, my name is Carol and I'm a misanthrope

Today the weather was not nearly as fine as yesterday, but I ventured out anyway, thinking of the recent study that found a correlation between computer usage and ass width. I donned my protective gear: oversized black t-shirt over long black nylon pants, and lime green hoodie jacket equipped with lip balm, sunglasses, fingerless gloves (formerly known as socks), snotrag, and house key. On my head I wore a baseball cap that says Shannon heart Aunt Carol. On my feet I wore my beat up Sauconies. Beat up because I took a pair of scissors to them to make room for my droopy ankle bones, and they have been falling apart ever since. (My shoes, I mean, not my ankles.) I wear all this stuff to protect me from the elements. You know, rain, sun, cold air, and the lurking pervert leaping out from behind a tree to yank down my pants.

So, I was ready. Born to run. I exited my back door and headed for the street, only to stop in amazement. The street was lined with parked cars. What was happening? I saw an army of bicycles, riders of all shapes and ages, pedaling in both directions. Wha-? Oh, no, it's Sunday Parkways! Sunday Parkways is Portland's street festival, where the city blocks off streets in certain neighborhoods over the course of the summer, so that people can ride bikes and walk. There's music and theatre, lots of people, dogs, bikes, noise, energy.

I slapped my head. I had totally forgotten it was big event day in the park. My park. Yeah, you heard me. My park.

I guess I've become a bit territorial of Mt Tabor Park, but in my defense let me say that usually the park is sparsely populated, even on sunny weekends. The families hang out in the playground: I hear them, but they aren't in my way. I share the roads with skateboarders and the trails with dogwalkers and the occasional jogger. Mostly I am alone. Not today. Once I made it up the main staircase to the summit, it was bicycle pandemonium.

Not my preferred scene, not in my park. But as I trotted by a guy dressed like a clown and riding a bicycle to which he had strapped two huge speakers and a stereo system, I had to laugh. The noise was impressive. He rode nonchalantly around the summit, grinning beatifically in the pale sunshine. More than one dog looked slightly anxious. A group of chubby females peered out at him from under a New Age tent they had constructed among the trees out of ropes and fluttery translucent fabric. I kept on trotting down the hill and reflected that I was watching my tax dollars hard at work, paying for this event.

Some people would be angry about that, but not me. I like my tax dollars to pay for things that promote community, even though I don't particularly care for community myself. I would gladly pay more taxes so that everyone could have adequate healthcare and education, (as long as everyone else paid their share too, of course), because that builds a strong community. I always put people before profit, despite the fact that most of the time I don't really like people. As a founding member of Misanthropes Anonymous, my first thought when I see you is, hey, hi. My second thought is, how soon can you leave?

I'm not really a misanthrope. Actually, I guess I'm more of a tree-hugging, bleeding heart socialist liberal. I just happen to also be a self-obsessed malcontent and self-proclaimed introvert. I'm happiest when I'm alone, but I am a big fan of keeping the social fabric of our city from unraveling. If that takes street fairs, festivals, and fireworks, my thumbs are up, even while I'm hunkering down to wait it out.

The dog days of discontent

It was a difficult week at the career college. Difficult for my Access and Excel students, who on Tuesday soldiered through their first test. Difficult for me, struggling to grade their tests Tuesday night and Wednesday afternoon, in time to return the tests the next day. A few things had to get cut from my schedule. This blog on Tuesday. My mid-day siesta on Wednesday. Oh, the sacrifices we must make to provide good customer service for our students.

Somewhere in the neighborhood of the Love Shack, not too far away, not far away enough, is a sad and lonely dog. I've never seen this dog. I don't know where it lives. But I can hear this dog weeping and moaning for long hours on end, its howls echoing above the houses on the gravel road, endless, piteous weeping and moaning. On Tuesday, the dog was speaking for me. I wanted to weep and moan, raise my voice to the sky, just let loose with a howl. Life sucks, owwwwwwwwwwooooooooooo.

Sometimes the dog's howling sounds wrenchingly heartfelt, full of genuine angst, like a coyote crying to the moon, and other times the howling resembles the fake screaming of an angry child: woe is me, everyone is so mean to me, boo hoo hoo. Either way, I frequently vow I am going to find that dog, record its howling, and play it back for its owner at top volume in the middle of the night.

