Posting because it's time to post. I doubt my capacity for coherency right now. Maybe bullets can help.

• Blitz, the cat who lived with my family for the past 22 years, was put to sleep last Thursday. I think of her as "my" cat, but she really belonged to my parents, and herself. She came into our lives accidentally; we had purchased two kittens, one for the family and one for my sister, who was now living on her own. Nora, the perfect, sweet, pretty kitten was to be for us, while Blitz, the scrappy, hyperactive, runt of the litter was to go to my sister. Blitz was soft and cute, as kittens tend to be, but she had been born with a bent tail that formed a club at the end, and her name was a true reflection of her personality. Long story short, Blitz never went to live with my sister, but stayed with the family. After a year or so, she had succeeded in driving her sister away and forcing our older cat out of the house. She knew, long before we did, that she ought to be the only cat in the household. Her ambition far outstripped her maturity and even while staging her not-so-subtle coup of the cat population, she was still trying to nurse at my mother's breast. The latter activity resulted, as one might imagine, in a contentious relationship with my mother, which lasted until the last 5 years or so of Blitz's life. Blitz was adept at bouncing off of walls, achieving high perches, and slaughtering birds. She broke her leg by wedging it into the crotch of a tree in our backyard, then gleefully dragged her tiny cast through her own feces. We have pictures of her snoozing on the couch with her brown-spotted cast. She was very much an outdoor cat, albeit one who enjoyed the comforts of home to the utmost. She spent her days denuding the neighborhood of rodents and hastening the evolution of the bird population by capturing the slower of the species. At night, she would come home to nibble on her food and collect the accolades and attention she so richly deserved. She loved to sleep on human bodies and could often be found colonizing the broadest (or softest) chest, back, buttocks, or thighs in the house. Even at her full adult size, she was smaller than most cats, but had an uncanny knack for taking over even the largest bed. The humans of her realm would wake to find themselves clinging to the edge of the mattress or contorted in pretzel-like shapes, while Blitz sprawled or curled in the middle of a wide nest. She also had a need to knead, and had no compunction about using her claws while she did so. We watched her approach with mingled dread and affection, blocking our tender skin with blankets, pillows, and other armor, so we could have the pleasure of stroking her incredibly soft fur without the attendant pain of her incredibly sharp claws. She also put those claws to use in her working life, sometimes pinning the tail of a small rodent as it tried to escape, other times batting it about, until finally using the same weapon to bring it to its untimely death. Up until the very end of her life, Blitz loved to play, and could be counted on to chase strings, ribbons, shoelaces, and other trailing objects. She was a fool for catnip and could often be found nesting in my mother's herb garden. She loved gardens in general and would find a patch of dirt warm from the sun and doze in the afternoons. She lived in 4 different houses with my parents and found her spots in each of them. In Hamden, her last home, she enjoyed lying half in sun, half in shade at the very edge of the hemlock hedge, where she could watch bugs, stalk birds, and receive the occasional scratch on the chin or ear from an obliging human. She always loved attention and affection, but it was not until her later years that she became truly needy of them. She developed a cantankerous yowl that she would unleash any time someone passed by. In earlier years, this sound would only have been deployed in a true emergency, such as being stuck out in the rain overnight. Several times, I awoke in such a circumstance to find a dripping-wet Blitz sitting outside the second story window, announcing her displeasure. After what one must assume were many attempts to gain our attention at the usual doors and windows, she had climbed up onto the roof and wanted to be let in there. The yowl also came in handy when she had snuck into the attic and been locked in there by an unsuspecting human. For me, she is the model for all other cats, and I find myself puzzled and disappointed when they do not respond to the same type of scratching and petting that Blitz appreciated. She trained me how to be a cat owner, and I know I will think of her whenever I put those skills to use. They will never be used so fondly or so well again.

Apparently, this post is like a sheriff in an old Western: one bullet was all it needed to get the job done.

