clouds are ringing, singing through the breezes...
Yes. It's been a while.
So much is to be accounted for during this absence. Much of this can be blamed on my usual 12-16 hour days, something that may lessen as the summer approaches but for now there's still two more weeks and I have some more preparations for finals to deal with. Much of my Memorial Day has been spent on that and this is more or less a short break before I go back to finish them and get ready for the last couple weeks of easily the most trying academic six months I've had to deal with thus far. To give you an idea of what I've been having to keep with, try having to analyze Tolstoy in the original Russian with the vocabulary of a five-year-old. I'm generally exhausted by the weekends and it's been a trial trying to keep up with the work as it keeps coming. I suppose the pace of having been doing this for a couple years is starting to catch up with me. I still have one more year but at this point it's 20 more upper psych credits and 20 more advanced grammar classes and a summer of service learning before I graduate. Not that anything is necessarily "over" at that point, but it does mean that focus is going to shift. The closer I get to an 8-hour day, the better.
So today marks the four-year anniversary of my being Portland. This is the longest I've ever stayed in any one place. I will have worked at the bank longer than I've worked any other place. My feelings are naturally rather mixed but seeing as there has been some substantial improvement over the last few years, I can honestly say that I'm currently at a much better point and can now see some clearer path before that isn't entirely filled with dread or shadow. The day was marked by my waking up from a nightmare and after relaxing a bit and adjusting myself to the waking world, I stretched and yawned only to find myself hulking out of my sleep-clothes. However, instead of a moment of berserker rage, it was more something like from Alice in Wonderland. I took a look in the mirror and saw before me a bewildered lycanthrope. The arms that had stretched and torn through the fabric and the chest whose heaving popped through the buttons of his shirt were mine. This creature was very, very different from something I remembered being far more fey, a creature that I still imagined myself resembling though here I was given some evidence to the contrary. He looked almost intimidating until it was clear that his expressions were displaying a set of shifting emotions, disarming and anything but stoic or growling. His eyebrow raised and it was visible he was thinking he'd have to wait until the next paycheque before he can replace that shirt.
Perhaps there's nothing like an actual physical transformation to demonstrate the difference between oneself now and oneself then. I woke up feeling as if completely changed, even though this transformation was clearly gradual. The main positive thing I can say about all of the strains and frustrations that I've had to put up with (and continue to put up with) was that it forced to me to explore other areas of interest and thankfully, they were at least available and honestly, that was what had allowed me to continue staying here let alone become semi-comfortable, granted I'm not sure where I could've gone otherwise. Instead of music though, there were other things there to support that I was lucky to find out were here but were not nearly as lauded and distorted. Portland is certainly not the modern Bohemia it claims to be and it's continued pretensions of portraying itself as such will probably never cease to annoy me, but I'm thankful that I was able to find other things in place of music to engage and support me while I figure out how to go about establishing myself via my passions. Portland was the place where I found the Russian word and now it's in my best interest that I continue with it, considering the university is now paying me to continue studying it. Pursuing psychology again, the road ahead is leading towards me becoming a psychologist, something that a professor had divined would take me a good 13 years. But it terms of finding a 9-5 that's tolerable and enough to keep myself afloat and comfortable, it's certainly better than what I'm doing now and it certainly beats bussing tables or working as a clerk or a barista for an indefinite period of time as time scales further reminding me that, while not old, I'm certainly not young anymore. And then, of course, the odd way I found myself comfortable in my skin, which is, I guess ironically, IS as that bewildered lycanthrope I see in the mirror. It will be interesting to see the reactions when I head out to Pittsburgh for my brother's birthday mid-June, who probably only remembered when the beard sprouted out of nowhere one odd full moon, seemingly out-of-place on me even though I grew to be uncomfortable without it, despite not being able to grow one up until that point.
