TITHONUS' DIARY!!
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it looks like I just had a fight with my best friend. You know what? This makes me want even more to get the hell out of this place. I've been drinking, but I don't really feel pissed. I felt I had to drink because everyone else was drunk... but, honestly, I don't think I need the drunk feeling for anything anymore. It used to be that I was so bottled up that some things could only come out when I was pissed, but now... I'm much more open. Through this diary, partly. It wasn't really a fight, just... tension between us. Bah. I hate it when I feel like people are trying to control me. I mean, it takes a lot to make me say no to a friend, you know, but if I say no, I want that to be respected as something meaningful. And I guess if I have to repeat it, be insistent about it, well, so be it, but then, it's sort of like, well, is this person really my friend? I have to go through this shit with strangers, yeah, but why... bah. I disagree with myself even as I say these things. It's alright for friends to push for things that they want, even if I don't want them, even if I do say "no". In the end I can be sour enough about it that the message gets across, I just don't like having to draw on that part of my... repertoire of responses. I guess... I learned a lot of powerful things during the uglier parts of my childhood, and I should be grateful for having those modes of being at my disposal... but I can't draw on them without in some way going back to or reconnecting with a part of my life that I want to be disconnected from. Which maybe is part of why I am such a pushover so much of the time; because, to perhaps stretch the metaphor a little, I don't have any "mid-range weapons" in my armory. I've got the lightweight stuff, the subtler-than-subtle hints, and I've got the heavyweight stuff, the fuck-off-and-die-or-stay-here-and-get-killed screaming menace, but I don't have the middle range, the bridge that indicates movement toward that latter stage... - On another note, you know what bothers me about academia? It's so inefficient. I'm serious. It's the problem of transparency, accountability... basically, in order to monitor what people are doing, you have to get them to spend more time proving that they are doing stuff than actually doing stuff. So, naturally, some people become specialists in the process of proving that they're doing stuff, and they thrive. It would be better not to have any so-called "transparency" at all and just live with the consequences. I mean, this anxiety about propriety is the basis of the whole publish-or-perish syndrome. Journals upon journals that exist purely for the purpose of being written for... journals that nobody really reads. Writing in this diary is more significant than writing for an academic journal, because, hey, some people actually voluntarily read this thing! (Thanks, by the way. :) ) Bah. I have to go away from it all because if I keep on feeling this cynical about it all I'm going to be a very unhappy person by the time I'm done... my feelings are important. I am not an investment portfolio. - "God it looks like Daniel Must be the clouds in my eyes" - Elton John and Bernie Taupin |
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