Woes of the Heart

photo by: .sw_in_shift

Two of my (30+) Aussie friends face the same woes of the heart - how to deal with residual romantic feelings for someone other than their current partners - and have asked me for some counsel. I don't really know what to advise. I suspect that most people experience this kind of chaos over the course of life, probably repeatedly, and it's just another thing that's kept from us as youngsters. This secrecy means that when we, as young adults, come to face these challenges we feel guilty and alone, which, amongst many other things, then serves to endow our illegal love object with an unhelpful aura of enhanced meaning.

I can already sense comments (either written or mental) along the lines of "true, adult love is about working hard at it and not being selfish." Yeah, well, they're kinda valid comments, thank you, but, in these cases, and I probably didn't make this clear enough, we're not just talking about that cheap sizzle of newness, but also crucially important variables: being a little older than twenty and therefore more certain of your relationship needs (but conversely more fearful of giving the new relationship roulette wheel another spin).

So (and this is stream of consciousness advice, competely unplugged, so I hope you are still onboard: toot-toot!), I think it really boils down to whether your absolute needs are being met in your current relationship. I think you have to have an honest look at your relationship as it stands, why you are with the person (fear of being alone should not be a top answer!), and whether you are compatible. I spotted this site called Relationship Gym a while back when I was supporting a friend going through a break-up. You should have a look at it. It's all about identifying the person you want to be with by examing your respective needs, values and goals. I imagine the guy who runs the site as Frank T.J. Mackey (Tom Cruise's character in Magnolia), but that says more about me because actually he seems very good at his job (his approach has an in-built bias towards the current relationship) and he not a hater of women. And no, I would definitely not tell illegal love object. That would just cause a lot of trouble for a lot of people, most especially for you. If you're going to leave your current relationship, you have to be able to do it without the safety net (which will end up being a sticky web) of a new relationship.

Finally though, I am not 100% resolved on the whole issue of "you've made a commitment (of some sort) when you were a teenager/young adult and therefore should grin and bear it until you die." Even knowing what I know about human history, I feel obliged to suggest (flippantly) that these challenges are a particular function of the capricious, diposable world we leave it etc, etc, but I don't believe that. Plus, I am not sure whether worthwhile ideals like not being entitled, reckless and wasteful mean that you have to stick at something that is in constant tension with your needs (presuming your needs aren't fanciful) especially when children are not involved.

What would you advise?

* * *

Meanwhile, over the past week, four of my guy friends (all post-grads) have asked me for reassurance that they're not "idiots", that they're capable of scholarly writing at this level, and that they did not peak too early in their academic careers...Sound familiar? Goes to show that, contrary to some findings in the academic literature, women are not necessarily more likely to vocalise the emotional consequences of their work. I have boy-men revealing all sorts of insecurities and crises about their academic lives to me. Admittedly their purges tend to be shorter than those of my lady friends (who also tend to be repeat clients). Maybe we need some more female researchers asking men about their emotional labour and its effects.

Bushfires in Australia

photo by: Reuters

I should be in bed, but I can't help reading about the tragic, horrific bushfires in Victoria, Australia. They're the worst bushfires in Australia's history and it's chilling to know that at least some of the fires were deliberately lit or re-lit.

I feel so far away, although it is being heavily (and sincerely) covered here in the UK.

You can donate money via the Australian Red Cross, or I just spotted that Kate, of Love You Big, has decided to donate all proceeds from sales at her etsy store next Wed 18 and Thurs 19 February to the Red Cross. Check it out.

Dummy Mummy

Photo by: Redo

One of my friends, KT, sent me this article to add to my Article Dump, The Dummy Mummy Decade: Boring, Selfish, Smug by Rachel Cooke:

In the past decade...- a decade that began, if you are in search of neat bookends, with the birth of Brooklyn Beckham - a growing number of women have reverted, 50s-style, to identifying themselves primarily, vociferously, and sometimes exclusively, as mothers. They fetishise childbirth, and obsess about all that follows it, in a way that is almost, if not quite, beyond satire, and which makes me feel a bit sick.

I feel sympathy for Cooke's position and agree with most of her opinions, but I definitely don't feel quite as angry about this development as she does. Plus, I think it's a bit creepy (and boring, selfish and smug?) when she says how lucky she is that most of her friends have not turned into dummy mummies. Must be nice trotting past your pals on a high horse and judging them.

Sunday Night Blues

photo by: Mayam S.

When any fit of anxiety or gloominess or perversion of the mind lays hold upon you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaints but exert your whole care to hide it. By endeavouring to hide it, you will drive it away. Dr Samuel Johnson

I have Sunday Night Blues (SNB) again and I am going to publish it by complaints. My Northern Irish friend likened write-up SNB to "back to school tomorrow" syndrome, except, as she said, it's "back to that evil bloody thesis." Just when you're getting weary and would like nothing more than a hearty soup and thirty minutes of a beautifully written novel, just when you should experience the inner glow of knowing that you are living your passion and that you have (in fact) enjoyed lovely company all weekend, and just when you hope to gently close your eyes with a soft sense of wellbeing, self-dislike for not doing enough (or sometimes any) work over the weekend comes and ruins it all. Then, just for a laugh, your inner voice asks questions like:

1. Why have you still got so much write-up to go?
2. Did you peak academically at age 22?
3. What are you going to do after submission?
4. How are you going to support yourself in that awkward, in between thesis and job/post-doc period?
5. Why don't those students in their early twenties, the ones in College who you are fairly nice to, but don't particularly want as active or enduring friends, seek out your company?
   