The spring sun is here! Though it is still 34 degrees outside, the sun is shining and it is actually conveying warmth to the earth. I like it. I will even accept it in trade for having to wait for the T in the dark each morning, due to Daylight Savings. The seasonal transitions in New England are so miraculous. I never get inured to them, no matter how many I experience. True, they are hard on the body, which responds slowly to the changes, but they are full of so many hopeful signs and marvelous stimuli.

I am having a more positive week. Possibly, this is due to having caught on some much-needed sleep over my spa-weekend in Connecticut. I have also reached a point of semi-acceptance and hopefulness about the future. That is, I no longer think that my prospects for a productive, meaningful life are squandered. Also, the sun is WARM. This cannot be overrated.

One possibility: applying for an MFA program and working through it as a part-time student, while also holding down a job. Believe it or not, this possibility never occurred to me. I am not great at combining things, at least in my plans for the future, or "what I might do". Right now, the idea of not having to choose one path (ie. work or school), but actually finding ways to make my situation work for me, is very appealing.

I'm going to publish this now, because Blogger keeps frantically notifying me that it has lost its connection...

I've reached some new plateau; I am writing this from work. It's a slow day and I am bent on making it slower. It's rainy and foggy outside, with occasional bursts of sunshine. I am looking forward to seeing some good friends who've been out of the country for a while, wondering if my fatigue will lift enough for me to be a good companion, and worrying that I am coming down with a cold. A few people at work have been truly stricken with illness: strep throat, flu, and other semi-serious afflictions. I feel a certain amount of reasonable hypochondria is in order. I am loading up on zinc, vitamins, and liquids, but sleep has been elusive. Since that is usually the one ingredient that makes the cure, I am concerned about its lack.

After a brief foray into "real" literature, via Cormac McCarthy's bleak and satisying Road, I am back to popping romance novels at an alarming pace. Part of the reason for my lack of sleep is my habit of staying up too late reading the latest romance. I am not sure which comes first, the novel or the insomnia. My new therapist seems inclined to delve into my romance-reading proclivities, so perhaps some sort of revelation and/or acceptance is forthcoming. For now, I will begrudgingly admit that this self-soothing method is probably not the worst one I could pursue. How's that for damning with faint praise?

Today, winter came back with a vengeance. As I shivered at the T-stop this morning, I felt inexplicably delighted by the cold. I suspect that I am a person who has trouble letting go of seasons. I want to be in the throes of the weather, whatever it might be, not teased and tantalized by intimations of the next season. I like winter in Boston, too. I like looking out the window and seeing snow on the train tracks and snow on the tops of the trees and snow on the roofs of the houses on the opposite hillside. I like rushing through the cold wind along with the rest of the commuters, stepping into the warmth of a cafe or bookstore, and feeling my neck get prickly with heat under my scarf. As I remember from my short stay in Minnesota, the drama of piling on all those layers, only to peel them off quickly once inside, is very satisfying.

In other news: 2 out of 3 colleges do not want me to attend their graduate programs. This is extremely disheartening, though perhaps not as devastating as it seemed at first. The second rejection is still very fresh, but I have successfully numbed myself to it, only succumbing to a few flare-ups during the day. When I begin to consider the implications, I feel such a strong surge of panic that I am loathe to continue considering. I will need to think about other possibilities at some point, but right now I can't think what those might be. I feel fairly ashamed about not getting into these schools - I don't want everyone to know - and I recognize that I really do consider them to be arbiters of intelligence and merit, despite all my speeches and rants to the contrary. I have fallen short and it feels just as startling and painful as a literal fall.

For years, my parents have been telling me about a performance by Cyndi Lauper at a Joni Mitchell tribute concert that they saw on TV. They were blown away by the performance and it had become legendary in my mind, though I'd never seen it. The other day, I finally had the presence of mind to look it up on YouTube. It was easy to find and, boy, did it deliver. The performance is astonishing, almost wrenching in its intensity and beauty. She really mined that song for all it was worth. I got shivers and felt tears spring to my eyes several times. Check it out.

