failure.

ever tried. ever failed. no matter. try again. fail again. fail better. --samuel beckett

i've been thinking about failure lately.  it's an interesting thing, failure, because its definition is slippery.  what does it mean to fail?  does it mean not to accomplish what you set out to accomplish?  does it mean to disappoint others by not accomplishing what they expected you to accomplish?  does it mean not hitting certain benchmarks of success on a prescribed timeline?

at different moments in my life, failure has meant each of those things.  i've nearly dropped out of grad school more times than i can count.  each time i felt disappointment in my own failure to achieve what i had planned to achieve.  but each time i also felt a wonderful sense of release and opportunity for a fresh start.  and i have been accutely aware of the ways in which i have failed to conform to the expectations of others, both in my family and in my church community.  but these failures don't feel like personal failures; they feel like explorations and discoveries, my true self emerging from beneath layers of prescription.

the most difficult version of failure i've had to deal with is the failure to achieve life goals on the timeline i've always been taught to accept.  i'm 34 and unmarried.  i have no children.  purchasing a house seems like a distant fantasy.  i'm still a student after 14 years of school, and will be for another three.  finding a job in my field seems an even more distant fantasy than owning a house.  and then there's the complication of being unsure i even want to accomplish those goals.  it's a constant struggle to remind myself that it's okay not to have achieved these benchmarks by age XX, that it's okay to be different from the prescribed norm i grew up with.  when i fail to remind myself of that, i begin to fail in other ways, too.  because dwelling on the fact that where i am in life constitutes failure according to some grand schema developed by someone else interferes with my ability to succeed in my pursuits, making failure all the more likely.  it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.  not only do i end up a failure according to the prescribed metanarrative, but also according to my own ideas of what it means to be happy and successful.

so i try.  i try to remember that i don't want to be married; rather i want to be married to the right person with whom i can have the kind of relationship i want.  i try to remember that there is still time to accomplish my goals and many avenues to them, not just one.  i try to remember that owning a home is not, in and of itself, a good thing; that sometimes there are alternative and more sustainable ways of living.  and mostly i try to remember that the only measuring stick that matters is my own conscience, not others' prescriptions.

capable.

so this year, i'm on my own.  where school is concerned, that is.  i'm out of funding until i pass my exams (which i should have passed ages ago).  so i'm paying my own way this year.  which means i'm dependent on financial aid.  can't pay tuition without a loan.  and yesterday--yesterday i got this horrible message form the financial aid office telling me i wasn't eligible for financial aid due to insufficient academic progress.  mind you, this is one day after i put nearly $4,000 in tuition on my credit card, depending on my loan to come through to pay it off.

so i panicked.  for about 45 minutes.  just sat on my bed with thoughts of failure and not being able to finish my program whirling through my head.  it was miserable.

and then i snapped myself out of it and got to work.  prepped a brief lesson for my classes.  got to school to teach.  let my students out a bit early each hour so i could make phone calls while campus offices were open.  i made an appointment with the ombudsman to begin the appeals process.  i emailed a faculty mentor to get her advice.  i emailed the chair of graduate studies to alert him to the situation and ask if we could meet to discuss it.  i called the office that helped me procure a leave of absence last year to see if they could help advocate for me.  i did everything i could think of to set an appeal in motion and get my ducks in a row.

everything except talk to the financial aid office, that is.  because they never answered their phone, there was no voicemail option (even though their phone said there was) and no email option (even though their website said there was).  it was very frustrating.

so first thing this morning i went to campus to visit the financial aid office.  where i discovered there had been a clerical error.  their computer had not registered that i was on academic leave last year and so had disqualified me.  three minutes and it was fixed.  i should get my financial aid award tomorrow.

and i am proud of myself.  a year ago i would have had a massive panic attack had this happened.  and then just given up.  six months ago, i would have melted into a puddle of tears.  but yesterday i did what needed to be done.  calmly and rationally assessing the situation and finding alternatives.  it felt lovely.  it's so good, after years of depression, to feel like myself.  to be capable and productive.

so here i go.  back into the breach, prepping for exams which i will take in may or june.  and next year i will write two chapters of my dissertation, with a third during the summer, so that fall of 2011 i can go on the job market.  and june of 2012 will see me robed to receive my third degree.  just watch and see.

scheduled.

if you've followed my blog for any long amount of time (and i doubt many have), you may have noticed that i disappear sometimes.  every single one of those disappearances has had to do with depressive episodes.  or, as i now think of them, mixed episodes.  mixed because my depression manifests itself through some manic tendencies--not needing sleep; not needing food; aggressiveness; irritability; etc.  my recent disappearance has been no different.  it has several causes, this episode.  the most clearly defined is j(wh) breaking up with me.  which has been horrendous.  i won't put that specific word in his mouth, but i know it's been very hard on him, too.  it's not a pretty thing, ending a relationship.  of course, that's not the only cause of this particular episode.  there's been the recent election, with accompanying emotional extremes--elation over obama's victory and discouragement over prop. 8's success.  and all of the ways my relationship with the church and friends and family are caught up in that.

