Hopeless

I don't really know why I blog anymore. 

Increasingly, I suspect that it is merely a way to delude myself into thinking that what I think is relevant and meaningful, a way to distract myself from the reality that by all the standards I've used to judge my life I'm a failure.  But it's not.  It's just the random observations of a has-been (or never-was) with no future beyond mere existence, spewed out to no good purpose at all.  What a waste of time.  What a waste of a life.

I used to have hope for and trust in the future as a place of possibilities.  I don't anymore.

Happy Holidays.

Comments

[Marsha]

Rana,
I've been following your blog for about 12 months now. I think some of us (me included) blog because we need a voice in the public sphere. We need to feel that people take notice of what we say. I'm doing a PhD and I think without my blogging I'd be near invisible. I have a huge amount of respect for the blogosphere but I think it's a mistake to focus on it entirely. I think you'd miss your blog if you stopped but why not use 2005 to start another project? I recall that you had some problem getting your academic work published. Is there a way to adapt it for the internet? Who cares if it's not general interest or whatever the problem was. You were interested in your work so other people will be too. This time you've had out will have changed your perspectives. Or is there some other kind of writing you'd like to do? What about your local newspapers? I could imagine you writing a column like 'Countryside notes' or something like that. I almost said just do something creative and you'll feel better, but knitting's not enough. You need a voice. Make 2005 the year that you do something for you. Whether it's some kind of writing or local politics or a mentoring programme for local teenagers or speaking in your church or popular history or anything.

A blog only provides a partial picture of the writer so I'm not qualified to tell you what to do as I don't really know you. These suggestions are more things that I would advise myself to do. Maybe I'm like you or maybe I'm not.

Anyway, have a good festive season and remember that spring will come again soon and it's always possible to make a new start.
Marsha

[Dorothea Salo]

A couple of things.

First, there is nothing intrinsically wrong or wasteful with just existing.

Second, work is not life. You don't have the work you wanted. (For now, but I know you don't want to hear that.) That doesn't mean you can't have a life you can value.

Peace Corps? A non-profit (http://idealist.org has job listings)? A PAC? Places to start, maybe...

[Marsha]

First, there is nothing intrinsically wrong or wasteful with just existing.

Good point

[Elayne Riggs]

What they said. In addition, recall that you have had these feelings before, Rana, and you have gotten through them. Trust that you will again. You are, I suspect, far stronger than you believe you are.

[bitchphd]

Ouch.

What the others said. These things are cyclical; you're down now, but you will return to where you fell from. You will.

[rams]

Whoa, whoa, WHOA!!! Lambpie, froggieraven, grab my wrist. (I don't believe in astrology, but Mercury's in retrograde) The wisdom's in the above comments -- I'm just empirical:

eat some dark chocolate,

knit for half an hour (a cap for Warm Kids would be a step in the direction of the Peace Corps without requiring a passport)

read Molly Ivins. She's depressed and mad, too, but she's been fighting the darkness a long time and can still laugh in their foul faces

and remember that your blog represents a gleam of wit and diversity, a bright tile in the mosaic, and that's just what they don't want.

[rams]

("They" being the forces of entropy, not the above commentators -- my syntax is in retrograde, too.)

[Marsha]

Some of it must be the post-academic identity issue. If you're missing that academic identity then invent yourself a new one. You don't have to be in a university to be a thinker and a scholar. You don't have to have to have a discipline to be a thinker and a scholar. Is there anything you always wanted to learn? Like the history of a foreign country or a different period? You've got the skills and you can bring your different experience to it. This idea that you have to be in a university to be an academic is such an Anglo-Saxon thing. Be a frog. Look at these guys, they're frighteningly clever and they're not in uni.
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/blogs/0,2-3506,48-0,0.html

[yami]

Piffle. My enjoyment is a perfectly good purpose. Your enjoyment is a perfectly good purpose too, but I'm feeling self-centered today.

"There's nothing wrong or wasteful about just existing" doesn't go far enough - "mere" existence is the whole point! Food, drink, non-procreative sex, giggling the night away... none of these things provide a future beyond mere existence, either. Hoorah for wasting time! If blogging makes you feel awful, then don't do it, but it sounds like you've just been possessed by the spirit of a Calvinist party-pooper. Which happens to all of us now and then, no matter where our lives are going.

If the future's too depressing, why not try the present? Dunno what the weather's like down south, but it's a jaw-droppingly gorgeous day here at the base of the San Gabriels. Not much snow on Mt. Baldy, but you can see all the way to winter on the San Bernardinos.

[Alison]

For what it's worth from a lurker, I find what you have to say quite relevant and interesting, and would miss your blog if you stopped. Not that my reading pleasure should be your first priority of course...

Alison

[Chris Clarke]

I know how it feels, Rana, especially today.

Thinking of you in my little corner over here. Anything I can do, let me know.

[USC]

This may be of interest

http://www.usc.edu/bus-affairs/ers/jobs/17246.html

[Jill Smith]

Rana - as I have said before, if you leave blogging, you will be missed. If that is not enough for you, that is your choice. But I and many others would be sorrowful.

