Although it is hard for me to do so, I'm going to admit to being discouraged lately. Discouraged and lost. World must have read the title of my blog, realized that Calvin has been kicking its butt, and fought back. When I sat down to write it out, the first line of a famous sonnet written by Wordsworth (a poet whose work, as a whole, I hate). Here's the sonnet:
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
Wordsworth is kicking against the industrial revolution, and it's not hard to tell that he's pretty bummed out with his world. I think I'm mostly just kicking against the crap hole that is America's economy as of late (thanks for nothing, Obama) and the fact that rejection wears many masks as of late.
I have a part-time job working as a translator for a medical company called QuantiaMD. It is my personal version of Hell (see also: cubicle), and they feed the flames by limiting my hours and employing me as a contract worker so they don't have to give me benefits and can fire me without a second thought. I have another glamourous job working retail for Eastern Mountain Sports. I love the people I work with, but EMS pays a wopping $1.50 over minimum wage (good thing I have two degrees) so even if I worked there full time I would have to forego one of the following every month: making rent, appeasing the debt gods with a slough of minimum payments, buying groceries, and paying tithing (which, for the record, has never and will never be foregone).
My car's timing belt has started a constant screaming and the clutch is iffy coming out of first gear.
I got rejected by 12 PhD programs after an application process that broke my brain and my bank account (I knew I should have used that $1400 to buy a motorcycle).
I don't have enough teaching experience to be a strong candidate for any of the three whole teaching jobs open in America right now, and I don't even get responses about applications I send for lower-than-dirt online adjunct teaching positions at world-class academic power houses like BYU-freaking-Idaho.
Don't even get me started about dating.
My confidence, my patience, and my options are all running on empty, and the effects are spreading. Here are the two ways I gauge my difficulties: I don't sleep well, basketball has ceased to be enjoyable. BASKETBALL! I can't believe it.
I'm about ready to join the army and be done with it.
^ most likely future
Anyway, there's more to complain about, but I'm tired of feeling like this. It's not like me to get discouraged and hopefully it doesn't last, but I'm tired of knocking on doors that don't open and getting no direction on which door I should knock next.
The future is foggy to say the least. I just hope it doesn't take too long to get my bearings.