6. Why do you still seek the approval of those you don't particularly know or admire?
   
7. When are you going to get married and/or have children?
8. Why do you generally not feel particularly fussed about either, but then sometimes feel inadequate when others talk about their achievements in these areas?
9. Why do typically handsome men (like those two beefy, prominent-jawed guys at the Aussie bop last night) always want to engage in "banter" with you in a completely humourless and therefore slightly aggressive way, and why do they seem so attractive to nearly every other woman?

And I've found that Dr Johnson is right. Coming up with reasonable answers to these questions is not nearly as effective as suppression and sleep. To bed

I have had another read of this post and comments, and I have concluded that if you're in a "fit" then simply acknowledging your worries (in a blogpost, if it's not going to be an amplifier) and moving on to something immediate and tactile is the way forward. I know I could never be so thoroughly English as to dutifully follow the Dr's advice. In any case though, you do have to wait for a calm, cloudless moment to start to come up with answers. I seem to often forget that even after all my years of meditation and reading.

What a piece of work!

image

W. Somerset Maugham is one of my favourite writers* and by Jove he was witty and acute...I suspect he was quite spiteful too. I say that and then I feel like I am being rough, especially if I take into account his personal hardships. Taking on board this combo of traits and analysing the photo above, what do you think: pal, enemy or frenemy?

To help you decide, here's an extract from Cakes and Ale, a satire of literary poseurs: (I have italicised my favourite bit - which I am hoping to elegantly drop into the conversation at my friend's birthday dinner this evening.)

But why writers should be more esteemed the older they grow, has long perplexed me. At one time I thought that the praise accorded to them when they had ceased for twenty years to write anything of interest was largely due to the fact that the younger men, having no longer to fear their competition, felt it safe to extol their merit; and it is well known that to praise someone whose rivalry you do not dread is often a very good way of putting a spoke in the wheel of someone whose rivalry you do. But this is to take a low view of human nature and I would not for the world lay myself open to a charge of cheap cynicism. After mature consideration I have come to the conclusion that the real reason for the universal applause that comforts the declining years of the author who exceeds the common span of man is that intelligent people after the age of thirty read nothing at all. As they grow older the books they read in their youth are lit with its glamour and with every year that passes they ascribe greater merit to the author that wrote them. Of couse he must go on; he must keep in the public eye. It is no good thinking that it is enough to write one or two masterpieces; he must provide a pedestal for them of forty or fifty works of no particular consequence. This needs time. His product must be such that if he cannot captivate a reader by his charm he can stun him by his weight.

And The Razor's Edge is one of my most treasured books.

Article Dump

photo by: Animaux

For a while now, I have been collecting articles that I have taken my fancy for one reason or another. Here is a bunch of them that may serve as a nice afternoon read:

1. Domestic Disturbances by Judith Warner: the dark side of people's faux-familiarity with the Obamas
2. How an Emotion Became a Virtue by Clifford Orwin: a history and assessment of "compassion"
3. The Myth of Multitasking by Christine Rosen: the downsides (neurological, educational and cultural) to multitasking
   
4. No Hay Banda; a Long, Strange Trip Down David Lynch's Mullholland Drive by Allen B Ruch: a superb explanation of the obsessions and fantasies that make up this "puzzle-box of a movie"
5. Thoreau's Worst Nightmare by Michael Agger: Are the new ascetics masters of self-denial or just self-promotion?
6. A Study of Self-Presentation in the light of Facebook by Sasan Zarghooni: an essay on the adequacy of current theories of self-presentation to account for Facebook, as an online social network

In any case, as my mother often says, "Be of good cheer!"

What's Going On

photo by: The Boy

Here is a lazy description of what's been going on:

1) It's been snowing. A lot.

2) There are a couple of Italian, male visiting scholars in our Department. One of them is fulfilling expectations: he is outgoing, cheeky and flirtatious. The other one has tattoos and a moustache.

3) I have been having some animated and fairly interesting conversations with women this week. We've covered topics like whether and on what basis: the media frames women in their thirties who have not married or had any children as products of the ills of Western society (we decided, essentially, that it's a luxury not to have to make those choices and that women should not have to bear that symbolic weight alone if at all); it is necessary to pretend that our theses have wider (non-academic) purposes and audiences in order to feel motivated and special; there is relationship between achievement and birth order; Sex and the City had any merit whatsover in terms of the questions it raised or whether its starting position (that women like to buy expensive shoes and bags) automatically negated its value; we can accept that highly ambitious, "save the world" men will probably also have overbearing egos and insecurities etc. (etc. = cheat)

4) I nearly suffered a palsy when my supervisor smacked an email on my desk, mid-paragraph, and said, "I am not going to comment" as she walked off. I thought the worst: that the Faculty had agreed that I was in danger of never submitting my thesis and had decided to let me go or that a colourful, carelessly-worded email of mine to a family member had accidentally been sent to my supervisor. It was, in fact, an email from a College pal, who is also the head of men's rowing, to my supervisor saying that she had to tell me she was going to "fail" me unless I coxed for them.

5) I am not coxing this term. I may never cox again.

6) A Canadian student with a deep voice who I met through a mutual friend came into my Department today and spotted me at my desk. She submitted in December and told me that she has already sorted an ESRC one year postdoc in London and was today being interviewed at my Department for a three year postdoc after that. Wowsers. Four years sorted. Good night. I wound up my shame-screen up even though she was just being frank and even sympathetic.

7) One of the College porters is enraged about a media conspiracy to sell the snowfall and the financial crisis as more serious than they really are.

8) I am pretty content with how my work is going. Still a long way to go and I can see my face drop and my eyes age by the day. I am also waking up frowning and buzzing. But, apart from all that (ahem), it's peachy times. I do feel lucky to be writing my thesis, and I have decided that I picked a good topic to develop my academic writing style, to make it more discursive and engaging.