A propos of your existential dilemma, there are many who have lived what they might consider to be "a waste of a life," and those they left behind would beg to differ.

[Rana]

It's not just the job. It's not even _this_ job.

So, while I know you all mean well, enough with the job suggestions. I'm not in a position to act on them, even if I qualified.

[flea]

I'm right down there at the bottom of the barrel with you right now, baby, and you know it. Hang on to me, okay? We'll get through it.

[LiL]

I feel just these kinds of things sometimes. But then I also feel the things Marsha said above. I don't know how you'll sort out your job/goal situation. That's really-really hard. I feel like I'm beginning to sort them out for myself, after struggling for years, but my experience is no help for someone else and besides, I could crash and burn any minute and lose everything I hold dear. We all could. It's what makes them precious.

But if you stopped blogging, I'd miss you. You're my friend (and a friend of many others who commented to this post) and it doesn't matter that I've never met you in real life. It's more even than that I'd just miss you. This may be a cruel thing to say - but I think I'd be hurt in a way similar to when a real-life friend decides to leave. Which never stops anyone doing it - but there it is.

And yet, if your heart's not in it, then you should stop. People don't own anyone who's gotten attached to them anything beyond being true to themselves, even if that means leaving them.

And you know, I think that being an academic for a long time almost spoils us - we do not quite know how to be like others who never had this ready-made identity handed to them at an acknowledged and accredited institution.

I feel like you're needing to create something, to put your inner world into the outer world, because there's something of a teacher in you, or a poet, an artist, or whatever it is that we want to call people who feel the need to change the world for the better - at least a little bit. And this need is hurting you right now because you don't know how yet. But I also think that you will know because it is hurting you enough that you won't stop until you do.

[Beth]

I like your blog. I wish I knew you better so I could think of just the right comforting thing to say. Pls hang in there!

[MisterBS]

Stay with my blessing; leave with my blessing.

Just don't leave without spitting on the bastards.

[cindy]

I'm not Catholic but I live with a Jewish man, so I know a little something about guilt. I'm going to lay it on you. If you leave I will be devastated. You will break my heart. Right now, I can't have my heart broken. This may not be working for you, but it's working for us, and damn it, you need to keep doing it. We love you.

[Harrison]

How many times I've felt the same way. How many times I've gotten over it. I don't know what else to say, other than, yes, these are bad times, but also, what you write reeks of capital D depression -- I would know, having been there so often myself. Hopelessness, anhedonia, regret, all hallmarks. But you know that already.

[DM]

Obviously do what is best for you; just realize that if you stopped this blog, you would be missed. This is a very good blog - at times thoughtful and provocative, and at times whimsical and fun. In today's world, that may not seem like much, but it really is.

[Amanda]

Oh, Rana. I won't give advice, since I've never found advice helpful in similar circumstances, either. But for what it's worth, I think there's nothing pointless about either living for the sake of living or writing for the sake of writing, and nothing you write here strikes me as a waste.

I think LiL's right about creativity and postacademic identity. I also think we're in the middle of a tired, trying time, which makes it a lot easier to fall into depression. Hang in there and take care of yourself.

[Rana]

Thanks, everyone.

I don't think I'm really going to stop blogging. I'm just frustrated with the role it plays (or fails to play) in my life. It used to be a way for me to come to grips with the emotional stresses of my life, to air them out and have other people pick over them so I didn't have them whirling around in my head anymore, making me crazy and depressed.

But now the things that make me crazy and depressed and the things I blog about have diverged, and so the blog too frequently feels like a bunch of distractions while I feel the insanity building up inside, with no place for it to go.

The job/career's part of it, but I can blog about that. It's the things I can't blog about that are killing me, and while I'm dealing with them, it's hard to feel happy with a blog that is just frivolous, or a blog that has meaning but no tangible effect on my life.

I do appreciate your thoughts, your comments and feedback and caring, but they can't solve the essential underlying problem: there are parts of my life that trouble me, and they are _exactly_ the sorts of things I have a profound difficulty talking about in person and _exactly_ the kinds of things I promised myself were off-limits to the blog, even though that is an arena in which I'd be able to address them more coherently.

And don't take this the wrong way, because I really do appreciate all your caring and concern and readership and friendship, but this blog can't mask the fact that my life is frequently an extremely lonely one, and sometimes blogging just drives home that fact and makes it even harder to bear.

I guess what I'm saying is that the blog is an emotional crutch as much as a coffeeklatch, and these days it's just not doing the job as far as the former function goes. I expect too much of it, as probably I do of myself. It's a recipe for disappointment.

[Wendy]

Rana, I'm sorry about all this. I'm a first-time poster here, and I've enjoyed your blog. Right after the election, I so related to so much of what you were saying. I'm also in academia and have struggled to find my place, too, not just career-wise but socially and geographically as well.

Good luck, and hugs.

[bitchphd]

I have a bit of the "some of the things that I really need to talk about aren't bloggable" thing going on too. I've started discussing some of them behind the scenes, via email and/or chat.

Which, you know, is advice, which is annoying b/c it's not like you can't think of this crap yourself. But fwiw.