England

[eredien]

I've made the decision, with help from Lotusblosm's Very Helpful Billboard: "Your college friend wants to remind you you were once poor and happy."

I think trying to bring that knowledge from the intellectual level down to the actual understanding level of my brain was why I was reading so much Rumi and theology. Ah, self-medication through great works of literature.

So, here's the plan.

Give two weeks' notice at job, probably about the week of the 10th.
Quit job.
Go to England.
Come back.
Pack some small amount of stuff.
Head for Cambridge.

Try not to care so much I don't have an apartment; the gerbilhouse clan has said many times I'm welcome on their sofa.
(Gerbilhouse folk: please consider this your official notice that I will actually, at some agreed-upon point in late Janruary or early February, arrive on your doorstep with a few boxes in tow and say, "Where can I hang my lantern?" If there is a problem with this, let me know before I give my job notice, and not after. I will call tomorrow.)

Try not to care so much I won't have a job and concentrate on getting one once I move.

I know I've said I made the decision before, but I didn't really mean it.

I am still worried about quitting my job, but I am trying to get past that worry.

I can't wait for a tsunami of circumstance to hit me and move me, which is what I have been doing. I'm going to try creating a big change in my life deliberately and consciously, with no real idea of where I am going to be at the end of it.

I really hate doing that last part.
I am quite scared.
Part of me is saying, "throwing away a paying job is the stupidest thing you've ever done, especially since if you stuck it one more month you'd get health coverage."
Part of me is saying, "you need to learn how it feels to occasionally do what you want to do when a good opportunity presents itself, even if it throws some uncertainty and hardship into your life."

Maybe it is stupid.
But I'll never know till I let myself try it.

--
Other news: I read Jane Jacobs' new book, Dark Age Ahead. She continues to be a lucidly-written genius, and outlines the roots of many problems with America's current mode of transport which I had never understood before, merely sensed the outlines of. Highly recommended.

I read Philip Jose Farmer's The Gate of Time. It is from 1970. I found the book was trying hard to be not sexist or racist, and failed. Perhaps this is because I am a woman from 2004. Has anyone else read it? What did you think? It also has one of the best twist endings I've ever seen in a book, but in my opinion, would have been better as a longish short story and (as always) the prolouge and epilouge were completely unnecessary. I haven't seen a more obvious perfect stopping place ignored since AI.

I read Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. I keep thinking I don't like Heinlein, but then remember I do as I read his works. Brilliant man. His characters are actual people. And Mistress is written so brilliantly that not only can you hear the characters speaking, but it becomes normal to listen to English with a Russian accent for the entirety of the book such that you eventually don't notice it at all.
I wonder if he studied Russian; it was only after I'd studied the language for a number of years that I could write in a halfway convincing Russian-person-speaking-English tone because at that point I was beginning to understand the differences in the grammatical structure of Russian (vs. English) such that I could tell what someone would begin to leave out or change when translating one to another. To amuse myself, I also wonder if he had a Russian friend go through the text with a fine-toothed comb, muttering phrases to him or herself all the while and crossing out any offending instances of the words "the" or "a".

A question for those more well-versed in Heinlein than I: do a great many of his books contain alternative marriage/sexual practices such as "line marriages?" How revolutionary was this at the time he wrote?
(Note: I have read "Stranger in a Strange Land," which fits that pattern, and a short-story anthology, "The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag," which, as far as I can remember, mostly does not.)

Comments

[emerald-scales.livejournal.com]

If it helps, i quite my last job to come here... with nothing waiting for me.

[homasse.livejournal.com]

Doing what you *really, really* want is never stupid, unless what you really really want involves copious amounts of alcohol and/or murder and mayhem. Seriously, go for it. Life is too short not to figure out where you want to go and where you want to be.

My life is vastly different because in a moment of desperation searching for a job, I said "Fuck it, I'll look for something abroad" and I clicked on the "overseas" box at monster.com.

You want to go to England, do it. You want to them move to Boston, do it. Sometimes, you just have to throw caution to the wind.

[silussa.livejournal.com]

Major jumps seem to actually start with small steps. As for the job, I'm not sure what it pays....but in the end, it IS a job. There are plenty more out there.

Good luck.

[fangtsu.livejournal.com]

Ah Heinlien. He rights such fun stuff, though I haven't read them all and prefer mostly the earlier works. What I've heard of some of the last couple things he wrote discourages me.

[khava.livejournal.com]

I've read three Heinlein books: Stranger in a Strange Land, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and Number of the Beast. All of them focused heavily on alternative sexual/marriage arrangements. In my view, this greatly detracts from their quality.

Number of the Beast in particular started with a fantastic premise, then degenerated into an orgy wherein every character had sex with every other character. With the exception of the father and adult daughter, who did not actually have sex, but instead discussed how there was nothing wrong with the two of them having sex if they used birth control, and how they could merge their eggs and sperm in a lab to produce offspring without genetic defects.

