Suspension
I try to live my life consciously, and never more so than when I sense a shift or change coming. Shortly after my engagement to Carey, I found myself luxuriating in the small details of day-to-day single life; of eating a can of tuna fish and a bowl of cereal for dinner, of letting a cup of coffee with a friend turn into an all-night hangout, of skipping a shower and forgoing deodorant on a Sunday afternoon and working up a nice healthy funk as I scrub the kitchen floor, ipod blaring and my greasy hair puling back in a sloppy pony tail with no one there to notice.
And now I'm in the mist of a pronounced fermata. Every two weeks I build up to a new grad school deadline, and I'm revising a screenplay for some friends and editing a book for Carey's parents' company, but in between, I'm beholden to nothing and no one. During the day I clean, I try out new recipes, I lose 3 hours to a good book. My walks with Greta have become less perfunctory and more like little adventures. I find a place in the park where I can let her off the leash, and I laugh out loud at her antics. Is it because she sees me paying greater attention that she's more merry? Does she ham it up for me more now that she knows I'm enjoying it, or was she this sweet and entertaining all along, and I'd stopped noticing it because I was tired and stressed from work? Then, I'd dread the obligation of taking her out, and I'd watch her impatiently, urging her to "do her business" so I could collapse on the couch.
Most of my little tasks reflect this shift now, this ability to find amusement and even beauty now that I'm not slogging through my day. I feel like Amelie with her hand in the dry lentils at the market.
And there's a change on its way. Every time I send off an application, I'm buying a sweepstakes ticket for a new life. Even an acceptance from Columbia will mean big things- teaching in New Jersey in the fall, class 3 days a week, and Carey moving into my little flat. Our wedding will most likely take place in the summer after my first year of school, and then I'll start my career, and then biology dictates that Carey and I should start our family. Having no job and no immediate obligations right now means that this future seems to me set and waiting, and I can feel myself moving toward it with no effort on my part. It all feels so sure and inevitable, and at the same time, it's like a "what if" I've created for myself, a game of pretend or a future dreamed up and planned by a little girl in the back seat of a car. This grownup future feels like it was drawn with crayons.
I have another day today; a Sunday without the looming menace of a Monday morning. I'm doing the little things I do, 30 or 40 minutes at a time, things that stack together and eventually comprise a day. At times I feel like I'm still recovering from my old corporate life at MP, and other times I feel like I'm gathering my energy for the approaching future. We so rarely have this kind of time to anticipate such a transition, and being suspended between what my life was and what it will be is intoxicating.
And now I'm in the mist of a pronounced fermata. Every two weeks I build up to a new grad school deadline, and I'm revising a screenplay for some friends and editing a book for Carey's parents' company, but in between, I'm beholden to nothing and no one. During the day I clean, I try out new recipes, I lose 3 hours to a good book. My walks with Greta have become less perfunctory and more like little adventures. I find a place in the park where I can let her off the leash, and I laugh out loud at her antics. Is it because she sees me paying greater attention that she's more merry? Does she ham it up for me more now that she knows I'm enjoying it, or was she this sweet and entertaining all along, and I'd stopped noticing it because I was tired and stressed from work? Then, I'd dread the obligation of taking her out, and I'd watch her impatiently, urging her to "do her business" so I could collapse on the couch.
Most of my little tasks reflect this shift now, this ability to find amusement and even beauty now that I'm not slogging through my day. I feel like Amelie with her hand in the dry lentils at the market.
And there's a change on its way. Every time I send off an application, I'm buying a sweepstakes ticket for a new life. Even an acceptance from Columbia will mean big things- teaching in New Jersey in the fall, class 3 days a week, and Carey moving into my little flat. Our wedding will most likely take place in the summer after my first year of school, and then I'll start my career, and then biology dictates that Carey and I should start our family. Having no job and no immediate obligations right now means that this future seems to me set and waiting, and I can feel myself moving toward it with no effort on my part. It all feels so sure and inevitable, and at the same time, it's like a "what if" I've created for myself, a game of pretend or a future dreamed up and planned by a little girl in the back seat of a car. This grownup future feels like it was drawn with crayons.
I have another day today; a Sunday without the looming menace of a Monday morning. I'm doing the little things I do, 30 or 40 minutes at a time, things that stack together and eventually comprise a day. At times I feel like I'm still recovering from my old corporate life at MP, and other times I feel like I'm gathering my energy for the approaching future. We so rarely have this kind of time to anticipate such a transition, and being suspended between what my life was and what it will be is intoxicating.