Sometimes it’s frightening how well my iPod knows me.
Earlier this week, I was Angry. For reasons I won’t go into now, because it no longer seems important. But I drafted my anger. I reworded it. I saved it, and slept on it for more than one night.
I received a pre-emptive apology. Which I accepted.
I deleted the draft the next day, but here’s the problem with the pre-emptive apology: at that point, you can’t be Angry without being an Asshole. Or at least, you can’t express the Anger.
So where does it go?
It doesn’t just evaporate, no matter how much I would like it to.
In my case, I usually just kind of bury it and wait for it to go away. Emotional compost, if you will. Which generally works…but it takes a while.
In the meantime, I had an 11-hour drive with only NPR and a loaded iPod to keep me company.
Music is a powerful thing. Often, it would take me hours to come up with the words that are expressed in a single song. Those are usually the times that I come here and post nothing more than a YouTube video. I’m not just promoting my favorite singers…there’s a reason I posted that particular song. Some people get it, others don’t, but it’s out there.
And as I drove the long road home with my iPod on shuffle, a song came on that ran through my veins like ice.
AND IT FELT SO. FUCKING. GOOD.
So I’m posting it here. Let me be frank – I am not posting it to be passive-aggressive, or because I need sympathy. I am posting it because, until I put the anger somewhere, it will not leave me. Life is too short to let it fester and putrify – I need to shoot this shit into space so it can dissipate into the ether.
And yes, I realize it’s completely trite that it’s Alanis, but whatever works. Play it on surround sound if you want to know what it sounds like in my head.
Since finals ended in May, I have been on trips to Traverse City, San Francisco, St. Louis, Virginia, Chicago, Iowa, Omaha, Minneapolis, Madison, Ann Arbor, and Western Pennsylvania. And Virginia again. And now that I’m back home in my little hamlet, I am literally at a crossroads.
It’s a common mantra in higher education that the learning curve at any new institution is about 3 years. This is why it is generally discouraged to do more than one degree at the same school, or to spend more than 3 years in the same post-doc. I do find the fact that this is a philosophy generally espoused by tenured professors as ironic as all hell, but if you think about it, it makes sense. In most undergrad programs (at least in science), your HARD year is the third year. For me, it was the first time I took truly high-level classes (and more than one at a time) and the first time I attempted research. (Keyword: attempted) It was also the first time I experienced panic attacks…every time I thought about going into the lab to attempt research. (This was also the first time I started to second-guess my plans to go to graduate school. Frankly, I’m still wondering if I made the right call there.) But senior year (or, if you’re a pretentious ass like me, FOURTH year) was more about tying up loose ends. The classes were easier, I had job interviews and GREs and grad school applications, but really it was all a piece of cake compared to third year. The tough part was coming to terms with leaving behind the best social network I had ever known – the emotional challenge, not the intellectual one. (Ever since my mom and dad made the executive decision to put me in kindergarten at age 4, I have known that my intellectual readiness generally exceeds my level of socialization.)
Grad school follows a similar pattern. Not that those last few years were a piece of cake, but the vast majority of the learning happened in the first three. It takes about two years to get your classes out of the way and get the hang of group meetings and break the instruments enough times that the senior students start making you fix them. In third year, you spend the fall working on your orals (which is really just an extended exercise in developing and defending a proposal), and in the spring you REALLY start your research in earnest. Then you’ve got two years (or…ahem…more) to actually produce and train someone to take your place. The stress is just starting, but the learning is mostly done in those first three years.
Postdocs: same old story, they just don’t make you stick around because you are expected to teach WHILE you learn. I felt like I probably had given everything I had to offer to my lab in Toronto after about two years – at that point, I had pretty much taught them everything they needed me to, and learned as much as I was going to. I stayed a third year because my project wasn’t done, and managed to squeeze out another paper, but I knew I was on the downswing. I think that’s the number one sign that you are getting smarter – you start to recognize when the learning curve is tapering off. I stayed for that last year for a variety of reasons – loved the group, loved the environment, was actually enjoying research, even when it wasn’t going as smoothly as it had when I started, and I had started to branch out and find friends outside of my little bubble. But it wasn’t my best WORK at that point.
So now, I’m headed into the third year at my current job, and the last year of my current contract. And, through the course of all of the road trips, I have had the same conversation with nearly every friend and relative I have:
“So, how’s the job?” ”Good, I have a really good deal, and my students are very sweet.”
