My annual personal crisis

How do I end up emotionally attached to such questionable people? I wish I had a better answer by this point in my life.

“Heart.” Uh, right. Actually, I guess that’s my answer right there.

I have to give J. credit for it being more than mere chemistry, except I cynically suspect it all comes down to chemistry of a more literal sort. I definitely made certain choices that got me into this chemical mess. And I’m really too old to be making those mistakes again and again.

But if I could fix this with pure rationality, I wouldn’t feel even ten percent of the way I feel right now, and I wouldn’t be even slightly tempted by the thought of more of the same when I get back from Europe.

Please, for fuck’s sake, let these two months be the emotional reset I need. It really shouldn’t be that hard. This is no M. situation.

Another running lesson

Been running faster lately. Saturday morning, you can sometimes catch me down at the quay, mouth-breathing heavily on the heels of fleeter-footed friends. It’s a real challenge. Without meaning to, I’d turned into the world’s most unlikely distance specialist. Could maintain a run for two hours – but a slow run. Up the pace, and you wouldn’t recognize me – puffing like crazy, barely finishing a loop that was only half my usual length.

I did a nutty 5k this morning, pushing myself hard across the ice and into a headwind and through the falling snow. (Snow! For heaven’s sake!!) I feel like I barely survived it. It turned out that I went out too hard. The cost of my best time yet: a horrible stitch in my side in the fourth kilometer. I had to slow way down for that, plus this crazy lactic acid buildup in one of my legs. But I hope I learned not to go out so hard next time.

So that’s wisdom #2: don’t get cocky about the “shorter” races. Five k is still far too long to sprint.

Awesome… but what is causal? And how/why?

From FiveThirtyEight: Divorce Rates Higher in States with Gay Marriage Bans.

Running wisdoms

I ran a cool 8.9 miles yesterday. Well, I use the word ‘run’ loosely – it turned out I was quite slow over that distance, so slow I don’t even want to say how long it took me. But I non-walked 8.9 miles. And 8.45 a few days before that, a bit slower still.

That, in fact, is a good illustration of the first bit of other people’s running wisdom that I’ve found useful: you can go far – much further than you perhaps think – if you just slow it way down. (Thanks, Rob Mirabile. I recall exactly where we were standing when you told me that. And you were so confident, and so right.) That’s how I wound up finishing my first 10K: pretty darn slowly, but above a walk. The two others I’ve done since then were for improving my time (nearly 20% in fact – woohoo). But I owe that first one to the discipline of a colleague who helped keep me at a pace that felt too slow but was actually, for the purpose, just right.

The other bit of running wisdom comes from a source I can’t quite put my finger on at the moment, somebody’s father, but not someone I know personally – I think I read it somewhere (a few times). Anyway, it’s this: all you have to do is put on your running shoes and step out the door. That’s it. If you’re standing there and don’t want to carry on, fine, but do that. I love it. Of course, I’ve never just turned around and gone back inside, but I think part of the game is managing internal pressure. Or maybe just routing it usefully. And that helps.

Obviously, running these distances gives me plenty of time to meditate. And I’m starting to develop some of my own running wisdoms. I thought I’d post them occasionally. My first one is this: if you want to build distance, don’t add it at the end of a loop you’re used to – add it in the middle of the loop somewhere, so you end up at the same stopping point. This one exploits habit to trick your brain into not thinking too much about the fact that you’ve actually gone farther, so ultimately your perceived effort is not as high as it otherwise would be, near the end. Thumbs up.

Fires for the New Year

An uncharacteristically clear night in Devon, punctuated by fireworks. My first (and, I imagine, also last) New Year’s Eve here. Also my first ever NYE spent alone – but I am quite enjoying it. I made the traditional meal of multiple seafoods – this time riffing on a Portuguese fish stew. And I created a new tradition, for years as difficult as this one was. I wrote down the things I need to leave behind in 2009. And then I broke out the cava, and I set fire to them.

A toast to 2010.

