it’s finally cool outside! yay! I can have windows open and sleep with a comforter!
skirrrrrts, I wear skirts now
I did a thing to my hair. I say I’ve wanted to do it since 7th grade but forgot until today that it was because I have sort of wanted to be Rogue since that X-Men movie came out.
I’ve had kind of a tough time for, uh, weeks
I keep learning new thing about what it actually means to run a classroom, and remembering how to be a liaison instead of purely a taskmaster
in many ways I’ve just been being dragged along into things, and I’m looking forward to being able to do more things because I want to
beer, oh my god, beer. I got to go to a giant beerfest and it was awesome for three hours, and then it was suddenly horrible, and then I got my head back around the shouting and drunk people being pushy and it was okay.
Mace is back! Mace is back! My partner in crime for the summer things we used to do is back! I’m not completely sure what the whole story is, but he’s back for at least the rest of the semester and he gave me a huge hug and he’s clearly stressed out but at least we all are.
Mic is also showing up to more things and I’m glad.
I got to see my sister! I miss her so much.
I’ve been half-composing DW entries for weeks but not getting much further
no but I’m so glad to be able to wear hoodies again, and the leaves are starting to turn, and I might get to go to a family of autumn festivals that I haven’t been able to go to for years
fuckin’, leadership positions in grad school are terrible, everyone expects you to give and set up but they are not there to ask or care about you or your journey. I wish I hadn’t but I might be even more lost and unconnected if I hadn’t.
I need to get over this mountain (or out from under it) and get back to the things that used to get me going, the things that I used to really believe I could do
tea.
Hamilton. oh my god, Hamilton. I’ve listened to it for days. I want a filmed version, I want it so badly. Oh it’s amazing.
Equal parts UGH and YAY -- massive, half-conversational life update
This post is actually a shit-sandwich! Just, things in the order in which I remember them, I guess.
I went out Friday! A small group of us went to a local pizza place and then to a pool place. We kind-of-sort-of updated the last person in the group to know about my horrible trouble with people I have previously referred to on this blog as either Ross and Rachel or Boris and Natasha. He was surprised and horrified, as is usual. We didn't give him the details, and tried to make it clear that this was my story and not anything in particular about TJ (I accidentally backed into the conversation with a remark that, if TJ took what looked like the best of the job offers she has, she wouldn't be getting away from our mutual horrible problems with these people -- I phrased it as "He wouldn't leave her alone." and last-dude (Mic, though I don't think he'll show up in my updates all that often) caught it and wondered. Mix (new tag; he's the one who gave me the sours mix recipe) reminded me that we couldn't speak for TJ and so I said "well we can still talk about what he does to me". Pretty sure the thing that Mic picked up from it was that Boris does not do science properly (which, yes, but also: he's an entrenched manipulative shit) and he let us know he's going to write a letter to… someone, I dunno… about someone else he thinks is a science-fraud. But anyway, I didn't give detail, because it was mine to give but I still don't feel that safe about it, so Mic only knows that there is sexual harassment of some form, "manipulation", and bad science)
So, since that parenthetical got away from me --
After, we went to the pool place that my recently-ex-boyfriend was always trying to get me to come to with his lab group. I shook hands and made conversations with strangers and re-met someone I'd known in undergrad and caused the barstaff to give me a weird look when I asked for something apparently odd but really not too far off from a shandy. And anyway, Mic was complaining about the bad mix of the well drinks. All the other people there were Mix's coworkers, and I think I made a friend but who knows. We talked about gin. I was at some point rather drunk and decided that that was the time to keep patting Mork on the shoulder and tell him things that were supposed to be validation but were probably received as more of that thing where when Gravy is drunk she tells everyone she loves them. I am actually shit at pool but made some good shots, especially after Mix kindly helped me understand the physics of holding and aiming the cue. Fun observation: I lost the ability (or motivation) to think in terms of more than one bounce off of the… rims… of the table (what are they called) after a while and my shots suffered a little. But at one point rather early I did sink two balls at once so that was awesome.
There was a chalkboard in the restroom (presumably to stop graffiti, but hahaha) so I drew on it.
My parents want me to come home for Thanksgiving Break but I've been hesitant about packing up the cat again for what amounts to four days. That and Mix invited me to do pre-Thanksgiving (apparently there will be crab), other-Thanksgiving, and steaksgiving with him and Mic and presumably Mork (Mix and Mic are friends from the same undergrad; Mork is Mix's roommate; it amuses me to give them alliterative nyms because in many ways they're a package and in many other ways they're like oil and water and some other thing that doesn't go well. Something something vinaigrette metaphor). Last year we did pre-Thanksgiving with Mic's incredible pasta, and other-Thanksgiving with three generations of K's family, and I was like whoa I have friends.
I dunno, I guess I was a little distant on the phone with my parents but whatever.
TJ and I have been having text-conversation about our mutual horrible people horrible problems and it just, it makes me angry. I'd love to catalogue everything so that it's somewhere, but there's very little evidence that can't be interpreted another way.
There were a lot of details that were going to go in this post but I got nervous about them, even 'anonymized' as they were.