i've refused to write because i knew i would be tempted to write about all of that.  breaking up.  the church and prop. 8.  being sad.  my family and prop. 8.  being angry.  ad nauseum ad infinitum.  and i didn't really want to do that to anyone who reads what i write.  plus i wasn't sure what, if any, of that i want out in the ether.  so i've avoided blogging.

so why am i here tonight?  apparently talking about the very things i said i didn't want to talk about?  i'm here because i decided to add blogging back into the schedule of activities that has helped keep me a little sane the last couple of months.  and it has been a schedule.

there are the scheduled interactions with other people:

• lunch with the thai tuesday crew almost every tuesday
  
• lunch with grad student friends every wednesday
• dinner with george almost every wednesday
• talking to JP every week
• attending quaker meeting once a month
  

and the scheduled minutiae  

• waking up early to plan a lesson before class every MWF
• organizing my medicine every monday into a little pill case so i can take it every day
• planning my week every sunday
• weekly appointments to take better care of my health
• walking to and from campus MWF (and occasionally in between)
• crying (which has happened with unfortunate frequency; so much so that it sometimes feels scheduled)
  

and there's the things that should join the schedule:

• tea with J.  because we've done it twice in the last couple of weeks and it's such a pleasure.
• dancing.  which i haven't been able to do because of the side effects of new medications. but i'm getting a handle on those, so i should be able to dance again.
• bike riding.  because i know it would be good for me, body and soul.
• going to the grad student knitting group.  because i have projects to work on.  and talk is good.  and new friends are always a good thing.
• baking my own bread.  mmmyummy.  i'll even have my own sour dough start soon.
• blogging.  because i miss writing about my world.

so look for more posts soon.  tomorrow a post about the things i've done in the last couple of months of which i'm proud.  because there's enough of which i'm not proud that i want to remind myself that i haven't been a complete loss.

and finally, if you've been involved in any of the above, god bless you--you have no idea how much it's meant to me.

moving.

if you know me in real life or if you've read this blog for a while, you'll know that grad school has been something of a rollercoaster for me. i've decided to drop out of the program at least four times in the last five years. i've taken time off twice. i surprised the program administrator by actually returning after taking time off. i usually doubt my ability to do what needs to be done so i can finish the degree. and i've experienced far more depression in the last five years than ever before in my life.

the experience has not been wonderful. so why do i keep coming back? that's a legitimate question and one i've not always been able to answer myself. i've often joked that i must be masochistic on some level. but when i'm not in the throes of depression, when i'm thinking relatively clearly, i know that i keep coming back because i love it. i love getting excited about teaching. i love the literature, which is magical. and most of all i love teaching. i can't imagine anything else i'd rather do than teach university. so i'm back. and i intend to finish.

the problem is that having been on that rollercoaster--especially the twists and turns that took me out of the program--i've lost much of my focus. and i've developed bad habits. i'm trying to get myself focused and working more diligently. one tool i've decided to use in that effort is a new blog where i'll track my work, record notes on my reading, and identify goals to be met and tasks to be accomplished. you can read more about how i envision that blog working there. and i'd love any contributions you'd like to make to my effort to keep moving towards my goal.

lent.

i've toyed with the idea of giving something up for lent for several years--ever since i lived in boston. i remember walking to the T on ash wednesday and being mystified by the smudges on my fellow commuters' foreheads. although i'd grown up in southern california with lots of catholic classmates, i'd never seen (or at least never noticed) ashes on people's foreheads for ash wednesday. it took me a while, that cold february morning in boston, to make the connection between the smudges on foreheads and the beginning of lent.

i'm not much for making apparently empty sacrifices--giving up chocolate or soda or whatever simple indulgence and then returning to previous habits once you've fulfilled the barebones of the sacrifice. but i like the idea of using this kind of structured sacrifice as an opportunity for reflection and change. and if the change needed is giving up soda or sweets--that's fine by me. in fact, i could probably do with consuming less of both.

but the change i need? i need to get out of my damn bed in the morning. i'm not talking about getting up early or about not sleeping in. nor am i talking about not taking a few minutes after waking up to cat-stretch and then curl back up in my bed and enjoy its cozy warmth while i think about my day.