This is not sour grapes, I swear

As I approach two months post-breakup, and am increasingly credible when I tell people that I’m (all but) over it, it’s nice to be reminded of the fundamental incompatibilities that I chose to ignore while M. and I were still involved.

Here’s a great one – a popular Anne Taintor image. It’s the cover of a notepad that I bought years ago and is a very genuine and authentic expression of myself. I have never been camping and have no desire ever to go camping per se. I am an enormous fan of comfort. Still, in the temporary insanity of wanting to spend time with M., an intrepid and enthusiastic camper, I actually contemplated going to stay in a tent on Dartmoor. Phew – close call!

totally me but the opposite of M.

Breakup

Subtype: feeling of having found soulmate turns out not to be mutual.

Breakup initiated by him. He was right, too.

Can’t sleep, can’t eat, can’t focus. Jittery. Feel close to vomiting most of the time. Don’t even get me started on the tears. Small transactions (buying coffee) challenging.

Colleague passes me coming into work, gives the usual “how are you.” I give the usual “fine, how are you.” Without breaking stride away from me, colleague says – downward intonation at the end of the sentences intact – “are you sure. you don’t look it.”

I remember all about this, though. I remember that it ends. I remember how manageable it seems in retrospect (although that’s partly motivated repression, the mind’s refusal to relive a true trauma – n’est-ce pas?).

Unavoidable sense of self-loathing exacerbated by desire to be kind to myself, but inability to think of any ways of being “kind” that don’t involve simple self-indulgence.

Small ironies: can’t even do simple distracting things like take a long walk while listening to “This American Life.” I need my distractions much denser, faster, thicker on the ground. Would be fertile ground for rumination. But can’t run (as can’t eat). Nothing effective except the most high-quality distractions (The Daily Show), which come in very small doses.

Cornish tendencies

I think the best way for me to memorialize Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick is to take the two chapters of “Tendencies” here in my files to Cornwall next week and create some new space to (re)read them. I’m pretty sure I never gave them the attention they deserved when I first encountered them in college.

Literary anti-populism

Can 7 million readers be wrong? Aren’t they usually? That’s how Troy Patterson – whose writing on Slate I usually love – sums up his disdain for Alexander McCall Smith’s “The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency” series.

I agree with Troy that the HBO adaptation kind of sucked. In particular, I found it cringe-inducing and disorienting to hear Jill Scott faking a Botswanan accent.

But the books? I can’t agree at all. They’re not great literature, sure, but rather than “a dull series of middlebrow novels,” they are charming, calming, re-centering and a pleasure to read. They have a distinct worldview that’s not mine but that I find refreshing: it’s sort of a mild form of values-driven social conservatism minus the offensive.

Troy’s not the first person I’ve encountered who dismisses books like these with the term “middlebrow.” It’s a telling form of snobbery – somewhat like the fetish for authenticity in food. If you like these books, or cruddy tex-mex, you can’t be part of his good-taste party.

Sorry, Troy, but the number of people who love a thing isn’t necessarily an index of its crappiness.

In which I pull out the British-isms

Bloody hell!  Wait — mustn’t grumble — no, bloody hell!!!  The stupid economy has now hit me where I live: nearly half of the faculty jobs that I applied to this year have had their searches frozen or flat-out cancelled.  Including a truly unique job at a freakin’ excellent university that short-listed me (!) and arranged to fly me across the Atlantic for the campus visit and the holidays as well (!!) … and then took it all back two days ago.  

I suppose it’s not all bad news.  The good news from my perspective is that I can stop messing around with the job talk, which has certainly been keeping me up nights.  There may be good news from schools’ perspectives too, even if their endowments ARE down by an enormous, scary percentage.  The whole thing reminds me of how Hurricane Katrina provided a legit-seeming excuse for Tulane to lay off tenured faculty en masse.  Economic crisis may allow a cover for desired-but-otherwise-impossible restructuring, or other types of rethinking of monetary commitments.

Mustn’t grumble, indeed.