I got the results from my thesis back a month ago: passed with revisions. It's a result I'm very pleased with. My examiners comments give me lots of food for thought and encourage me to take my thinking further. And while I don't agree with all their suggestions, agreeing is hardly the point of academia.
But when people ask me how I'm celebrating, my response is "I'm not." I thought I'd be thrilled to see the result of 6 years of hard work come to a successful end. But I'm not. For the most part, I feel apathetic.
And that's been really confusing for me. Confusing and stressful. Because as I try to sort out what this apathy is about, I'm faced with that big looming question of "What next?" And that's a question I haven't really had an answer to. Like Jack Sparrow in Dead Man's Chest, my compass doesn't know where to point.
When I made the decision to move to Australia and pursue postgraduate studies 8 years ago, the idea of being an academic thrilled me. I was desperately unhappy with my life; study was an out. It was a way to a better future. And while I thought that better future would involve living the my-work-is-never-done lifestyle of a hotshot academic, a lot has changed for me since then.
During the process of doing my PhD my priorities shifted. Through a lot of hard work I gradually built a life for myself that makes me happy. A life outside of my PhD. And while I wanted to make living my new life my priority, I didn't know how to shift my thinking of what it was I would be getting out of my PhD in the end. So even though the prospect of being an academic hasn't exactly thrilled me for some time now, when people asked me what I want to do post-PhD I still say "Research, through a university."
Because my personal life was not a source of pleasure for me, and because I couldn't really imagine myself wanting something more than I wanted a career that would take me away from the things that made me unhappy, I never gave much thought to other career options. I'd be an academic. I'd work hard and long and travel and my ideas would be interesting and engaging. That's what I thought would constitute a good life. A life where I would be constantly striving on to the next big thing.
As I've said, a lot changed for me. I stopped looking to the future and started living in the present, and I discovered that I like it in the here and now. When I think about it, I used to buy into the idea that life has these trajectories that we go down and if you mean well things just kind of work out. But that's not how the world works. Times are bloody tough out there! I've come to terms with the fact that life is often shit and you just have to deal with it because it doesn't matter who you are or what you've been through, life doesn't owe you a fucking thing. Whatever you want from life, you've got to work smart to get it. And be prepared to roll with the punches when it doesn't work out anyway.
What type of a career I have has become a lot less important to me. Instead, I want to focus on enjoying my life. My career goals have shifted to finding something that will pay me enough to be comfortable while managing my debt load, and flexible enough that I can continue pursuing the various adventures life throws my way. I realise that I'm basically chasing after a unicorn, but I want my life to be a lot more than my job! The problem with academia is, it's a particularly exploitative industry, with the situation growing worse by the minute. I've seen the changes that have occurred over the past 6 years, I do not like where things are heading!
I'm writing this from a farm house in central Queensland, because of that whole prioritising living my life thing and because, if you let it, life takes you on some funny adventures. And while I'm meant to be studiously working away on my thesis revisions, I've mostly been sitting here, letting my anxiety about the future grow into paralysis. So yesterday afternoon I was delighted to go sit in a tractor for a few hours and feel anxious there instead! While scouring Facebook, I came across this article that a friend had posted. And I don't know why, but something in me clicked.
The thing is, I love doing research. I love engaging with theory. I love writing. And I am good at all those things. They bring me happiness and make me feel alive. But I don't want to be in the academic rat race. I think ultimately what I would like to do is work in, or with, the community sector. I like the idea of doing work that has practical, tangible benefits for actual people. I don't really know what this role would actually look like, but I feel like I've got at least a vague sense of a goal of something I can work towards. And I know that it is going to take a lot of work to get myself into the career path that I want. It's not going to happen overnight and I probably will have to make some short term sacrifices with living my life to achieve the long term goal. That's OK though, because my compass knows where to point.
Tuesday, August 5, 2014
Tuesday, April 1, 2014
What is Love?
Just a minute ago I was walking down the street and had one of those moments where I remembered something about my ex that annoyed me and was overcome with a feeling of joy at no longer having to deal with this particular, very small thing. And I thought to myself "I mean, I loved her, but fuck she drove me crazy!" And then I thought "But did I really love her, if what I feel most about not having her in my life anymore is relief?" Of course I fucking did!
There is this idea that love is something elusive and grandiose, that it's only really real when it is big and intense and life threateningly permanent. Like when you would catch a grenade for someone, even though they wouldn't do the same for you. Well that's just stupid! Quite frankly, Bruno Mars, if someone is trying to kill me via grenade they're probably not going to stop because some fool got in the way and blew themselves up. No, if I've gotten myself into a grenade throwing situation I'd much rather my loved ones not get themselves killed delaying my assassination. I'd really rather they let me clean up my own mess, thanks.
Love is such a wonderful and complex emotion. Love can mean all sorts of things, can exist in all sorts of ways. But for some reason we seem really set on minimizing it, narrowing it down and restricting it. Why are we so scared of it?
