So now I've got all this time on my hands. (Ew, gross, time is sticky and hard to wash off.)

Things I think I should be doing during this time (as opposed to thing I want to be doing, things I can do, etc.):
1. LOOK FOR A GODDAMN JOB. I mean, look for a job. This looms the largest, mainly because it caters to several different sources of insecurity and potential woe. Most urgently, I need money, because what I have is running out fast. Slightly less urgently, I feel like I should be working, because of my Puritan genes, the IMs society sends directly to my brain, and the excellent programming of Mount Holyoke to attempt/accomplish great things. Unfortunately, I don't want to find a job, mostly because I fear the job-finding process. I fear the resume-writing. I fear the job description-reading. I fear the interviewing. I fear the relocation. I fear the 9-to-5-ing. At this point in my thought process, I am huddled in a corner of the room, preferably underneath some sheltering object, making the sign of the cross over my head.

2. Applying to grad school. Or at least deciding about/researching grad schools. The need to make decisions about the future seems prominent. None of this namby-pamby waiting around to figure out what I really want. Just decide on something and DO IT. Ah, the fascist Nike commercial that is my brain...

3. Read good literature. At the very least, if I am not looking for a job or making stalwart decisions about the future, I ought to be expanding my mind with the reading of great books. I have a big pile of such books waiting for me. But all I want to do is read romance novels and The New Yorker, perhaps an occasional mystery to punctuate my days.

4. Write every day. But not in blog form or email form; I must write for the sake of writing, 2 hours each day, snippets of novels, short stories, poems, anything with a literary or self-improving bent.

Given the punishing and self-flagellating aspects of the above directives, I begin to see why it is difficult for me to enjoy myself during my down-time. There is always something else I should be doing, and those "somethings else" are elevated to a level of virtue and ambition that my actual thoughts and movements cannot achieve. Also, it turns out the the messages that I fear are only coming from my punishing unconscious are also coming from external sources. This creates an interesting sort of "proof," akin to that achieved by Fox News' referencing of two different sources for its false claims. If two separate voices, each with some sort of seeming authority, speak the same words, then those words take on the heft and force of facts.

The other paralyzing aspect of this situation is that I think it will last forever. I think my hesitation, fear, laziness, well-earned vacation, or whatever it is called, is a permanent state of inertia. However, this has never proven to be true. I do move, act, think, write, decide, change. I just do it on a schedule that seems to lag behind my expectations for myself. Since this topic comes up a lot, in therapy and in conversation with those trusted ones in my life, I even have a nice metaphor for it: my psyche moves in geologic time, while my expectations live in the fast-moving present, the tiny indentation of time in which humans flourish.