From all sides

Busy time of the term, it is, and though some of it is due to my own idiotic volunteerism, it's just not pretty. I had the ethics exam on Saturday, which was... amusing, I guess, in its way. After I took it, I wrote recommendations for two of my friends for a public service award that they won't win, because there are some very, very uber-focused people here who have apparently started entire movements about Darfur and have been engaged in highly confidential work on womens' rights in war-torn Middle Eastern countries for international institutions, and though my friends are really lovely, dedicated public servants, they don't really do headline-grabbing work like that, they do good in the form of trying to reform the health care system and prevent fools in the lower and middle classes from getting ripped off by predatory lending schemes, and THAT, my dears, is just not flashbulb sexy enough. I admire the uber-focused leaders of movements and such, I do. And I am thankful that they exist. But I'd rather hang out with my exceptionally dedicated but unsexy friends, because those uber-focused people? They scary bitches.

So yeah, I spent a couple hours nominating them and then went right into major stress mode about this stupid letter that I drafted in a slightly drunken haze last Thursday. No, it's not some sort of regrettable booty call missive. Get your minds out of the gutter. And it's not stupid ... I don't think. Not really. It's a school-related political statement criticizing the administration, and because I dreamed it up with a friend of mine who is better connected with an interested polity, we got more than 30 signatures and it came out in the school paper today. And I haven' t heard anything about it, but I was and am in a terror about opening my email because I'll probably get some sort of message telling me I don' t know shit about shit and that it wasn't the way the statement made it sound at all and yadda yadda blowhard bullshit.

I'm temperamentally unfit to be a rabble rouser, is all I can say. So it was kind of dumb of me to write this in a public forum (I'd written to the administration privately last year about this issue). What's even dumber, though, is that oh, 15 years ago, in high school, I did the exact same fucking thing: wrote a column criticizing the headmaster of my high school, which had just merged with the local private boys' school, for not showing up to events enough like the headmaster of the girls' school had done. Damn, I still remember the title of the column: "The Case of the Fucking Missing Headmaster." It may not have had an obscenity in it, though.

I got flack for that column from a teacher, as I recall, who said I had my facts wrong (he was actually pretty nice about it), and from others whom I don't remember off hand. It was uncomfortable being That Kid, even for a short while. Of course, there were a lot of politics going on that I didn't really understand -- the merger of the two schools had been vehemently opposed by a certain portion of the girls' school (some parents even brought a lawsuit to stop the merger, which was ultimately dismissed), and the fact that most of the top administrators of the girls' school melted away within a year or two after the merger was an obvious sign of which way the prevailing winds were blowing.

Anyway. I haven't gotten any flack about this letter, even if my name is prominently situated under it, but I'm living in fear. I hate confrontation. If you're a public figure, and you make lots of decisions, you're gonna make some wrong ones, and you gotta expect some criticism from time to time. We all head up our own personal ventures (i.e., lives), and hey - you make a mistake, you get some flack, you shrug, mentally make a note to think harder about it next time, and move on. So I don't feel bad about the criticism. I just don't want to get attacked back.

Okay, I guess that is hypocritical. FINE. I'll just shut up about my terror now.

But I'm going to whine some more about my workload this week. HA.

So the deadline for turning in the letter was yesterday at 3. I had a policy paper due at 5 -- for WHICH, by the way, I had totally miscalculated the length. When did 2500 words become 10 pages? I always think of 500 words as being a page. I guess I know this from the days before double spacing? Dunno. Anyhoo. Tuesday night I was up til 4 am trying to analyze the North Korean human rights situation, and then yesterday I spend some quality time panicking, I tell ya, trying to finish it before the deadline. Quality.

I turned that crappy waste of paper in, and then had a small reprieve. And drank. And smoked. And it was good.

Oh yes, and while all that's going on? My mother, dear batshit crazy lady that she is, still hasn't made up her mind about coming out here or not, and I'm like, please dear lord, make her decide in the next day, because airline prices are going up the closer we get, and it's a little nervous-making, not knowing if my spring break is gonna consist of squiring my mother around or not. I mean, don't get me wrong, I had a good time when she came out here last year. But it's not exactly relaxing, you know what I'm saying?

Anyhoo. She finally decided yes tonight, so that's that. Except it's not, because family never is just THAT. Why, why, why hasn't she gone to see The Nephew yet, now going on 2 months? Heavenly painted saints above, what is wrong with the woman? I mean, I can explain what is going on in her mind with fairly spot-on psychobabble analysis, but my GOD, woman. Get a coping mechanism.

Fortunately, I'm just too freakin' busy to dwell on this bothersome piece of family screwiness, because -- let's see now, I've got a fellowship application due tomorrow at 5 pm, as well as a group project due the same time, a class presentation to give on Monday, two board meetings on Monday night, and -- oh yeah! I have that small decision to make about what job to take!

It's a busy time.

That is why I smoke.

Plus, I actually do make it look sexy.

P.S. What I got out of all that stress about the letter and the recommendations and shit? That when it comes down to it, I love to write. I ... I can't even joke about it, it's so unfunny to me how much I love it. My subjects here may be petty, small-minded and boring; my tone may be petulant, irritating, repetitive, self-pitying and self-absorbed; my style may be derivative, ham-fisted, clumsy and unreadable -- but I fucking love the act of writing, and I don't care. To my surprise and delight, a number of people have directly or indirectly complimented my writing in the past week. Being recognized for it is meaningful in a way that dwarfs everything else.

My career shrink, my friends, my own brain -- they're all right. I know what I want. I just need to figure out how to make a living doing it.