I've been thinking a lot about relationships and love and how I want to live my life since my last blog post. I've been doing a lot of reflecting about how and with who and why I fall for people, what value I place on what types of relationships, and what different sorts of dynamics this produces in my life. That reflecting is still very much a work in progress. By no means do I actually have anything figured out.
What I have noticed, though, is that since I have made the active choice to stop buying into traditional relationship structures, I've had a lot more love in my life. Since I'm not restricted to giving all my emotional energy to one person, I've found that I have more energy to give everyone. And since I am not placing demands on a particular person to reciprocate my feelings/energy, I've got more emotional resources to draw upon and am less invested in trying to balance out emotional exchanges.
I feel like in traditional relationship structures emotions sometimes get treated like goods that can be bartered for. Like, "you gave me 5 apples but 2 of them were rotten, so I'm only going to give you 3 oranges." Now if someone gives me 5 apples I will appreciate them and give back to them how ever many oranges I can manage to give them. It might be 1, it might be 7. Maybe I'll give them something that's not even a fruit instead! The point is, instead of trying to exchange like for like with people, I give what I am able to give and take what they are able to give. If I want it, and vice versa.
There is less attachment to the love in my life now, though that is definitely still a work in progress! What I mean is, when I start to feel loving feelings for someone, I don't feel the need to clamp down on that person and make them be a part of my life in a particular way so much anymore. I'm getting better at just sitting with those feelings and letting them be there and letting the relationship be whatever form it will be. Again, it's something that I'm working on, not something that I have mastered.
It can be tricky because while I think about relationships and emotions as unstructured things, I quite often find myself in various types of relationships and having various types of emotions with people who take a more structured approach to things. To them, certain feelings or behaviours or whatever mean certain things, whereas to me, well, I've just summed it up in a new tattoo...
Loving someone doesn't have to mean anything more than that you care about them. Whether or not they reciprocate doesn't validate or invalidate your feelings. It's worth checking in with yourself to make sure that you're not investing too much energy on something that is not giving you anything back, you know, for self care and all that. And it's worth remembering that love is just an emotion. It doesn't have to be that big of a deal.
There is this idea that love is something elusive and grandiose, that it's only really real when it is big and intense and life threateningly permanent. Like when you would catch a grenade for someone, even though they wouldn't do the same for you. Well that's just stupid! Quite frankly, Bruno Mars, if someone is trying to kill me via grenade they're probably not going to stop because some fool got in the way and blew themselves up. No, if I've gotten myself into a grenade throwing situation I'd much rather my loved ones not get themselves killed delaying my assassination. I'd really rather they let me clean up my own mess, thanks.
Love is such a wonderful and complex emotion. Love can mean all sorts of things, can exist in all sorts of ways. But for some reason we seem really set on minimizing it, narrowing it down and restricting it. Why are we so scared of it?
I've been thinking a lot about relationships and love and how I want to live my life since my last blog post. I've been doing a lot of reflecting about how and with who and why I fall for people, what value I place on what types of relationships, and what different sorts of dynamics this produces in my life. That reflecting is still very much a work in progress. By no means do I actually have anything figured out.
What I have noticed, though, is that since I have made the active choice to stop buying into traditional relationship structures, I've had a lot more love in my life. Since I'm not restricted to giving all my emotional energy to one person, I've found that I have more energy to give everyone. And since I am not placing demands on a particular person to reciprocate my feelings/energy, I've got more emotional resources to draw upon and am less invested in trying to balance out emotional exchanges.
I feel like in traditional relationship structures emotions sometimes get treated like goods that can be bartered for. Like, "you gave me 5 apples but 2 of them were rotten, so I'm only going to give you 3 oranges." Now if someone gives me 5 apples I will appreciate them and give back to them how ever many oranges I can manage to give them. It might be 1, it might be 7. Maybe I'll give them something that's not even a fruit instead! The point is, instead of trying to exchange like for like with people, I give what I am able to give and take what they are able to give. If I want it, and vice versa.
There is less attachment to the love in my life now, though that is definitely still a work in progress! What I mean is, when I start to feel loving feelings for someone, I don't feel the need to clamp down on that person and make them be a part of my life in a particular way so much anymore. I'm getting better at just sitting with those feelings and letting them be there and letting the relationship be whatever form it will be. Again, it's something that I'm working on, not something that I have mastered.
It can be tricky because while I think about relationships and emotions as unstructured things, I quite often find myself in various types of relationships and having various types of emotions with people who take a more structured approach to things. To them, certain feelings or behaviours or whatever mean certain things, whereas to me, well, I've just summed it up in a new tattoo...
Loving someone doesn't have to mean anything more than that you care about them. Whether or not they reciprocate doesn't validate or invalidate your feelings. It's worth checking in with yourself to make sure that you're not investing too much energy on something that is not giving you anything back, you know, for self care and all that. And it's worth remembering that love is just an emotion. It doesn't have to be that big of a deal.
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