Much of the current improvement of affairs I owe to Dan, who asked me to be his roommate after he and Emily decided to divorce back in January. We both kept quiet about this for a bit largely because we wanted everything squared away before announcing the news; the natural assumption after all would've been that we had become an item and that wasn't or hasn't been the case. There was also the suspicion that the primary reason for their divorce would've been Dan's bisexuality coming more and more to the forefront, but in actuality it was more the final straw when their other problems were reaching their critical mass. On that note, however, Dan's recovered fairly quickly and has already started seeing someone for a while. It amuses me and most others that Dan apparently has a taste for bears, granted I could've done without hearing about my ex sending him obnoxious texts to him once he got wind of the divorce. (The jerk was tactless enough to even approach me when we went out for a drink about he was upset that Dan was turning down his advances rather coldly. Because you really want to appraoch your ex about trying to sleep with his roommate upon hearing of their divorce. Needless to say, I'm sure I'll be remembered as being quite the bitch, but at this point, there isn't too much love lost. Their lot is not one I envy.)
So since then, we've been living together for nearly six months in a rather nice, decently-price apartment in Irvington, the part of town where I had lived with that hipster band for that brief period. Having a bit less to worry about, the city appears slightly different but still many of the same things that annoy me remain. I still probably take a bit too much schaudenfreud from those episodes of Portlandia, but it's nice to see that the crap that I've had to deal with on a daily basis is acknowledged in some form rather than the usual "it's-not-a-problem-it's-just-you" reaction I tend to get when I mention any of my experiences. Dan is seeing firsthand what my usual day is like and ironically, despite our living together, we actually see each other about as often as we did prior. The main difference now is that if the other is feeling down, usually over some stupid insensitive boy we had feelings for at the time, we can usually knock on the other's door to vent. It has made an interesting difference in the way that we've been going about Pre-Fash, which still exists in some form, even if for the most part, the results are still left to the desk drawer. As of now, we're basically still plugging away but there's no rush, especially if, as a handful of folks have been kind enough to say, we're just experiencing the pain of "being ahead of our time." Perhaps. Time will tell I suppose.
Anyway, this is probably long enough and I have some assignments to finish within the next four hours. A film analysis in English, two essays in Russian. Here's to the next ten days to go as painlessly as possible.
So much is to be accounted for during this absence. Much of this can be blamed on my usual 12-16 hour days, something that may lessen as the summer approaches but for now there's still two more weeks and I have some more preparations for finals to deal with. Much of my Memorial Day has been spent on that and this is more or less a short break before I go back to finish them and get ready for the last couple weeks of easily the most trying academic six months I've had to deal with thus far. To give you an idea of what I've been having to keep with, try having to analyze Tolstoy in the original Russian with the vocabulary of a five-year-old. I'm generally exhausted by the weekends and it's been a trial trying to keep up with the work as it keeps coming. I suppose the pace of having been doing this for a couple years is starting to catch up with me. I still have one more year but at this point it's 20 more upper psych credits and 20 more advanced grammar classes and a summer of service learning before I graduate. Not that anything is necessarily "over" at that point, but it does mean that focus is going to shift. The closer I get to an 8-hour day, the better.
So today marks the four-year anniversary of my being Portland. This is the longest I've ever stayed in any one place. I will have worked at the bank longer than I've worked any other place. My feelings are naturally rather mixed but seeing as there has been some substantial improvement over the last few years, I can honestly say that I'm currently at a much better point and can now see some clearer path before that isn't entirely filled with dread or shadow. The day was marked by my waking up from a nightmare and after relaxing a bit and adjusting myself to the waking world, I stretched and yawned only to find myself hulking out of my sleep-clothes. However, instead of a moment of berserker rage, it was more something like from Alice in Wonderland. I took a look in the mirror and saw before me a bewildered lycanthrope. The arms that had stretched and torn through the fabric and the chest whose heaving popped through the buttons of his shirt were mine. This creature was very, very different from something I remembered being far more fey, a creature that I still imagined myself resembling though here I was given some evidence to the contrary. He looked almost intimidating until it was clear that his expressions were displaying a set of shifting emotions, disarming and anything but stoic or growling. His eyebrow raised and it was visible he was thinking he'd have to wait until the next paycheque before he can replace that shirt.