There's just… so much more. But I've gotten tired of wading through the shit again, so I'm going to stop here. But: this isn't the "usual" graduate student angst (and I don't know why I'm so insistent about establishing that for myself, because the usual is also hard and unfair); this dude casually gaslights, isolates, manipulates, and imposes. He uses silence and ambiguity, and I'm just being nice and the veneer of scientific rationality, and I couldn't tell you whether it would be more or less comforting to know, once and for all, whether he is actually conscious of and deliberate about it.
I keep getting hit with a kind of paralysis about what to do. I want to get him punished for this shit but there's very little unambiguous evidence; I want to fire him as a mentor but that actually causes more problems; I want to confide in Good Boss Lady but I don't know what she'll be able to do or even if she'll be on "my side"; I want to get out of this situation in just about any way I can but, like, professionally, my opportunities haven't looked better, so quitting altogether is actually not smart and taking a leave of absence would raise questions; I want to put my head down and just get through this so I can graduate, but I'm not guaranteed any kind of cooperation on this plan (although: Field just worked a minor miracle by having a productive conversation that led to some of our almost-secret, wishful-thinking ideas being given a go-ahead, and I'll be excited about that probably sometime soon) especially if this asshole is going to hold my progress hostage or be a huge interference.
My dad, who did grad school himself, thinks I should just switch programs -- bite the bullets that are curriculum changes, awkward questions, and a complete topic switch, and just go. But there are a few things I don't want to give up for good reasons (dammit, I used to be excited about my topic) and for bad (I really, really do not want to field any questions ever about why I switched, and here I can't go into exactly why switching programs makes me feel like everything I've said about this program and about how research in this field should be approached would become bullshit because I couldn't back it up like I said I would -- and yes, I'd have to switch programs if I dumped this asshole).
And I keep wondering if part of my hesitation about going forward is actually that I have to go forward, whether I'm having the other troubel or not. Or, well: over the years I've gotten good at doing this thing that I am currently doing, and now it's time to move into a new phase and I am actually scared of that phase! And would moving to solve this horrible-people-horrible-problems thing actually just delay me engaging with the monster I have to fight anyway? Probably yes! But would having this problem solved make it easier to engage? Probably also yes!
I got to spend a lot of time with Good Boss Lady by pure good luck (well, and she keeps sending/bringing me to things that will advance me professionally, and keeps briefing me on why she's doing it, and I'm so happy to have that because it tells me Look This Is An Opportunity, Take It.) and some things she said made me realize that my inner life has taken a direction I don't want to be going in. I have become a bundle of negatively-defined impulses (I don't want to go to class, leave me alone all of you, I don't want to talk to you, I don't want to think about this because it's hard or scary) with no particular positively-defined motivation. And I used to have that. And it's kind of dangerous for me not to have that because I'll keep taking local steps to make things easier in the short term, and without these positive goals in front of me (or even easy to reach for) there isn't any strategy to them. So I might miss the things that I used to want and probably still want though they're currently being drowned out by nooooooooooo. So that's why I was entertaining the idea of a real leave of absence. But I'm not as sure anymore that that'd do the trick.
But: I cleaned my kitchen again! Sort of. Did a lot of dishes and cleaned out my fridge and put more things in my fridge that I will actually eat! And I'm kind of excited about it! I had planned on cleaning more things but that didn't happen.
Also, for the first time in a long while, I have been able to spend whole days with my cat! She seems to be happier about it, tough I'm not sure she trusts it, exactly: whenever I change rooms for even five minutes, she wakes up and follows me, and chirps, and settles down six feet away. It's kind of adorable and clingy. I am so happy to have this little monster in my life.
Also, I half-decided that I'm going to go to a local comic store, because I've been reading things on the Comixology app but I kind of want to read more, and also to purchase an actual physical comic so that I can determine which experience I like better. I loved being able to read Young Avengers on my phone when I was traveling the other week, and the Guided View thing is really neat, though there was one page layout where I thought it didn't work as well. But I also love physical media, especially being able to stare at it from like two inches away if it's that beautiful. And there's something still satisfying about owning a physically-embodied thing, and being able to loan it to people. That's one thing I'd like to see more of -- Kindle has a loan program for some of its titles, and even though I haven't had a successful loan opportunity yet (one friend lives on another continent, so market restrictions, and another one is too busy to remember to open the books) I think it's a really cool thing, because there aren't great avenues to recommend digital media that aren't wholesale sharing and for various reasons not all media can be freely shared.
What sparked the decision is that I decided I wanted to read about Isaiah Bradley and I couldn't find a digital copy of Truth: Red, White, & Black or any of the issues it collects, and all of the physical copies I could find (yup, part of the problem is definitely that I don't know where to look) are, uh, out of my price range. My school's library has access to dissertations about the book, and they might have comics because I swear I saw Field check some out once, but I'm going to have to go physically look. And the public libraries might but I can't navigate their search to my satisfaction, so I'll have to go in, sometime. And, comic book store maybe, because I do kind of want to go browse and see what other art styles or stories jump out at me, but I also checked out the website of the one near me and the people who own it seem nice, friendly, enthusiastic, so since I have half a taste already established I might get some recs.