It's hot. Maybe the dog is howling because it can't get to its blistering hot metal bowl of water. Maybe it can see its owners through the patio door, kicked back in their Lazy-boys in air-conditioned luxury. I have no idea, I'm just making this all up. But god's truth, I'd like to throttle those owners for creating the conditions that motivate that dog to continuously weep and moan. Sort of like I'd like to throttle the owners of the career college for creating the conditions for students to fail at Access and Excel.

Well, I guess that isn't really fair. There's really not much the two owners do these days except play golf, as far as I have heard. They sneak up to the third floor via the elevator on Board meeting days, to avoid mixing with us riff-raff, I presume. We rarely see our college president, who seems perennially on trips to east coast Ivy League colleges with his 12-year-old son. Is it fair of me to blame them, the invisible Board, for staying stuck in 20th century technology, when the means to help students succeed at learning computer programs exist? I'm talking about using computer simulation software to teach computer applications courses. Nothing radical, nothing new. Other schools do it, even employment agencies use simulation software to teach the basics of Microsoft Office.

My Excel class is not large, only fifteen students, but the capabilities of the students run the gamut from how do I select a range of cells again? Press the what button on the what? to I am a power user and I could teach this class, stupid. Lecturing seems like a Jurassic approach in a computer class where everyone is moving at different speeds. But unfortunately, they are all stuck working through the lessons and exercises in the error-ridden, out-dated textbooks. If they are careful readers, they can successfully complete the lessons, but even the most careful of students can navigate an exercise with 20 complicated steps and reach the end with no conception of what they were supposed to learn. I see it happen time and again. They perform the steps, but fail to learn. How is that helping them prepare for the workplace? And don't get me started on what happens to ESL and learning-disabled students.

We use a software tool called Lanschool, which allows teachers to commandeer computers in the classroom to demonstrate skills students need to know and to review for tests, on the premise that showing them how to perform a task is just slightly more effective than simply telling them how to do it. The best I can manage is to have them work along with me on their computer while watching me demonstrate the skill on the computer monitor next to them. Ideally, though, the best way for them to learn the material would be for them to teach it, but it's a rare student in the computer classes who is willing to bravely demonstrate for his or her peers the steps to, say, create an input mask in an Access table, or insert a function in Excel that returns the current date. Muttering ensues. Teaching, you call this teaching? Why are we doing the teacher's job? Muttering, followed by mutiny, followed by unemployment.

My unvoiced suggestion is for the college to purchase software that lets students learn in a simulated computer environment, where they move through the lessons at their own paces, receiving instant feedback from the software, moving on when the system thinks they are ready. Without having to read the out-dated, step-by-step workbooks. But then, who needs a teacher? Indeed.

I think my problem is I just want to shake things up. I'm dissatisfied with the pace at which my own studies are progressing, and I'm feeling trapped in what I perceive to be an ineffective work environment. The chronic malcontent resorts to pot-stirring, just for the hell of it, just to avoid really having to feel the uncomfortable feelings that arise when one realizes there are no easy solutions. That people learn in all kinds of ways, and I have no control over them or their learning process. That the owners of businesses can do whatever they want, and that includes doing nothing. That dogs will continue to howl, because that is what dogs do.

Self-deception is how I survive a life of cognitive dissonance

John Perry and Ken Taylor, my favorite living radio philosophers, are dissecting the problem of self-deception on Philosophy Talk. Why do we self-deceive? Sorry, I shouldn't lump you in with the self-deluded. You probably are totally self-honest, a paragon of virtue and integrity, off-the-charts emotional intelligence, yada yada. Not me. My normal state is self-delusion, but sadly for me, I'm not lacking in self-awareness. I can tell you why I self-deceive. Because the cognitive dissonance of my life is too painful to face.

For example, I say I care about the environment. I recycle, I buy green products, but I drive a vehicle with an internal combustion engine that spews pollutants and greenhouse gases into the air that other people must breathe.

I don't download pirated movies or steal music, but get out of my way when I'm driving to Wilsonville on the I-205 freeway. The speed limit is 65, but that's for pokey trucks. The best my tired old Focus can do is about 73 mph, but I'd be airborne like all the SUVs if I could be, no matter what the speed limit is.

Here's another example. I stand in front of a roomful of aspiring medical assistants, telling them to always move in the direction of their dreams, that they can have that perfect job if they just don't give up, all they need is the resume du jour, a few key words, a good answer to “Tell me about yourself,” and a life of bliss will be theirs, guaranteed. Just follow these simple steps. Bla bla bla. When I really get going, my voice will actually quiver with passion, as if I truly believe what I am saying. They stare at me raptly, nodding, desperately wanting to believe that what I claim is true, that somehow they will all find the job of their dreams. The odds are that only a couple of those MAs will find a job they tolerate, much less one they like. Six months after graduation, the rest will be working at KMart, Wal-Mart, and Food-Mart, bagging crap for cranky customers and muttering bitterly about how I deceived them.