This was a good day. I slept late, breakfasted, read, then clothed myself and set out on an adventure. My adventures mainly consist of lots and lots of walking, followed by coffee and more walking. Today's was no exception. I decided to walk down to Brookline Village, returning High School Musical 2 (yes, I'm wincing as I write that) to the Redbox at Stop 'n' Shop on the way. Once I reached Brookline Village, it seemed advisable to keep going to Kenmore Square (which I've only just realized is NOT Kendall Square). It was sunny, in a pale, wintry way, and it felt good to be moving. The more I walk around, the more I actually begin to piece together the layout of the city - mainly the way in which places I've visited by train/bus/car are connected to each other. Most often, it turns out that a place to which I had journeyed by 2 or 3 trains turns out to be right next to a place that is within walking distance from my house. Also, walking allows me to stay in contact with the parts of the city that are not so shiny or groomed for consumption. After a few blocks of dingy warehouses, I walked through a lovely little park which happens to be the one I had glimpsed many times when driving M to school and H to the doctor. I figured out that if I walked some ways in the other direction, through that park, I would end up near the MFA and the Gardner Museum. Today, however, I stuck to the plan and walked down Brookline Ave to Kenmore. I considered several Starbucks, umpteen Dunkin Donuts, and a few independent coffee shops, but kept going. I stopped in the Barnes and Noble, eschewing their cafe for a quick look at a guidebook, then set off for the Trident Bookstore and Cafe on Newbury. There, I had an incredibly small but well-appointed cobb salad and 2 cups of really good coffee. The place was hopping, but the waitress seemed content to let me stay there all day, drinking free refills, reading my romance novel, and starting a new crossword puzzle. I, however, was not comfortable taking up space that seemed needed for others, so I paid and wandered over to the bookstore side to check it out. They have a good selection, but it is way too crowded on a Saturday to make for enjoyable browsing. I found a small selection of used CDs and ended up buying 3: Loretta Lynn's Van Lear Rose, Tift Merritt's Tambourine, and a Blue Note jazz compilation. Buying CDs feels so strange these days, as if I were insisting on cooking in a cast iron cauldron over a fire while the newfangled range sits unused. Especially since I will be downloading these CDs and putting them on my nano anyway. When I left the store, it was beginning to snow, so I bundled up, feeling like a seasoned New Englander for bringing all my winter paraphernalia. The air was cold and crisp and the snow fell so gently; my spirits were buoyed and I decided to keep walking. Half a block away, I followed temptation and turned down an alley. This alley contained the back lots and parking for rows of condos and brownstones. It was so quiet and peaceful to be just off the street this way. I put my headphones on and queued up Ryan Adams' "Come Pick Me Up". The snow fell softly in between the tall corridors of buildings. The song provoked its familiar combination of longing, aching, and happiness. The alley stretched on for blocks, hemming me into my own little slice of the city, as the music soared and my feet strode along. It was a wonderful series of moments.

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.

Last night I realized that the colleges I am applying to are all located on I-95. It's a new strategy for college application - the Interstate Method. If I added Brown and MIT to the mix, I'd have a complete itinerary. It makes me feel weird, like I have been programmed by aliens and have no free will. Maybe that's what happens in private school...

The Christmas Card Debacle of 2007 is almost at an end. Putting the fresh labels on the painstakingly glued and stamped envelopes was truly satisfying. Leaving the misspellings and typos created by my predecessor on the fresh labels was also a rare treat. What a heady mixture of responsibility and unaccountability! O, an admin's life for me. Yo ho ho, indeed.