here's what i am talking about: when i get overwhelmed by all of the things going on in my life--things which i'm not really managing well--little things become obstacles to my acting. stupid little things. like what i'll wear. or what i'll eat for breakfast. or the fact that there's laundry piled on my floor. and too often i react by laying in my bed stewing. sometimes i stew over the stupid stuff. other times i stew over the big stuff. either way it's incredibly unproductive. and it usually means i don't eat; it sometimes means i don't shower; and occasionally it means i don't make it to appointments.

obviously this is not okay. the thing is that i know if i'll just get up and take care of those little things, i'll have a good start to my day. and it will take me less time to shower, eat, and start a batch of laundry than i spend stewing. and i won't have the hunger-headache to deal with or the guilt over not getting something--anything!--done.

so for lent i'm giving up my bed--or rather the self-flagellation staying in (or getting back in) bed represents. time to simply do the things that need to get done.

pathetic.
so just a few words on fatness.

in the interest of full disclosure, let me start by saying i'm not a fat person. i carry a few extra pounds lately. between 15 and 20, depending on the time of day and what i've eaten recently. those extra pounds keep me from wearing some of my clothes. more importantly, they indicate a basic absence of healthy living. but i'm not fat. i don't say that in order to preempt any misconceptions about what i look like. i say it because part of where i'm coming from in what i have to say on this matter has to do with overcoming my own prejudices as someone who has always been either skinny or at least on the thin side of average. more on that in a moment.

back to the topic at hand. fatness. about five years ago, i worked for my sister's company. we had a sales guy who worked with us. funny, funny guy. and super nice. everyone loved him. including all of his customers. and among those customers were a couple of women who owned a store in california. and these women were fat. not chubby. not a bit overweight. they were fat. and they would bring this guy brownies when they saw him at tradeshows and flirt every chance they got. i'm sure they had a bit of a crush on him. he was that kind of guy--a bit geeky, but just so nice and so funny that it didn't matter that he wasn't dreamy. and one day this sales guy and his sales guy buddies were joking about these women and their weight. and it just fried me. so i very snidely (and loudly) commented to no one in particular that it takes oh so much wit and intelligence to crack a joke at the expense of the fat girl. which shut him up pretty quickly.

i have a long history of coming to the defense of the chubby kid. for instance, when i was nine or ten there was a girl i went to church with who looked at me with a bit of hero worship in her eyes because when she was in third grade and i was in fourth, i defended her from the torture of playground girl-bullies who taunted her about her weight. i'm sure part of this had to do with having a couple of siblings who were chubby as kids and who were teased about it. but mostly it had to do with having been on the blunt end of the stick when it came to being taunted about body-image myself.

about a year after i derided my co-worker for his dimwitted effort at humor by making fun of someone because of their weight, i fell hard for a man i met online. and when i say i fell hard, i mean i fell like a barrel coming over niagara. i spent 40 hours talking to him the first week after he found me online. he was perfect. funny, intelligent, thoughtful, cute, an idealist tempered with just enough cynicism. a dream. he didn't have a picture posted, but he told me he was big. 'football player big' is how he put it. so i pictured a linebacker or something. someone definitely big but also athletic. someone sexy. the picture in my head was wrong. he wasn't athletic. and he wasn't sexy. he was fat. really fat. you could have fit two of me in a pair of his pants. probably with room to spare. and i found myself in the situation of loving everything i knew about who this man was, being turned off by the idea of his body, but feeling some pretty powerful chemistry when i let him close enough to kiss me.

it was a strange experience. and an incredibly good one. it forced me to confront my own prejudices--prejudices i didn't even know i had--and get over them. and it amazed me to discover how deep they were. how i had bought into the social construction of the fat guy as jolly and asexual. because, you know, there's just so much fat that how could he possibly feel desire in the same way a man with glistening muscles and rippling hair could? and because obviously a fat body couldn't possibly arouse a skinny one. it goes against every law of nature, right? you know, the laws that dictate that the bad guy wears a black hat and has brown eyes while the good guy wears a white hat and has blue eyes; that criminals have protruding unibrows, hairy hands, and an ungainly (though surprisingly speedy) limping gait; that the good people are also the successful people; and that the pretty people love the pretty people, while the fat and otherwise deformed people love other fat and otherwise deformed people.

i got over myself. because i loved this person for who he was and how we were together. because there was undeniable chemistry between us, no matter what silly notions i had about weight and sexiness in the abstract. when i broke up with him, it was over irreconcilable religious differences not over stupid cultural prejudices about sexiness.

for a good year after breaking things off with him, almost every time i saw a big guy i felt a surge of desire. and i still have that reaction sometimes. i like that. i like the fact that i've managed to, on some level, shed some of the culturally constructed prejudices about what it means for a human being to be beautiful and sexy.