The antidote to self-deception is self-reflection, suggests John and Ken's guest philosopher, Neil Van Leeuwen. Ken isn't buying it. He is ripping Neil's argument to shreds. Mr. Van Leeuwen stands firm, a charming optimist. Ken says morosely that self-deception won't make us happy. I'm with you, Ken. No argument from me, the chronic malcontent. The best I can say is that self-deception helps me maintain the illusion that life is worth living. It does no good to remind me that I should be counting my blessings: I have a job, I have a car, I have a life. Lucky me. Being alive is difficult when one is a self-obsessed malcontent. Don't misunderstand me, I don't want to be dead quite yet, but so far, I haven't figured out how to really live. Not without a liberal dose of self-deception.

I'm a blip

In the wake of the various disasters and traumas in the news, I am finding it hard to focus on the trivially mundane, parched, pedestrian blip I call my life. What is there to say? I haven't been in a car wreck (yet), I haven't been shot at (recently), I haven't failed a class (yet)... really, what is there to complain about, you might ask? Go ahead, ask, but be careful what you ask for, because the chronic malcontent always has something to complain about. Whine is my middle name. Well, not really, it's Mary, but don't tell anyone. Whine is so much more accurate. And funnier.

On Thursday we ended a term at the career college. Friday was spent complaining to my colleagues, grading a few papers, complaining some more, and then driving with Bravadita to in-service in Wilsonville, to sit through three back-to-back sessions of peer-produced palaver aimed at making us better teachers. (Did it work? How could you possibly tell?) After which, we escaped, only to spend the next 45 minutes sitting in near stand-still traffic, trying to get back in time to grade a few more papers, maybe actually turn in our grades.

And when we finally made it back to the Clackamas site, we found out we wouldn't be allowed to stay very long—low enrollments means no evening orientation, which means the staff goes home early (those slackers!), which means we don't get to use the copy machines to print out syllabuses (syllabi? No, apparently not anymore), which means we will have to frantically compete with each other for copies on Monday morning. Argh.

Today I was tired. No excuses, just gray skies and foggy neurons. Even after the clouds departed, leaving lovely blue sky, my mental fog remained. I knew I should feel peppier, with so much sunlight, but with all the drama and trauma of the week, I just can't seem to conjure any gumption. The best I could do was take out the trash. Some days, that feels like climbing Everest.

It occurred to me today that none of this so-called life, this thing I think is so important, none of it really matters. In the end, all this crap I have accumulated will end up in a landfill. All my art will molder into dust. All my writing, all these stupid journals, will get dumped in the recycling bin and shredded to make more important things like paper bags or cardboard boxes. No one will care, because I have no descendants to speak of. (Well, I have one niece I don't know very well. I guess I could designate her my heir, but that seems like a mean thing to do to someone I like.) I certainly won't care what becomes of all my earthly crap, because I'll be dead, beyond caring, quickly forgotten. The whole sordid thing I call my life is just a blip in the continuum of human existence.

Just a drop in the ocean of life. Just a few breaths in the timeline of breaths. A couple shuffles on the mortal coil. Carrying on the fine tradition of being born, complaining about how life sucks, and then dying to make room for someone else to do the same. You know, it just occurred to me that this blog might outlast me. What a thought. Long live the blip.

Time to give up hope for a new past

My friend often admonishes me to stay out of the wreckage of the future. That is always a good reminder. I have a tendency to fret about the things that haven't happened yet. However, I can see the advantage of this tendency, believe it or not, despite being a chronic malcontent. For all you chronic malcontents (and you know who you are), pay attention. For all you Pollyannas, think about it like this: If you know are faced with a decision, it is important for you to see all sides of your dilemma before committing your resources to an action. Ask a chronic malcontent to play the role of devil's advocate! We are naturally skilled at looking at the dark side. We can help you minimize risk. And we work for dirt cheap, too, because we don't see any point in asking for what our advice would be worth. See, who knew being a chronic malcontent had a bright side! Hire a malcontent today!