“Any chance of becoming tenure-track?”
“Actually, yes, but I’m going to look for other options this fall.”
This is usually the point where people jump to the conclusion that I hate my job and hate my institution. This is not true. It really is a good job, and I am reminded of that every time a friend at another Michigan institution posts job postings on Facebook. I have a great department head who supports me, and I am paid better than I would be anywhere else for a comparable job. I can just tell that I’m nearing the end of the learning curve, and at this point I have to decide whether to fish or cut bait.
I am currently living in a very small town. When I moved here, it suited me well, because I was still able to go back and forth to Toronto to see my friends, and I am not fundamentally small-town averse. But this particular small town is generally populated by students…married couples and families…and Townies. None of these options make for particularly good company for a single girl in her mid-thirties who still harbors pipe dreams of getting married and having babies. Sure, I can drive an hour to Grand Rapids whenever I feel like having a good time and meeting people, but this just hasn’t yielded any real connections that will last beyond a few beers. Even the online dating cognoscenti keep sending me matches that are 4-8 hours away in an effort to make me pay for a subscription, because they can’t come up with any local options. In short, aside from my genuine love for the state of Michigan, there is absolutely nothing tying me here.
So naturally, everyone asks “In a perfect world, where would you go?”
I’m a firm believer that home is where the heart is. I also believe you never truly know where your home (or your heart) is…until you leave it. I don’t mean vacation – I mean picking up your life, moving it somewhere new, and seeing if it fits. This takes, at minimum, a year. You need enough time to get over the homesickness, make new friends, and start to lay down roots. Nothing can change the fact that my roots are grounded in Virginia – that’s where I grew up, where my parents will live out their retirement, and where it appears my brother and sister-in-law will raise their children. Moving to the Midwest the first time made me realize how a big part of me belongs here – I have formed adult relationships with my aunts, uncles, and cousins, and now the next generation of tiny cousins are starting to invent games and jokes just for me. Toronto gave my repressed city mouse its time in the spotlight – it changed my personal style, the way I eat and drink, and tweaked my political views and the way I foster relationships. Coming back to the Upper Midwest consummated the love affair with the Great Lakes that started when I was about 8 or 9 years old. These lakes have a romantic pull that the Atlantic ocean never did…no matter how much I will always consider myself from the East Coast.
Generally, when I meet people, and they ask where I’m from or what my story is, I rattle off my sequence of hometowns, and get a response something like, “Wow! You’ve been all over!”
I really haven’t. I have never lived more than 12 hours away from where I grew up, and all in one quadrant of that radius. Okay, fine, having spent some of that time in Canada makes it SOUND much more exotic, but when you think about how large this country is, let alone this planet, I haven’t gone that far.
I had never seen the Pacific until May 2012.
This summer, I checked off four new states I had never been to, and I’m still not halfway. I’ve still only been to two of the Canadian provinces, even if I’ve been on all of the Great Lakes.
At this point, the one thing I know is that I can find happiness of some sort anywhere. When people ask if I would stay in Michigan, I answer “absolutely!” but…right now I can get anywhere in the lower peninsula in 3 hours or less. I’m not sure I’d be quite as happy in Ann Arbor, to be quite honest. At least where I am, my city mouse can get to Grand Rapids and my country mouse can find beaches, hiking, kayaking, biking, etc….all within an hour’s drive.
Right now, I have paid my dues where I am, both professionally and personally. I have learned a lot about being a better teacher…I have probably formed all of the meaningful friendships I am likely to find here. I have shared inside jokes with the preschool cousin set. In short…each place I settle takes a piece of my heart…but I can always come back.
At Pennsic, I had a tarot reading. It said that previously, my life has been all about work. This is sadly true. Despite my best efforts, my career has always been the only thing moving forward in my life - the only thing that I can really put my faith in - and I have followed it wherever it takes me. The reading went on to say that a change was coming. It might be scary, but I need to have faith, and trust in it.
Bitch, please. I don’t need a tarot reading to trust my gut. Frankly, it has yet to steer me wrong, although it does have a sick sense of humor. 7 years of grad school, IBS and whatnot. But this summer, as some friendships have faltered, others have strengthened, and new ones have been forged…even my personal life is in flux. It’s hard to know who (if anyone) to trust, but I have nothing tying me down, and for once I feel like I have only my own heart to answer to.