so why the hell am i writing about this at 2:00 in the morning? because tonight i sat in a somewhat stunned silence as i listened to someone go on and on about how 5's don't date 9's ('she was fat--not just chubby, fat' said with just the right amount of scandalized disbelief. 'and we all know that a fat girl can't be a 9.'). and it ticked me off. but i didn't know this person well enough to be sure i was accurately assessing how serious she was about what she had to say, so i didn't respond at the time other than to say, a bit snidely, that of course being fat is just about the worst thing possible. maybe she wasn't, but she sounded serious. and when i got in bed a few hours later, i was still bothered enough that i couldn't sleep for thinking about it. so tonight the blog gets to be my exorcist. and my soapbox. because honestly what could be more pathetic than a grown woman thinking it's impossible for a stereotypically beautiful person to love someone who's stereotypically unbeautiful? nothing? that's what i thought.


{addendum: because i can just hear the comment: 'but amelia, if you had such a prejudice you had to overcome, why is it pathetic that someone else did, too?' here's why: because my prejudice was latent. buried so deeply that i was unaware of it until circumstances forced me to confront it. it was not something i articulated. 'but amelia, that just makes you sound like a hypocrite--you know, thinking one thing but saying another.' i disagree. all of us have culturally instilled prejudices that operate below the surface of our minds. the question is, when we think about a matter consciously, do our thoughts confirm or counter those prejudices? i have always known that i could be deeply attracted to someone who was not stereotypically beautiful. my past boyfriends and other men i'd kissed when i met the man i'm talking about above had included everything: pretty seriously over weight, rail thin, average, college athlete (former and current) with rock solid body, kinda funny looking, and stereotypically gorgeous. and i was aware enough of those around me, including friends and family who were a bit overweight, that i knew better than to categorically dismiss someone as unattractive based on weight. i knew how much it hurt those close to me to be dismissed in such a way. and i also knew that they were beautiful--to me and to others.}

springtime.
roses are, for me, home. when i was very small, our backyard was overgrown. the side yard was a positive jungle of weeds and tall grass and ivy. we had an enormous rubber tree that dropped leaves everywhere. and my mama grew vegetables in pots. i remember eating peas in the pod fresh off the plant. but the thing i remember most is the roses. frequently my dad would give my mom a rose bush for a birthday or an anniversary. and i started learning their names even when i was small.

when i was in grade school, i loved to take a rose to my teacher. i'd ask my mom in the morning before school. and sometimes life was hectic and she was busy and the answer was no. but sometimes the answer was yes, and i was given a pair of clippers to cut the perfect blossom. and my mom would wrap the stem in wet paper towel and then in tin foil and i would carefully, and proudly, carry it to school.

eventually we re-landscaped the yard and it was no longer a jungle. but there were still roses. always roses--both inside and outside the house. it wasn't unusual for my dad to send my mom flowers. for special occasions they were usually roses (but not often red ones; they're kind of dull). but the ones i liked the very best in the house were the ones mama cut in the garden. a little bit of beauty she had planted and cultivated and brought in to share.

when i went away to school, the roses were one of the things i looked forward to most when it was time to come home (other than family, of course). i'd come home just about this time of year--maybe a week later. and the roses would be in the middle of their first spring time blooming. big beautiful blossoms of all colors. air full of heady scent.

i have my favorites of course. i love joseph's coat for it's crazy sprawl and it's gorgeous orange and yellow coloring. betty boop develops from brilliant yellow and pink, to white and red. intrigue smells sultry, with a twist of citrus. plus it's a beautiful plum purple. double delight begins with pure white petals at its heart surrounded by brilliant pink-scarlet. as it ages, its center petals change from white to red. one day, i went out mid-afternoon to visit the roses (and that's the correct description for what i do when i go to see the roses) and found the most perfect double delight with its pure white center. i went out later that same day, at the end of twilight, and that same bloom's heart had changed. it made me want to spend hours watching, just to see how the change happens. in the spring, the blooms on first prize are often as big as a salad plate. and fame gives me an almost constant abuandance of fluttery red blossoms.

when i moved back to southern california to go to school, my mom took me to the nursery and bought me some roses of my own. i loved coming home from a busy day of school and work to discover my mini roses blooming on my porch. and they managed to survive even my worst neglect (they're surprisingly hardy plants, roses). i still have my mini rose garden. my mom has turned them into habitat for one of her garden fairies.

nothing gives me peace quite like the roses. i walk into the yard to visit them and all of the worries and stress simply disappear.

i thought i'd share their beauty. wish you could be here to see them for yourself.

{the roses, top to bottom: betty boop, joseph's coat, just joey, duet, golden showers, joseph's coat, double delight, 4th of july}