This morning I attended a workshop on... well, essentially the topic was Looking on the Bright Side, not in so many words. Fewer than a dozen people sat around a loose rectangle of old folding tables, staring out the window, at the ceiling, at the clock. Anywhere but at each other. Some of the people were well known to me, others were strangers. Didn't matter, old friends, new people... I kicked the legs of the table, feeling alien and out of place. I hate workshops where I can't hide out in the back of the room, drawing silly pictures in my journal. I draw pictures anyway, even if I have to be a visible member of the group, but I don't like it. I'd much rather do what my students do, and pretend like I can escape notice. Anonymity should extend to visibility, in my opinion. Like, please, ignore me, I'm not here. I'm not a real person, I just play one on TV.

As always happens when I think there is no purpose or meaning to existence, someone says something brilliant that nails me between the eyes, bringing me back to earth with a thump. Ouch. Busted. Today I heard someone say, “It is time to give up hope for a new past.”

This is me. When I'm not fretting about the future, I am dwelling on the past, trying to rewrite history, indulging in the if-onlys. (See a previous rant.) You know what I mean. Stuff like... If only I had finished college back in 1978, when I had only a year to go. If only I hadn't tried to make money doing something I absolutely despised (sewing), instead of focusing on my art. If only I hadn't spent so much of my life orbiting other people instead of creating my own space. Bla bla bla. The if-onlys get a bit repetitive after I've hashed and re-hashed them a gazillion times. (I'm sure there is a food joke about hash somewhere in there, but I'll let you imagine it. It will be a lot funnier that way.)

How much time and energy have I spent trying to create a new past? What a total waste.

Wait, time out for a song. I can't really express my angst while Michael Nesmith is warbling “Tumbling Tumbleweeds.” Too bad I can't sing, I'd serenade you. Hey, sing along with me! See them rolling along... pledging their love with a song? Wha? Tumbleweeds fall in love? Tumbleweeds can sing? I must have it wrong. I can never understand lyrics. (Like, Wrapped up like a douche, another loner in the night... come on, don't tell me you don't sing it like that.)

As bad as my if-onlys get, though, I have only to think of Mary to realize I got off easy. Mary calls me on the phone every two weeks and reads me excerpts from her journal writing. She doesn't want feedback. She wants the relief that comes from unburdening her soul to another human being, one who won't judge (out loud, anyway), won't criticize, and won't hang up on her. It is hard not to judge Mary. She is stuck in the past, blocked from evolving into a viable functional human by two events that have defined her life ever since. The first is the typical horrific account of child abuse. The second was some harsh words directed at her by her best friends in high school. (She's 45 now.)

Mary has been calling me for almost two years, every other week. At first, I was uncomfortable with my role as listener. I felt obligated to respond with appropriate noises, maybe offer a comment or two at the end of the tirade. Now I rarely make a sound. I play Mahjong, and as I click the tiles, her words become poetry, by turns poignant, stark, riveting, trivial. She's too immersed in her pain to hear how funny she is. She is crying to heaven. I'm just a channel, a conduit, through me straight to god. At least, that is what she hopes. (Since I rarely speak, I haven't told her that I'm a chronic malcontent whose personal philosophy skirts a fine line between fatalism, cynicism, and nihilism.)

Mary is trapped in an unbearable present, terrified of the future while hoping for a new past. Maybe there is another advantage being a chronic malcontent. No matter what I think or feel or say, I can never take it too seriously. If I ever stop laughing at my quirks and foibles, please take me out back and shoot me. I'm counting on you, don't let me down!

Oh, poor thing, you made it up the stairs and everything

So far this morning, in an effort to avoid working on my dreaded concept paper, I've cleaned the cat box, cleaned the human box (AKA the toilet), taken out the trash and the recycling, done a load of laundry, and roasted a batch of beets and a batch of yams. And it's not even noon! Look at me go, I'm a dynamo! Isn't it amazing how productive I can be when I'm avoiding doing the work that really matters. Remember the four quadants: Important but Not Urgent is the quadrant that always goes begging. I'm currently mired in the Important and Urgent quadrant. Yes, all this stuff needs to be done—eventually. It doesn't have to be today. I know what I am doing: I'm procrastinating by being super efficient. And, sadly, highly ineffective.

And before I start mopping the kitchen floor, I am taking time to blog. (Probably there is a 12-Step program for this malady, if I could figure out what to call it.)

Despite everything, even the chronic malcontent smiles sometimes. Two good reasons to smile today. First, today is the second day of summer. The sun is shining just like it is supposed to. The sky is blue, it's 67°F, on the way up to 85°F. Clouds will roll in tonight, according to Bruce Sussman, and tomorrow the temperature will drop like a stone as the clouds unleash rain and wind. But today, it's summer, and life is good.

