According to my friend Suri, who just started reading this blog over the past few days (and has since read all of it since its reboot), apparently I tend to reveal a bit more about my character and personality on here than I ever realized. Well, at least until this afternoon, when she told me things like "Yeah, I knew about that, I read it on your blog."
Hm. And close to 80-90% of my friends and colleagues now read my blog.
Oh dear. This can't be good for my modesty.
...waitaminute. What modesty?
Look on the bright side, folks -- at least all of the potentially-troublesome things I've written have been about myself, and nobody else. Well, at least nobody that I've named. And if I haven't named them it's mainly to cover my own ass.
As I mentioned before, though, it's not like my life isn't an open book anyway for those who care to ask the questions. It's just that few care -- or have time -- to ask the questions, especially when most of them get answered here (in a roundabout fashion, of course). I've not exactly made anything a secret if you know how to read things and decipher key clues within this text, and don't plan to start anytime soon.
I just know that some of you will now begin reading back through these posts again trying to "decipher key clues."
Good luck.
Anyway.
There is a reason these two posts today have been entitled "Burnout and Crash," and it's probably not a reason I have to fully explain (especially for those of you who are GTAs as well). Fall semester is a killer, folks. It is one of those times that as a student, will wear you down and make you completely sleep-deprived, at least for the first few weeks. Spring semester is easier; there's only a month's break between the two, there are less students in the classes you'll teach (generally speaking, anyway), and at least for the first-years, they'll have enough experience under their belts to get back into the swing of things quickly and with much vigor. But fall? Fall just saps the life out of your bones. There's always something to be read, something to be written or graded, or something to take precedence over sleep, socializing, and generally living any semblance of a normal twenty-something's (or, for some of us, thirty-something's) life.
As you've probably guessed, it is Thursday night (or, as the clock suggests, 12:52 Friday morning), and I have basically failed in my attempts to find something to do this weekend, or a date.
This is, of course, entirely my fault.
I've been asked by several of the guys of the department to, y'know, seriously consider coming to the EGSA party-mixer-thing on Saturday afternoon, being held at some bar/restaurant in one of the nicer areas of town (I received directions as to how to get there early this morning, in case I wanted to go).
"You guys realize that anywhere I go I have to drive back and forth from Newton, right?" I asked.
For those of you new to the blog, Newton is 24 miles north of Wichita if you take I-135, which is a straight shot between my house and the city. My beat-up Monte Carlo, as you may recall, likes interstate driving just fine for the most part, but it gets an estimated 18 miles per gallon. On a good day. So every trip to Wichita and back is a fair amount of gas money to spend, as you might imagine, and that adds up with gas prices out here hovering around $3.60 now. Between leaving the house Monday and pulling back into my driveway tonight, I put 152 miles on the car this week alone. And that's about average for a week of classes and various small errands around town.
"You're the one who's always saying you need to get out of the house more," one of the guys said. "Well, here's your chance."
"And point taken," I replied, "but you know me and the bar scene, man. I'm just not a fan of that, I don't go out and mingle that well when I'm...well...around people I know."
This was, of course, the most gentle way I could put it. Truth be told, as some of you know, me + bar + friends + cheap beer or other drinks = Brandon gets into lots of trouble. I am not a fan of trouble, yet when I'm drunk it seems to find me in one way or another. Or, rather, for some reason I tend to go looking for it. Either way, it never ends well. This is why I rarely drink with others, or at least others in public.
Attempts to find some sort of a "date" over this long weekend have also failed, and that is also entirely my fault.
"You know you're going to ask her out," Suri told me this afternoon, the "her" in question being someone I've been talking with this week. "I can tell. Just do it. The worst she can do, of course, is say no."
As an aside here, I have been friends with Suri, continuously, since we both entered the program last fall. We've had several classes together, have worked on projects and presentations together, and this semester we're even working on a presentation for the novel Comfort Woman for our Middle Eastern/Asian lit class together. I trust her without question, and she probably knows me -- and my personality -- the best out of anyone else in the department, and knows many things about me and about my life that I wouldn't necessarily write here. She is also one of the most frequent purchasers of my tie-dye t-shirts I make and sell as a hobby during the summer. So, when I say here that she knows me, and knows how I think, she does.
"I don't know how to go about dating again," I said. "I've been out of the game for way too long. I'm old now. I'm not sure I can interact anymore with anyone but myself."
This, I will freely admit, is true. The sense of what the former girlfriend described as complacency, though there is probably a better term for it, is what partially led to our breakup, though there were many other reasons -- almost all of them my fault as well. Suri herself isn't single; she's been in a long-term, serious relationship for quite some time.
noun, plural -cies.
m-1. a feeling of quiet pleasure or security, often while unaware of some potential danger, defect, or the like; self-satisfaction or smug satisfaction with an existing situation, condition, etc.
Yeah, that's about right.
Anyway.
"You'll do it," she said. "I know you will. Stop analyzing it so much."
It's not that simple, I wanted to say. There are lots of variables involved. Options to weigh. Possible outcomes to predict. Problems unforeseen. Awkwardness to ensue.
Yeah. Suri's right. I'm over-analyzing things.
I'm not sure what my plans are for tomorrow yet. I probably won't awaken until around noon, which at this point could only be a good thing. I really need to mow the grass this weekend, but I've been so addled with work/school-related stuff that I haven't even had the chance to check the weather, and I'm long past the ability to care about anything tonight but sleep and kitty-time.
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