It occurs to me sporadically that my life is pretty good. Or rather, the individual ingredients that make up my life look good on a platter. Somehow, however, the sum of all these parts is less than satisfying. I have pretty constant anxiety and pretty predictable bouts of melancholia (so much more literary than depression). The source seems to be a constant low-grade certainty that I am not doing "the right thing". This thing changes all the time, but it is always not what I am doing. It's hard to keep perspective in this ever-shifting landscape of criticism. So, I keep reminding myself of the good things in life. Sometimes saying them out loud, writing them down, or just thinking about them lifts my mood.

In other news, today I experienced the white collar equivalent of banging one's head with a hammer to forget about the pain in one's thumb (or is it vice versa?). My regular job involves scanning all of the paper documents produced by the company, in order for them to attain paperlessness. Not only is the irony of this not lost on me, it fairly smothers me with its obviousness at every moment. But back to the hammer: today, instead of scanning, I collated, corrected, and compiled addresses for the company Christmas card list and hand-addressed over 50 envelopes. Upon completion of this task, I was actually relieved and even almost excited to scan some documents. I felt a sweet nostalgia about the scanning and performed the familiar motions with a sense of homecoming. Gotta love it.

I finally asked for help with my grad school essay. After a couple of frustrated and unproductive hours at the library yesterday, I emailed a rough draft to my adviser and a few friends. The relief was palpable. It felt so good to let go of my shame, resistance, and perfectionism! My adviser has already sent it back with some helpful comments, which I will act upon as soon as I get over my instinctive resistance to suggestions of any kind.

I found out that I'm not very good at Scrabble. But I am still playing it! This is another true victory of my mature life.

Tonight I have conferred well-being upon myself. I took a bath and am sitting in cozy pajamas, drinking a pot of tea. It was a stressful day, peppered with little pockets of goodness. Now I find myself with a rare few hours alone. I am not doing anything substantively different than I normally do, but the silence and certainty of being alone makes this a special time.

I am looking after my boss's daughter until next Wednesday. She will be out late at night almost every night, so I might have more moments like this one in the next few days. Balancing work, caring for H, and dealing with M feels like a lot. The internship is going to be obsolete for the next week and a half. I hope I will find/make time to complete a good draft of my grad school essay so I can at least get my recommenders squared away. The first deadline is a month from tomorrow and I have doubts as to whether I'll make it.

My thoughts are jumbled yet curiously static. It's difficult to write about my life and state of mind. I think I am withholding thoughts and feelings from myself in order to remain somewhat positive. There are lots of negatives right now, but I don't want to see them or catalogue them. Therapy would be a good place to take these issues and air them out. Right now, they'll remain musty in the corners of my mind.

Hmmm...time to post again. It's now November and I feel changeable, like the weather and the season. My psyche is alternately chilled and heated and I never know how best to suit it up.

I have a job now. It's pretty much unutterably awful, almost comic in its badness. If only the boss in the pink shirt with the white collar from Office Space would lean on my cubicle and ask me about my TPS report. Perhaps I will glean the beginnings of a satirical novel from this. However, I suspect I will only glean even more support for the idea of going to grad school. My applications have stalled and it's hard to know what this portends. I hope I will complete them. I hope some sort of latent ambition or drive or utter panic will give me the impetus to finish this process.

The internship is also hot and cold. I will meet with my boss this weekend to talk about what I'm (not) doing. I am certainly "doing" a lot of self-criticism and blame, so hopefully this meeting will help me put things in perspective. I have to remember all the changes I've been going through over the last months. And I have to share some of the weight of this with my boss, whose frenetic life often gets in the way of her ability to mentor.

Ongoing positives include riding the T, working at the various libraries in the area, daily communion with my roommate, savoring the bite in the air when it shows its teeth, FutureSex/LoveSounds, romance novels, the New Yorker, and frequent contact with Carleton and Mount Holyoke friends.

Maybe I should go to grad school for something other than Sociology. Shifting gears like that both tantalizes and terrifies me. Often I feel like the only thing I'm really good at is being Jenny Smith. Couldn't I just be employed at being me? Or read a bunch of stuff, synthesize it, write about it, but never define its category or discipline?

