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I've gotten into the habit of unplugging the modem for a few hours to write sans temptation. I'm going to unplug it again in a little while, for more than a few hours, as I've kind of written myself into an interesting spot in this chapter (interesting spot being elle-code for a corner from which there appears to be no write-able escape). Before I do, I decided to talk (ok, write) out loud to myself to see if I can pinpoint the strange way I'm feeling.
I think the word that would best describe the way I'm feeling right now is melancholy. I'm not depressed, not particularly miserable (in fact, I've had some really bright spots over the last week), but I have this post-holiday, tinge-of-homesick, sick-of-the-dissertation, starting-to-feel-the-pressure sort of thing going on, coupled with an unexplained longing for something. You know the feeling you get sometimes when it just seems as if something is missing but you don't know what? I'm trying to tell myself, it's the phd, elle, you're longing for the phd. Hah! Anyway, the melancholia is manifesting itself physically--a minute ago I felt so boneless and weak that it felt like I was just a big puddle of blah.
Speaking of physical symptoms, I think I've written at various times on this blog (or maybe I just complain to people IRL) about bad bouts of itching, my swollen ankles, and repeated kidney infections. These don't occur together, I don't have hypertension, and my blood sugar levels are okay, so I've decided to swallow my fear and go see a(n) urologist... just in case.
The other feeling I have right now... does anyone else have the crazy problem of being in love with the idea of someone? Okay, maybe not in love, but feeling a strong attachment/connection to what you believe someone to be? The reason I describe it as being in love with the idea of someone--I don't even know one of my unrequited loves in real life and the other one I haven't been really close to in over a decade. But I know their politics and their brilliance and other quirky little things and I am so feeling them right now.
That is all.
6 comments:
Being in love with someonev or the idea of right now? Could it be a need a desire to feel accepted, wanted, approved of, cared for?
After Christmas is always a funk I think, or at least for people who seem to really really love and enjoy Christmas.
I feel like a ball of something, not really nerves or emotions, but sort of someone who wants something, something that will do the trick immediately, but not quite sure of what the something is.
Sorry, I can't help. Keep writing I suppose.
Some of this sounds like the after-the-holidays blues and some of it sounds like the writing-the dissertation blues. The writing the dissertation blues are a special kind of blues... :-) They are getting you ready for the world of academia. Writing the diss is the first place we learn how to write and work in isolation. There's no grad seminar, no seminar paper, no course work, and even with a writing group, it's still just you alone with your ideas and sometimes that makes you feel blah. :-)
Being in love with the idea of someone has to be the most exciting part of being in love. It's that weird stage between "really new" and "getting to know you." It's the place where your imagination can run wild, usually until you find out who the person you're in love with the idea of really is... Most of the time people are so much cooler "in theory" ;-) than they are "in real life." All of that is my way of saying I fall in love with the idea of people and things all the time. :-)
In love with the idea of someone... YES. I really feel you on that right now. Especially the 'not someone I know in real life' thing. It's a great experience, when you feel very much in sync with someone with very little of the frictions and complications of actually interacting with them. Eventually it gets boring, but I love it and I love to draw it out. I also find this feeling to be an excellent antidote to the post-holiday letdown.
ok, y'all make me less crazy.
**feel** less crazy
heh. a friend of mine, a filmmaker, actually directed a short film about something like this, the Death of Sensuous Particulars
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/00/11/vca.html
:)
hope you feel better and get to see the physician.
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