Today I decided to vote for Barack Obama in the Massachusetts primary on Feb 5th. Subsequent to this decision, I read an interesting article in the New Yorker that ended up being kind of a character study of Hillary Clinton. The article made me like her more and empathize with her as a person and as a woman, but it didn't change my vote. I got more of a sense of the causes of her current affect and positions and a stronger narrative that makes her movements and statements cohesive in a way they hadn't been before (at least for me). I also got the guilty sense that it's her very womanhood (her experiences as a female-identified person living in the US, to be more specific) which has formed the opinions that I find hard to take. Her combativeness, competitiveness, and inability to show her humanity make her an unappealing candidate, one who resembles the garden-variety politician more than any sort of "new" choice. Her policy ideas and style of governance are not interesting or compelling to me and I see no reason to think that she will change those any time soon. Not to mention that voting for a woman simply because of the "fact" of her female-ness goes against all my training and belief. (Though there is definitely a political and social need for women-as-symbols in prominent political positions. See Condoleeza Rice for the ways in which this need can be fulfilled and stymied simultaneously.)

In short, it turns out that I'm just like the rest of the American people: prepared to vote not on the issues, or any concrete sense of how to change things, but rather on the emotional desire for change and the feeling that the rhetoric of hope is a good start on hope itself.

Work sucks more than usual this week. Today, I seriously considered quitting after this week - that is, if they don't let me go first :) Then I wondered what job I could possibly find that would be any better. I begin to sense why I might be looking for hopefulness in a political candidate; I get enough cynicism every day, just listening to my own thoughts. I have pretty much completely given up on the internship. I think I can trust the fact that I NEVER work on it to signify that perhaps I am not "on board". Now I need to figure out if/when I should tell Carol about this and whether I should allow myself to a) be swayed by her attempts to get me to stay, b) be offended if she doesn't make any such attempts, or c) put this off for several more weeks. If I quit the internship, do I have to start working full time? If I don't work full time, will I experience such overwhelming ennui that I will begin to miss the internship? Is change worth it? Maybe it's easier to just go along with the current program until I reach the edge of the world and fall off.

Inspired by my friend PG, I have decided to make a list of movies I want to see. Her list was of movies she has already seen in the past year, but it reminded me that I have been meaning to list the movies I've yet to see, so I can either rent them or put them in my Netflix queue. If the writer's strike continues, I will not watch the Oscar broadcast, which takes some of the pressure off! Though, come to think of it, I haven't kept up with Oscar-nominated movies for many years. I used to be a zealot about it and I used to read movie magazines like crazy, so I knew about all the movies before they came out. I also used to go to the movies once or twice a week. Now, it's more like once or twice every few months.

Movies I Want to See that I Still Haven't Seen (from 2007, mostly)
1. Michael Clayton
2. No Country for Old Men
3. Juno
4. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
5. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
6. Sweeney Todd
7. In the Valley of Elah
8. Eastern Promises
9. Charlie Wilson's War
10. Away From Her
11. The Savages
12. American Gangster
13. Gone Baby Gone
14. Control
15. The Darjeeling Limited
16. Half Nelson
17. The Good German
18. Once

I love making lists...until they exhaust me. Around # 13 I started to feel fatigue setting in. How/when will I possibly watch all these movies? At least I saw "There Will Be Blood". It was so satisfying, I might not have to see another movie all year. Even its flaws were beautiful and bold.

• Ah, the cheerful bullet point, ready at a moment's notice to turn morbid, rambling digressions into bouncy agenda items!
• It's grey and cold outside and I can't believe it's not snowing. The air looks edible, as though I could bite into it like firm, dense snow.
• I am living for the weekends now, racing through the weekdays in order to effect my escape as soon as Friday afternoon rolls around. When I think about people dying young (Heath Ledger), being diagnosed with incurable diseases (entire panel on NPR last night), or losing their ability to enjoy life as old age takes over (my roommate), I imagine that I should be suffused with a new sense of the NOW and how to live it. Not so. I am still mired in the curiously stagnant present.
• The second season of Weeds was fantastic. I can't wait for the third to become available!
• I got blindsided by the New Yorker recently. Absorbed in the tale of Sergio Vieira de Mello's doomed attempt to put Iraq to rights, I forgot that this was a true story, with a known ending. His death in the 2004 UN bombing took me cruelly by surprise, as if it were just happening for the first time. I was shocked and saddened in a way I hadn't been when hearing about the bombing in the news. Though I was reading the article as research for my internship study of SRSGs and their qualifications, I was unexpectedly most touched by the very attributes that made his leadership of the UN Peacekeeping Mission a failure. He was clearly ready to move on from his professional life into something more personal. He didn't get off on the danger anymore.
  
• I finally called the Boston Psychotherapy Institute to find a therapist. I realized that I am feeling exactly the way I felt 10 years ago when I first started therapy - like I am stuck in a rut and I can't find my way out of it alone. My intelligence, self-awareness, empathy, and emotional experience are not the only tools required. I am waiting for the intake person to call me back so I can get the ball rolling.
  
• Helen listens to romance novels on tape. Recently, she asked me to order some of my favorites for her. It has been embarrassing and awkward to hear these stories read aloud! I am alternately blase and defensive about sharing something that feels unexpectedly personal and almost shameful. For a long time, I have only shared romance novel recommendations with my mom.
  

It's a New Year, but, judging by the state of my blog, I am only turning over old leaves. My brain, heart, and life are very full, but not clear and hopeful, which is (maybe) the state which would provoke blogging. I get sick of writing about my same old anxieties, frustrations, and problems, and I imagine that my audience of 3 or 4 might get sick of hearing about them. Lots of nice transitory pleasures have crossed my path over the last few weeks, but the general state of things is pretty much the same. I have had bursts of optimism, during which I recognize how well I am doing. But these are eclipsed by a stronger feeling of "not doing well" that is very persistent and possessing of mutant strength. I have regressed to a feeling that would be very familiar to my young self, to my 20-year-old self, and to many other selves in between. The struggle of my life has been one against my overweening expectations of myself.

I have also realized that, for someone who is a true homebody, I have not done such a great job providing myself with a home. I have moved nearly 30 times in my 31 years, and I am not done yet. This realization exposes a gap between my inner and outer lives that is staggering in its width. I have never been good at figuring out how to make my external life - by which I mean jobs, houses, interactions - complement my inner life. Instead, I seem to try to force my inner self to accept the trappings of some other standard of living. It's a painful inconsistency.

See what I mean about old leaves? I hope they are turning into some good mulch by this point. I feel an urge to post the positives of my life, but that feels almost like a cheat. So many wonderful things happen to me, I do so many good things, I am surrounded and loved by so many good people, but right now these things don't seem to make a dent in my overall unwell-being. And yet...in general, my days pass happily enough. This deep sorrow and dissatisfaction only manifest when I sit still and try to write.