Perhaps there's nothing like an actual physical transformation to demonstrate the difference between oneself now and oneself then. I woke up feeling as if completely changed, even though this transformation was clearly gradual. The main positive thing I can say about all of the strains and frustrations that I've had to put up with (and continue to put up with) was that it forced to me to explore other areas of interest and thankfully, they were at least available and honestly, that was what had allowed me to continue staying here let alone become semi-comfortable, granted I'm not sure where I could've gone otherwise. Instead of music though, there were other things there to support that I was lucky to find out were here but were not nearly as lauded and distorted. Portland is certainly not the modern Bohemia it claims to be and it's continued pretensions of portraying itself as such will probably never cease to annoy me, but I'm thankful that I was able to find other things in place of music to engage and support me while I figure out how to go about establishing myself via my passions. Portland was the place where I found the Russian word and now it's in my best interest that I continue with it, considering the university is now paying me to continue studying it. Pursuing psychology again, the road ahead is leading towards me becoming a psychologist, something that a professor had divined would take me a good 13 years. But it terms of finding a 9-5 that's tolerable and enough to keep myself afloat and comfortable, it's certainly better than what I'm doing now and it certainly beats bussing tables or working as a clerk or a barista for an indefinite period of time as time scales further reminding me that, while not old, I'm certainly not young anymore. And then, of course, the odd way I found myself comfortable in my skin, which is, I guess ironically, IS as that bewildered lycanthrope I see in the mirror. It will be interesting to see the reactions when I head out to Pittsburgh for my brother's birthday mid-June, who probably only remembered when the beard sprouted out of nowhere one odd full moon, seemingly out-of-place on me even though I grew to be uncomfortable without it, despite not being able to grow one up until that point.
Much of the current improvement of affairs I owe to Dan, who asked me to be his roommate after he and Emily decided to divorce back in January. We both kept quiet about this for a bit largely because we wanted everything squared away before announcing the news; the natural assumption after all would've been that we had become an item and that wasn't or hasn't been the case. There was also the suspicion that the primary reason for their divorce would've been Dan's bisexuality coming more and more to the forefront, but in actuality it was more the final straw when their other problems were reaching their critical mass. On that note, however, Dan's recovered fairly quickly and has already started seeing someone for a while. It amuses me and most others that Dan apparently has a taste for bears, granted I could've done without hearing about my ex sending him obnoxious texts to him once he got wind of the divorce. (The jerk was tactless enough to even approach me when we went out for a drink about he was upset that Dan was turning down his advances rather coldly. Because you really want to appraoch your ex about trying to sleep with his roommate upon hearing of their divorce. Needless to say, I'm sure I'll be remembered as being quite the bitch, but at this point, there isn't too much love lost. Their lot is not one I envy.)
So since then, we've been living together for nearly six months in a rather nice, decently-price apartment in Irvington, the part of town where I had lived with that hipster band for that brief period. Having a bit less to worry about, the city appears slightly different but still many of the same things that annoy me remain. I still probably take a bit too much schaudenfreud from those episodes of Portlandia, but it's nice to see that the crap that I've had to deal with on a daily basis is acknowledged in some form rather than the usual "it's-not-a-problem-it's-just-you" reaction I tend to get when I mention any of my experiences. Dan is seeing firsthand what my usual day is like and ironically, despite our living together, we actually see each other about as often as we did prior. The main difference now is that if the other is feeling down, usually over some stupid insensitive boy we had feelings for at the time, we can usually knock on the other's door to vent. It has made an interesting difference in the way that we've been going about Pre-Fash, which still exists in some form, even if for the most part, the results are still left to the desk drawer. As of now, we're basically still plugging away but there's no rush, especially if, as a handful of folks have been kind enough to say, we're just experiencing the pain of "being ahead of our time." Perhaps. Time will tell I suppose.
Anyway, this is probably long enough and I have some assignments to finish within the next four hours. A film analysis in English, two essays in Russian. Here's to the next ten days to go as painlessly as possible.