The only one I actually liked was The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, which had the least sex and the least radical sexual views (but still very radical) of the three, and had some excellent libertarian themes.

Discussion of Heinlein (Some Spoilers)

[eredien]

I personally thought that Mistress didn't focus on alternative sexual/marriage arrangements so much as occasionaly pause to present them to the reader as "this is the way this character lives" when those arrangements or the rules guiding their understanding were disregarded or challenged. (eg: Stu's run-in with Luna's court system, or when they throw Manuel into jail for bigamy at one point). Most of the time, I thought, the characters got along with their lives.

I did think that it was more pronounced in Stranger, which occasionally (in my opinion) stopped the plot to focus on sexual behaviours. I have mixed feelings about this: showing how alien the alien's attitude was toward sex and the varying definitions of love and normalcy was very much in keeping with that character, and in some respect, part of the plot. I don't think those differences necessitated, however, a complete stop in the plot for a demonstration.
There's a difference between giving the reader a description such that the reader is led to think, "hey, this guy's attitude about sex is different, and it's intriguing, and causes some problems, too--let's see how that plays out in the worldview he's currently in" and an actual description of an orgy.

The book(s) which I have most recently read which show alternative sexual arrangements and succeed at making them both relatively unobtrusive yet also central to the main character's worldview and perception of self is Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel's Dart series.

[wayman.livejournal.com]

The only Heinlein I've read are Double Star and The Puppet Masters, neither of which involved sex or relationships in any way as far as I can recall, but both of which seemed so bland, formulaic, and predictable that I never felt the urge to read more Heinlein. (More's the pity, in that I apparently missed out on his more controversial philosophical stuff, like TMiaHM and Starship Troopers and SiaSL....) In retrospect, the ones I read probably seemed this way because they (like much of Asimov, whose fiction I find similarly dull but whose nonfiction I love) in large part established the formulas.

As far as quitting job and England and Gerbilfriends, go you!!! *hug*

Double Star

[eredien]

I was told by my tenth grade math teacher, who first told me about Heinlein, that Double Star was absolutely wonderful when it first came out. I still plan on reading it at some point.

I have found Asimov's long ficiton works (namely, the Foundation series) to be horrendously plodding and boring each time I attempt to read them, but absolutely adore his short stories.
As to his nonfiction, I think I only read the book he and his wife wrote on writing, and his (auto? cannot remember) biography, which was one of the most self-congratulatory books I've ever read. It was entertaining--but I don't know if I liked it.

[ghostsphoenix.livejournal.com]

I've only read "Starship Troopers" (which is not to be confused with the movie by the same name, which should have never happened, and if it did, not with this book's title on it), but it had nothing to do with marriage or sex, really. The closest it comes to sexual issues is that the Army is all-male, but this is balanced by the Navy being predominantly female. *shrug*

-Ghost

[weirdquark]

Hm. The only problem I can see is that I don't have any place to hang my lantern so I don't think we'll be able to find you one either.

Other than that, yay of you coming.

It is a good thing. And throwing away a paying job and a living situation that makes you unhappy is smart. It doesn't matter if you aren't sure where you're going; you can figure it out on the way. Making a choice to change your life this way is brave. Go you.

[lotusbiosm.livejournal.com]

So, here's the thing. You're 22 years old. Which means that this is the point in your life when you should take risks. It is also the point in your life when you should move out of your parents house. So, if it helps, you are not being reckless, you are taking the next logical life step. Because if you stay there, will you move out? Or would you spend the next year (or more) living at home. With your parents. In the town you grew up in. Crashing with some friends in the big city till you get on your feet is infinitely more responsible, ultimately, than staying at home, which is not only safe, but will make you miserable (which is then, not safe). So there.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Yes, Heinlein did study Russian, and his wife was fluent. In my opinion, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is his best novel, the one that most precisely balances politics, story, characters, and infodumping. He did become very interested in sex in his later years, but usually not as coherently and entertainingly as in Moon.

You are going to England! And then you are coming here! Yay. Take pictures, please. And be aware that when you get here I will lock you in a room with all those books you've been meaning to read for years, after you've done the job-looking and so on. Yay.

[foleyartist1.livejournal.com]

I don't know what I'm doing with my life. I don't think anyone does.

All I know is, health insurance next month isn't going to do any good if your living situation makes you insane in the meantime. It is much easier for your friends to help you scrape up money for a doctor's visit than it is for some random doctor you've never met to make you sane again once you've gone round the bend.

I think you're making the right choice.

[batshua]

Good luck.

I'm sure you've made the right decision. Many hugs because I realize this was not easy.

Many more hugs because if you're still in Boston during Spring Break I do believe I will see you.

[kirath.livejournal.com]

I'll keep it short...

Do as you decided. It's a Good Thing for you.

*huggles*