Returtleneck

So upon reaching to the final leg of my now well-established A-B-to-B-to-bed routine, and after indulging in what I will allow myself hubristically (the word characterises itself, as chance would have it) to describe as a very worthy lasagne, I found myself outside of myself. I looked at myself, wearing my black cotton turtleneck jumper (it was "cold" by Brisbane standards), which might in its younger days have been considered pretentious in Brisbane (who knows, perhaps it still is), and I thought to myself, I've looked at this jumper before.

True to instinct, a quick search reveals that I not only saw myself in the selfsame sweater, but blogged about it, back in 2005, coming up on ten and a half years ago. Perhaps it came across in that post; perhaps it didn't, but I was happy with the almost revelatory sense of change ... progress even ... that the out-of-body observation gave me, the distinct and surprising impression of myself as someone so different to the person I had been not so long a year prior, and different again from the person two years prior. I'd gone from a kind of university hanger-on, working at the research equivalent of the frat house in Old School, to probably diagnosably depressed, to being an active and accepted part of a very different culture, community, lifestyle. The sense of change, of velocity, of trajectory (I won't pretend to intention), was invigorating.

So I saw myself from outside myself again tonight, but this time I wasn't surprised by the change. And that made me sad. Don't get me wrong; I haven't been sitting still. I now have an ongoing appointment at what I really believe is one of the world's great universities. For all intents and purposes I'm debtless, own my own domicile, and have no socially unacceptable addictions, habits or predilections. But I'd be hard pressed to tell myself that I've grown or changed substantially within myself over the last couple of years (an argument could be made if not successfully defended for the two preceding years).

I'm conscious, or at least suspicious, that I've felt this kind of dissatisfaction or ennui a few times. Perhaps once it led me to France, perhaps it led me back to Australia, and perhaps it led me to my current job. There has been a something of a cycle of a quadrennial renewal of vocation in my life whose catalyst restlessnesses might well have been more personal than professional.

My probation was a close-run thing; the dean ham-fistedly, and my more immediate supervisors in a much more informed and timely fashion, told me as much, and I was conscious of it even before those indications. Its been 4 years. Its very tempting to take my ennui and translate it once again into a change of employment as a substitute for addressing personal circumstance.

Hopefully I have the courage to address them separately.

stew

This has been a difficult week. I've been below my best as a teacher, and as a researcher. I was reminded that I can make a big difference to my students with very small gestures, but those won't get save my job next year, and its frustrating that I'm not doing the big things better.

More importantly, though, I've been struggling to find things outside of work to make good on my great French lesson of travailler pour vivre et non vivre pour travailler (perhaps the greatest lesson I learnt during my time in Rennes¹). It is hard to recall when my work-life balance was less life-focussed than now.

Tonight, though, I made a really good lamb stew. I had some diced lamb that needed using, a bag of capsicums on special at the local fruit'n'veg, and a bottle of big Australian Shiraz that I'd been saving for illogical reasons. The smell was tantalising, and in the end all ingredients were better for each other's company.

Small pleasures, but it helps.

¹ Well, either that or "Il manque un peu de beurre".

The days I've thrown away

I can't remember when I last had a memorable day.

the plot

"... discussing post-war US literature
with a girl whose upper arm read 'Fiction'
like it might have been type-written.
When I asked her its significance
she said she sometimes took reminding
what she wanted to be doing
whether reading it or writing." 

It seems that this blog has devolved in recent times into a series of brief summaries of the books I've been reading. Now, this is far from the worst of the various one-note themes to which it has clung - "I'm homesick and don't speak the language" and "This is what I did on the weekend" spring to mind - but its not as wide a subject matter as I would like to imagine myself capable of writing. Nor does it really paint a representative picture of what I spend my time on, though its resurrection as one of my leisure activities is something I enjoy.

One of the things I like about fiction, or at least about the books I have been reading, is the presence of a dominant storyline. There isn't always one central character, and there isn't always one location in which the story takes place, but typically there is one thread of activity, or overriding theme, which serves as a spine to give the story structure and direction.

This is not something that can be said of life. Or, at least, not of my life at present.

My work life, in particular, seems at present to be, and for the past year to have been, an exercise in juggling a dozen or more little endeavours at once. Preparing for lectures, dealing with assignments and exams, keeping up with administrative stuff (I handle Masters admissions and credit assessment for transferring students), helping PhD students, undergraduate project students, Masters project students, reviewing conference and journal papers, writing papers, and trying to develop and sustain the handful of international collaborations I have. It often seems like I spend my time just pecking away at each of these enough to keep them from burying me, and I'm left with little time to actually focus on and make inroads on significant problems.

The same is true to a lesser extent of my life outside work. I give snatches of time to sport, or to reading, or to TV or games, or these life measures that other people seem to find so important, like buying a house or getting a car (I find it a little baffling that others consider either of these an achievement). I spend time with friends, but not nearly as much as I should. I visit my family, but not as often as I should. But in neither my work nor my personal life do I feel like I have a dominant storyline, a central quest, a single light on the hill to which my time is contributing.

Now, I should make it clear, I'm not having some kind of existential crisis, bemoaning a lack of meaning in my life. I'm not suggesting that others have a strong sense of their role in life, of some focal point (vanishing point?) towards which their endeavours are leading. Nor am I saying that I'm doing too many things, really. I do feel like there is value in these things I'm doing. If I didn't, I wouldn't be doing them (or in some cases, I'd be able to stop deluding myself that I will get around to them). Its just an interesting contrast between the stories that I read, and the story that I'm writing with my days and hours.

vent

In the last 24 hrs I've called the radiology lab and the two knee specialists referred to me by my doc, and all 3 told me the earliest date was mid-september. This is particularly frustrating because my knee is actually holding me back in the meantime. I tried riding home really gently yesterday but could feel that it was stressing the knee sufficiently to not want to do it as a regular means of transport. I also feel it when I walk, and sport is out of the question.

Its tempting to think they can't fit me in because they're busy, but I *know* its because they're closing up for summer. This whole goddamn country with its hopeless addiction to holidays is a dead loss for much of july and all of august, which is hot-weather cold-comfort for anyone who needs a service provider during that time.

So as not to sound too nationalistic about my whining, if I were doing this in Australia I would also have an appointment in September, and its uncertain whether the cause for that being a long waiting list rather than a long holiday would lower my blood pressure.

forehand wide

Dammit, and dammit to hell.

I finished up the physio sessions on my knee yesterday, and the physio told me in leaving that I was OK to start playing sport again. That was good news.

So I played tennis today. Well, I would have played anyway, but I felt better about playing some singles against Franck. I was hitting the ball OK, too. My serve was out of rhythm despite having been hitting them well in the warmup, and I was stuffing my approaches, but other than that it was fun to be back in the sun and running around. We got to 5-6 and I was serving at 15-15 and went to net to get a simple dropshot. I waited too long on a forehand and pushed a gumby piece of crap into the tramlines and started to shout in frustration when I landed and twisted a little bit on my knee and wound up shouting because my knee hurt like crap.

Since then I've been at pains to walk as its gotten all inflamed again. I left work straight away and came home to put ice on it.

The irony is that yesterday at the physio I was asked to settle up, but didn't have my chequebook, so I was intending to go back this afternoon to finish it off. Off course, I couldn't, because the knee that was fine to play sport on was not, by contrast, fine to carry the weight of a chequebook.

Which would be delicious if only I wasn't a bloody cripple.

Bitter? Two pints please.