Here's the second reason. I know life is good because I found a favorite sock I've been missing for weeks. Cotton, oatmeal-colored, super soft and comfy... not much use if there's only one. (Unless I get the flesh-eating streptococcal disease and lose a foot.) But somehow I knew that, unlike most of my missing socks, this one was going to come back to me. And sure enough, today I descended the steps into the normally dark basement laundry room and there, illuminated in a ray of sunshine that miraculously found its way behind the washing machine, was my AWOL sock, resting on the concrete floor in a nest of dust and detritus.

It reminds me of how I got the job at the career college. (Yes, it resembles a nest of dust and detritus, but that isn't what I meant.) I'm remembering how I sent a résumé  in response to an ad for a marketing adjunct instructor, no master's degree required, and after a short period of disappointment, forgot all about it. Almost two years later, I got a call from the program director of the business/general education department in Wilsonville. Would I be willing to teach a couple marketing courses? I was like, who is this? And the rest is history. (I'm still asking, who are these people, the invisible leaders of this bizarre excuse for an organization? But I digress.)


I'm not sure I would hang onto a single sock as long as my employer held on to my résumé. Still, my point is, good things can happen, even if they don't happen right away. 


Last night, my colleague and friend, Bravadita, remarked that someone suggested to her that she try to look on the bright side of life. Notwithstanding the fact that Bravadita's life pretty much sucks right now, the person seemed to be saying that (1) this sorry situation of stress-related rash and unemployment is Bravadita's fault (because we create our reality with our choices); and (2) if Bravadita really wanted to change things, she could, simply by focusing on the positive rather than the negative. 


Well, when I heard that, you can imagine the malcontent in me rose up to defend my worldview. “Ha!” I said intelligently. I was like, let me at her, my fist, her nose, bring it on! Very helpful reaction, Carol, to resort to violence to resolve a disagreement.  


What I realized is that my need to be right supersedes everything else in my world. My need to justify my worldview keeps me sifting through all the evidence to seize only the bits that confirm my beliefs. And it's interesting (to me, probably not to you) that despite the obvious evidence that good things can and do happen (even to me), I still am desperately committed to my malcontented position that life sucks and then we die. Despite the job. Despite the sock. 


The chronic malcontent in me rationalizes my intractable position by thinking (and sometimes saying out loud, to my embarrassment), well, the career college only hired me because they were desperate for a body to fill the empty class. They didn't really care who they hired. Any ignorant sucker willing to work for $17 an hour would do. And the sock, well, it's just a stupid sock. It's not like it's anything important. See what I do? It's like my brain can only see the negative. I've been malcontented for so long, it's a habitual reaction. It's chronic! I'm doomed. Even when the sun shines, I can't enjoy the moment: After I rejoice in the feeling of sunlight on my face, my second thought is: it won't last, tomorrow it will rain, and life will suck again.


Now that I've reaffirmed my worldview that life really is meaningless, pointless, and absurd, I can finally open up my concept paper and get to work. After I unload the dryer. And go for a walk. Hey, it's summer, what can I say. It will be gone by tomorrow.

I don't need a Magic 8 Ball to see what's coming

I can always tell when my colleague in the Gen Ed Department (I'll call her Sheryl) has some juicy gossip to share. Sheryl waved me into the office last week, grinning like a fool with a secret. “Guess who I saw in the parking lot this morning!”

Sheryl is a spry, near-retirement gal with bottle-blonde hair who has taught English, math, and computer classes for the college for fifteen years. She has a memory like a video camera, capturing everything—events, conversations, reactions—in a linear fashion, frame by frame. (My brain, in contrast, uses a snapshot approach, organizing scenes more or less by strength of emotion rather than chronological order. So, basically my memory is a photo album organized by a three-year-old.)

The future has been looking somewhat precarious at the career college. Rumors abound. We're moving, we're closing, we're fired...  so I was quite interested when Sheryl told me she cornered the President of the college in the underground parking lot for some answers. I wasn't there, but I can picture him pinned against a car by her direct, no-nonsense, schoolteacher manner.

“Tell me the truth now. Are we closing?”

She's quite intimidating when she assumes her full school-mistress persona, complete with lowered brows, pointing index finger, and strident voice. I can only imagine he was transported back to childhood, cowering under the shadow of his first-grade teacher as she demanded he stop biting the buttons on his shirt. No, wait, that was my childhood. Well, he probably ate crayons. (I never did that.)

