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Thursday, May 16, 2002
15:58 
Cyclonic low, losing its identity....
Nearly in tears today. Everything feels so tense and uptight and, well, difficult. I am very stressed, to the point where I have a tension headache that is making nodding and smiling very difficult and I seem to be having to do a lot of that today. It's just one of those periods when you look at what your friends and people you know are managing to achieve and you feel pretty damn worthless and unfortunate yourself. You look around you and despite yourself, despite knowing better and despite generally understanding that life is a matter of swings and roundabouts, you just want to scream at them that they are so lucky and it's so unfair and why can't it just be nice and easy and good for you for once. It's all pretty stupid, and it's all caused by stress. None of it makes you feel any better. Mostly it just reduces you to standing in the corner of the photocopying room with your shoulders shaking and a lump in your throat as you try to avoid crying in your open-plan office.
I have a cup of organic green tea with chamomile here and I've stopped drinking coffee at work. So far it isn't helping. I feel very alone in the decisions I have to make, and I also feel like I've been cut loose from all the things that I wanted to do before. Before what? I'm not really sure. I'm not sure what my priorities are any more and I don't even know that I could sit down with a list and work it out. I see small scenes, as I do sometimes when I'm writing stories. A kitchen; tiled floor, aga, a battered kitchen table of solid oak that has been either oiled or waxed or had nothing done to it at all save for the addition of a drawer that has round knobs and has bits of string and sellotape in it, rows of jars on the shelves full of dried pulses and pasta and herbs, not all of them condiments, a window above the porcelain sink with fresh herbs on the sill. Outside the garden is untidy but cared for. The small utility room where the muddy wellies are left is just at the back of the kitchen and there is hard-standing outside with a stand-pipe and drain and a place for cleaning boots.
I can see myself going back to writing, getting a dog and taking longs walks in the countryside for inspiration. But I've never had anything published and been paid for it, much like I've never used any of my more esoteric skills (what there is of them) and been paid for it. I have dreams about turning Ravenfamily into one of the weirder consultancies, where we work on energetics for people not because it's a fad or because it will make us easy money or because there's a market out there for Celtic Feng Shui and mandalas but because we feel it is important and there aren't enough people paying attention to this aspect of the environment. I want to be an EPO. I want to get my doctorate and be Dr Fleming. I also want to find some way to integrate all that I can do and be and make something good out of it in a holistic fashion. I don't want to keep segregating my daily work for the environment and the other things I do for the environment. In my heart the two things are not separate.
I also feel that I need more experience in the "real world". Being an EPO is something that would be good as a basis from which to work. Having a doctorate would certainly be qualification enough to set up a business (although I'm not sure I have business sense, I have inherited my dad's nose and he certainly does, so maybe I inherited that from him in the same way I inherited my mum's allergy to wasps and bees).
What do I want? I defined a set of "magical goals" a few months ago. I don't feel like I've come any closer to achieving them, not really. I have a roughly-defined idea of my goals in physical training, although I'm not really getting substantially near achieving those either. I thought I knew what my non-magical goals, in terms of life goals, were, but now that I'm faced with choosing between them, I really don't know that they are all that accurate any more.
I'm so confused it's actually making me feel queasy and I really don't know where to go from here. I'm sort of conducting life in a kind of mindful fashion at the moment. I'm calling Frannie, sorting out that I can stay over Sunday night to attend this job interview on Monday without really thinking about what I'm going to do next. I'm just coming to work and going through the motions, nodding and smiling, but I don't feel like that. I feel like my insides are being shredded and chemically processed, squeezed through an extruder and rearranged in a heap. Everything seems somewhat disjointed and I know I'm on the verge of getting seriously depressed here, but as things stand these are all external stressors and there's fuck all I can do about any of them.
For the first time ever I didn't even enjoy T'ai Chi particularly this week, and came close to leaving early a couple of times, but it went really quickly and it was time to go home before I'd made a decision. Time flies when you're having fun? I don't think it's dependent on how much fun you're having.
Brown rice.
Wednesday, May 15, 2002
17:43
Why does it have to be so complicated?!
It's never easy, is it? Just when you think you've got your head round things, all of a sudden life throws yet more complication at you and you're left with a splitting headache and a brainful of strategy implications that are enough to make your teeth hurt.
We need to buy a house. I know we need to buy a house. If we had our own place where I had space and felt comfortable, then I'd have the headspace to do all sorts of things that currently I can't do because I'm not content. If I'm not content I get stressed and when I get stressed I lose motivation. As things are at the moment my mental health is starting to suffer, and when that happens it's time to do something about it because my physical health will start to deteriorate rather rapidly unless I do.
Property prices here in Devon are petrifying. They really are. So, a couple of weeks ago I applied for a job in the Buckley office. That's in North Wales, just south of Chester (hi Frannie!) Property prices there are actually almost reasonable. We could probably even afford to buy a plot of land and build that Earthship. The issue there is that moving to Wales is kissing my PhD goodbye, and there is also the worry of what Frood and the Booze Monkey would do. If the Booze Monkey and I could earn enough to cover the household expenses, then Frood could find something that he really wanted to do, like become a blacksmith. But, it would depend on the Booze Monkey finding work up there. About two weeks ago I figured that the PhD was a lost cause anyway, so I wasn't all that bothered. It seemed that the most sensible strategy was to get the fuck out of Devon where the house prices reduce you to tears. On Monday, however, I had a meeting with my supervisors, who seem to think that they can talk the Registry round and find the rest of the funding, as long as I can produce a good project proposal for the rest of the work and I can make the time available to do the work. That would mean staying here, where I have access to the IGER labs near Crediton.
I want to have Dr Samantha Fleming on my chequebook. I would probably, in all likelihood, look out for another PhD to do if this one fell through. On the other hand, I'm not sure I need a PhD any more. I just want one. I never give up on anything, and I don't want this to set a precedent. The thing is, there's no guarantee that they can talk the Reigistry round and find the funding, and, even if they did, I still need to get a proposal approved, and find the time. I won't know how much time to find until I've done the preliminary work. The logistics of doing the work could even then still scupper it.
Of course, I get a job interview for the Welsh position. And it's on Monday, which means that if they offer me the job I will have to make a decision next week and I just don't have enough information to make a sensible decision. It's like trying to play chess without knowing where all of the other player's pieces are or how many he has. It would be a good move, as it would get me into an Area office from where I can pursue my EPO career with a bit more vigour, it would get me out of England, barely, and we could certainly afford to buy a house and even buy some delapidated relic and turn it into a mean, green living machine. Completing the PhD would take three years part-time. The financial implications are quite extraordinary, but EH has left me with the impression that it wouldn't be impossible. I've also been told I can appeal my job salary and possibly get another 2k a year (almost), possibly even backdated.
I just don't know. Add to all of this the extra complication of Frood also having job interviews at the moment, and it's all just too much, really. I feel like my brain has turned into cheese strings.
Did I say I got my ear pierced again? Through the top. It's quite nice, although currently extremely itchy. I'm going to get the other side done once it has healed. A word for the wise, though - don't drink a bottle of wine the night before having a piercing done as the alcohol thins the blood and makes you bleed all over the place. Your piercer won't like it and you end up looking like a gory mess with coagulant spray on your face for the rest of the day.
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