I have to say I’m ready. Ready to find my next Home.
In this moment, I am just the right mix of exhilarated and terrified.
It’s easy to be brave when one has a steady job to fall back on and a family that loves you no matter how ridiculous you are, but there it is. I am, once again, waiting for my real life to begin.*
This picture has been making the rounds of the Facebook since we all came home from War last weekend: Pennsic is pretty much the ultimate in romanticized excess, and some people get very caught up in it, particularly at night. Let’s see if I can paint a picture for you:
Step 1: Imagine yourself on vacation. Not a visiting-people vacation, a foreign-locale-nobody-knows-you’re-here vacation.
Step 2: Now remove all traces of your normal identity. Clothes you would never wear in normal life. A different home, one made of canvas. Different hairstyles. A different name. Different friendships. A different accent perhaps, a different personal history.
Step 3: Now wander around at night through woods only lit by the occasional row of tiki torches, past a bog covered with mist, all with the sounds of drumbeats, dancing, and laughter in the distance.
Okay, so Step 3 is kind of hard to try at home. If you are also carrying a mug and/or hip flask filled with something you have to be 21 to purchase, then you’re getting the idea.
There’s a saying among SCA folk. Let me see if I can capture the sheer romantic poetry of it…
If you can’t get laid at the Pennsic War…you can’t get laid.
I mean, seriously. There is a lot of drinking going on, some truly debaucherous parties, backrubs are handed out freely, and everyone is on vacation. Your average Pennsic evening could range anywhere from singing songs by the campfire and toasting marshmallows to naked bellydancers and moans of ecstasy emitting from the next Port-o-John.
It’s basically Medieval Spring Break (woo!).
With its population at around 11,000 people, Pennsic is a crowd you can easily lose yourself in. And some even manage to pull off the “What happens at Pennsic stays at Pennsic” thing. But it’s also something else.
Pennsic is, at its core, just another small town.
It has restaurants, shops, and small entertainment venues. It has greenspaces and neighborhoods. You can cover the entire area on foot, but it’s going to take you a while.
And, like every small town I’ve ever known, it also has GOSSIP.
Our camp is a mix of marrieds, families, and singles. Some of the singles are of the sort to go out to the parties, find people to make out with, and come home saying things like, “He was NOT CUTE. But he was SUCH a good KISSER! I need to find him again…” And I have no problem with that sort of thing…it’s just the sort of thing I grew out of long before I started going to Pennsic. (For the record, after a handful of gentleman callers stopping by throughout the week, it was this guy that she wound up with on the last night of War. Note to all gentleman callers out there: a woman’s “type” goes right out the window when confronted with a Very Good Kisser. True story.) These people don’t really get gossiped about, because everyone already KNOWS who they’re hooking up with. We just do lovingly mocking impressions of her the next day.
I, on the other hand, have never hooked up at Pennsic. Okay, full disclosure: I have, once or twice, engaged in some hot-and-heavy hand-holding. I know…SCANDALOUS. I don’t hook up because it’s impossible to bring someone home without everyone knowing about it. It’s impossible to spend the night in someone else’s tent without your walk of shame being duly noted. It’s impossible (for me, at least) to have any romantic fun without making recognizable noises and those tent walls aren’t as thick as they seem. I just don’t want people all up in my bidness. Other people can put their bidness out there for everyone to see, and I’m fine with that. Live and let live, and at Pennsic, anything and everything goes as long as it happens between consenting adults. I just happen to always hang out with my Clanmates, and go to bed alone.
And yet, according to this year’s in-camp gossip mill, I have apparently slept with at least 3 men (2 of whom are married) and one woman in our group.
Perhaps it’s due to my personality – my natural way of relating to people and putting them at ease is to joke and flirt, and innuendoes fly like that weird floatie stuff in a snowglobe everywhere you go at Pennsic. Ever since my first War, I have gotten more than my fair share of backrubs and doting from various men in camp, and it’s expected that some people will be jealous of that. Jealous and/or bored people have nothing better to do than to make shit up to keep themselves entertained. But I refuse to apologize for being attractive and fun to be around. Healthy self-esteem is not something one should be ashamed of.
So for next year, I have made a resolution: I will not rest until the rumor mill links me to, at the very least, a sex tape, a ball gag, and a very confused hamster.