Apparently he realized he wasn't getting away without coughing up some answers. She said he sounded like he was eager, almost relieved, to tell her his plans for the college. His plans. That phrase surprised me. I don't know why I thought someone else was driving the bus off the cliff. Maybe because we rarely see him, our invisible college president. I guess I thought he was traveling to conferences, hobnobbing with career college academic-wannabes, doing team-building exercises while his team languishes back at our wilting campuses. What do I know. This is what happens in the absence of leadership: people make up stories to explain what they see and hear. I'm very creative, as you know. But being a chronic malcontent, my stories tend toward the sturm und drang.

 Anyway, back to the story. The answer to the question was “Yes.”

Yes, the site is closing. By the end of 2013, when the lease on the decrepit moldy office building runs out, we will have transitioned to a new site, currently under negotiations, somewhere near the airport (and our major competitors). So, we aren't actually moving; the site will be closing while a new site is opening.

I don't need a Magic 8 Ball to see the future now. Sheryl and I and a handful of other long-timers will man the sinking ship at the old place, while shiny new adjuncts and keepers from the other campuses launch the new venture. While we nurse along the old computers, patch together wobbly chairs, and erase the ghosts of 20 years' worth of scribblings on tired whiteboards, they will enjoy new desks, new chairs, new computers, new whiteboards, maybe even a few Smartboards. While we alternately sweat and freeze in the microclimates of our familiar worn-out classrooms, they will have thermostats in every classroom that actually control the climate for that room.

And when we finally usher out the last student, wipe down the whiteboards for the last time, pack up our mementos, and close the doors on the old site, what then? Do you think there will be room at the new site for us?

We'll be lucky if they remember who we are.

I do my best work when I'm doing nothing

That is the conclusion I reached today as I trundled my way to Freddy's to replenish my empty fridge. Driving to the store is one of those mundane activities that allows my brain to roam free. My almost-ancient Ford Focus (Found On Road Dead, Fix And Repair Daily) knows the way. On autopilot, I can think about other things besides uninsured motorists, belligerent bicyclists, and kamikaze squirrels. For example, I think about my life and how it sucks. Today, instead of monitoring traffic, I monitored the current level of my malcontentedness. After pausing politely at a four-way stop, I heaved a series of angst-ridden sighs. I realized only one conclusion was possible: I should do nothing, because doing nothing is what I do best. I should just stop trying so hard to make things happen. As soon as I try to do stuff, everything goes to hell in a hand-basket.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend back in 1998. He was a Lyle Lovett look-alike, tall, tan, over-the-top charismatic, and an avid proponent of Science of Mind. I was tagging along after him, metaphysically speaking, searching for my own belief system. My quest wasn't working all that well. One day, after I had shared my typical morose viewpoint, he said, “Carol, you need to re-frame your questions.”

“What? What do you mean?” I asked, not really interested in the answer.

“Well, what question are you asking right now?”

“Uh—why am I such a loser?”

“See, that's what I mean,” he said with satisfaction, as if I were the data point that had just proved the validity of his scientific theory on success.

“Huh?”

“Well, if you ask the question like that, what answers do you think your brain will come up with?”

I stared at him with some resentment. I could see where he was going, but mostly I was annoyed with his obvious smug satisfaction. I hadn't felt that level of certainty about anything in a very long time. To have that level of conviction! I still don't know what that feels like.

Now, in 2012, I can hear his voice smirking in my ear: “Carol, what question are you asking?” And doggone it, it's the same damn question!

Some people say our brains are like computers. If that is true, that would explain why I keep getting responses from my brain like, “File not found.” Maybe my brain is just responding to the questions I ask. The answer to the question “Why am I such a loser?” can only start with “Well, Carol, the reasons why you are such a loser...” Which makes me think I should just stop trying to think my way out of my malcontentdness. I should stop thinking. I should do what I do best. I should do nothing.

The post should stop here for dramatic effect, but since no one will read this except my sister, Bravadita, and a handful of visitors from Russia, I will add a little more. I am too old not to know that I can't expect to sit around and do nothing. I know where that kind of thinking leads. It's sort of like waiting for the bus to come to my front door instead of going out to the bus stop. The only bus that will come to my front door is the short bus, if you know what I mean. And the only place it will take me is the looney bin, where, yes, I will get my three squares, a bed, and lots of time to think. Is that really what I want? Even my malcontented brain knows the answer to that question.