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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.)
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.)