Another definite good: Johnny Cash singing "I Still Miss Someone" in Folsom Prison. Strangely, this song always makes me miss California.

First of all, we can all breathe easy because the Red Sox are safely in the World Series. Of course, I expect Boston to spontaneously combust sometime in the next week or so.

I am procrastinating, to the benefit of my blog. I have many hours of interning to complete, but I am burnt out on my current project, so I think I'd better blog. Also, I should be writing my personal statement for grad school applications. Today I sent off checks to Carleton, Mount Holyoke, and ETS to get scores and transcripts sent. I'm hoping these literal checks will spur some figurative reality checks in the application process. In any case, it feels good and nostalgic to have a reason to procrastinate again.

I had a good, social weekend. On Friday, I took the train down to Lakeville/Middleboro to meet Keith. It's an hour's ride on a very comfortable train. I sat on the top deck and enjoyed the view of leaves changing, small towns, and cranberry bogs. The ride back to South Station on Saturday was enhanced by the presence of outlying Red Sox fans. I spent Saturday night in a bar in Harvard Square, watching Game 6 and losing my voice and my hearing. Sunday I had brunch with my sister and her friend in Brighton. I enjoyed walking around the city, continuing to figure out where things are located, and in what relation to each other. The days have been warm and bright, perfect for rowing, sculling, and baseball.

This week finds me reconsidering things. The only constant is how much I enjoy Boston. The internship is unsatisfying for a variety of reasons and my search for part-time work has stalled again. I wonder if I should form a new plan - work full-time and scrap the internship? I'm going to give it a couple more months and then revisit this idea. Or maybe I need to scrap grad school and look into professional positions instead. The possibilities keep hope and anxiety alive.

A lot has changed since my last post, but remnants of that mood cling. Transition is transition, with all its incumbent uncertainty. At least now my transitional feelings are taking place in new, interesting environs. I am living on the 5th floor of an apartment building in Brookline. I love being in Boston and my fascination is enhanced by the very specific time of year and set of circumstances in which I've arrived. I am speaking, of course, about the baseball post-season. The Red Sox are battling the Cleveland Indians for the ALCS pennant. I am a peripheral and intermittent fan, at best, but even I can feel the fever. I walked down by Fenway yesterday, around 1pm the day of an 8:20pm game. Fan were already roaming around in packs, bedecked in red and blue (and the occasional pink - MLB's unfortunate nod to femininity), seemingly just there to soak up the atmosphere. The weather was startlingly beautiful and the air lay sparkling around the park, shimmering and charged with excitement. Little did those early-gathering fans know: the game that night would last 5 hours and 14 minutes, finally discharging its weary and (momentarily) defeated denizens at 1:37am. I wonder what the atmosphere around the park felt like then?

I can report that Boston is a good place to be lonely, unemployed, and indecisive. I am feeling and experiencing all those things, but also the thrill of being in a new city that contains much to compel and fascinate. In a flash, I can take to the streets and discover new territory. I can nurse my nagging indecision over an excellent cup of coffee and eavesdrop on the deciders around me. I can take my laptop to the stunning courtyard of the public library in Copley Square and wait for inspiration to strike. I can gaze out my 5th floor window and let the vista of trees, old buildings, and hills spark my emotions. I can immerse myself in the chaos and confusion of the Haymarket farmer's market on a Saturday afternoon. I can wander the North End in search of pastry, secretly superior to all the tourists who are just visiting this city. I'm even enjoying the job search, as it takes me hither and yon, on the T and on foot, into high rises, hospitals, and ramshackle office parks. I almost dread the day when I will be returning to the same place over and over. These initial interviews are so delicious, filled with promise and flirtation, like a first date before the unfortunate political views of ones companion are revealed. I scan my email and phone messages, wondering if I'll get called back for a "second date". As delicious as the interviews are, the waiting is dismal. Time passes slowly and my worries proliferate. At least I am safe and secure in my housing and somewhat solvent, for the moment.

Just took a break from writing to discuss politics, baseball, and the visiting cat. I am keeping the plants in my room while the cat is here, so I have a jungle to contemplate. I watered my jungle and now I wonder what the rest of the day will bring, or what I will bring to it.

Here, borrowed from my Dad's friend's blog, is a great little article on dealing with transition. It pretty much lays out all the things I've been feeling lately, then contextualizes them as part of a "Neutral Zone" which comes into being during transitional periods. It's helpful to know that others experience this kind of profound dislocation, and helpful to get permission to be in the thick of it for as long as I need to be.

Yep, there's simply too much to write about and my mood is so unreliable that I fear publishing a bunch of cranky whining and existential angst. The following is a list of my current preoccupations:
1. finding a part-time job in Boston
2. thinking about moving in with my new 85-year-old roommate in (less than) two weeks
3. related to the above - considering how to most efficiently move my scattered possessions to Boston and trying not to consider the responsibilities I will bear for helping said roommate
4. what to do about parking at my new home: there's no overnight street parking in Brookline and it costs upwards of $120/month to rent a parking space in a garage.
5. my internship and whether or not I am spending enough time/doing good work/impressing my boss or, alternately, able to find something of value for myself in all this (ie. why am I doing this in the first place?)
6. grad school applications - where? why? how? can I bring myself to write a personal statement? will I get everything in on time? do I really want to pursue more education? is sociology the right discipline for me?

Lying awake at night, as I am prone to do more and more often lately, these topics run through my head, along with concerns about my parents' eventual death, my long-term relationship with an alcoholic, my inability to feel any lasting ambition, and other cheery concerns. I am most definitely in the midst of some sort of depression - I am a fairly high-functioning depressive. Every day I get up, work on my internship, apply for a few more jobs, research grad programs, and get through the day. Some days I feel more positive and hopeful; I enjoy my work/research/applications. Some days I just want to stay in bed.

For today, things are looking up. There's a savory pot roast slow-cooking on the stove. The sky is blue and crystalline, the way it gets when the temperature starts dropping along with the leaves. I have an appointment with a temp agency for Monday; this will get me out of the house and make me feel like I am doing something concrete to get myself a job. Despite feeling extremely lazy when I got up this morning, I managed to work on my internship task for 1.5 hours, leaving me only 2.5 hours more to fulfill my daily (self-imposed) goal. I read an article in the New Yorker that got my intellectual juices flowing and gave me some ideas about topics for my grad school essay. I am safe, warm, and in a familiar place for the moment. Who could ask for anything more?

I haven't been able to write much lately. I do a drive-by of my blog every day, consider posting, then find something else to do. I'm not really sure how to write about what's going on with me; I'm not really sure what is going on with me. I'm definitely not sure how I feel about it.

I paid a helpful visit to my parents this past weekend. I left their house with a much cheerier outlook on life, my life in particular. But I still don't know how to write about it.

I've been wondering where my taste for trashy sentimentality comes from. I have always prided myself on at least knowing what real art, real culture, good film, etc is even if I don't choose to patronize it. More and more, I am forced to admit that the line is blurring for me. This becomes apparent when I recommend books, music, and movies to others. I am increasingly unable to predict who might like what and which media are really good/worthwhile/intelligent. I like what I like, and damn the torpedoes. This is all part of the middle-Americanization of my soul, I suspect. I am one of those people who grew up with pretensions to intellectualism, valuing culture over commerce, complexity over sentimentality. Strip away the fancy schooling and vocabulary, however, and I am just as low-to-middle brow as everyone else. Am I thisclose to becoming a Libertarian? Will I serve my kids Chef Boyardee? Will I continue to notice cultural distinctions? Does it really matter?