Revelations, 10:30

So over the weekend I decided that I'm not going to start "work" (aka career, aka real life) until September 2008.

The impetus is three fold:
Fold one, I have the chance to go to the Olympics in August, and I don't think the kinds of jobs I'm looking at include 2 weeks vacation after less than a month of work.
Fold two, everyone I know is stressing out so seriously about consulting jobs/TFA/other jobs that have conventional time lines, that I think I might do well to just check out of the job market, rather than stressing so far in advance (especially as Lisa - my supervisor at MTV - said there was no need to apply more than two months before my desired start date).
Fold three, I've spent pretty much the past five years (estimating conservatively) trying aggressively to get ahead and make all the right career moves, and now that I'm on the cusp of that big move, I realize I may be happier with a less high powered job. But I have to sort that out.

So it'll just be scamming the grant committees and the parents, at least for another couple of months.

The Unfortunate Permanence of Impermanence, or Vice Versa, or the Total Opposite.

As a result of various (in camera) discussions last night, I have spent a more-than-usual time thinking about what it means to have exes. Specifically, these three things:

1) Endings, past, the inevitability of change, the instability of the world. (ie: How is this thing that I thought was so important years ago now allegedly "over"?).

2) The seemingly contradictory persistence of things apparently dead and gone (ie: Why do we still think about our exes? Why do they still call us? Why do they still haunt us? Why do a boyfriend's exes still haunt me even though I never met them because they're no longer part of his life and will never be part of mine? Why won't my exes stop trying to be a part of my life?).

3) Revelation (ie: How much do you tell your current boyfriend about your past boyfriend? What circumstances might necessitate telling? What circumstances mean you should never ever tell? What do you do with an ex that is present even though you don't want them to be? Why do I want to know about your exes if I know it will likely be upsetting? Why do I want you to know about mine?)

And I guess the question at the heart of this matter is really: How much perspective to we have about what (or who) is really significant? If we ever have any, when do we get it?

The pain in my back has, generally speaking, subsided to the status of non-issue. And, of course, it's pathetically thrilling to be able to do normal things (I'm sitting upright! In a chair!) and even slightly beyond normal things (I went to the gym yesterday! For a whole half hour!). Sure, things are still a little tight and it catches me off guard on occasion (say, if I try to stand up suddenly), but more or less I'm back to normal.

Except that it's still too uncomfortable to do things that seem he althyand nice and not that physically demanding. Like jogging across Elm street when the light changes and there's four lanes of traffic whizzing towards you. Or cuddling. And then I get frustrated (I almost used the second person, as in "And then you get frustrated" but the whole point is that the experience isn't generalizable) and snappish at the person implicated (in this case, the drivers of all the cars who are trying to run me over or the able-bodied students skipping joyfully out of harm's way or the co-cuddler who is half-asleep and thus half-oblivious to my squirming).

And so the saga continues. No cuddling. And greater reliance on the good graces and brake pads of the people of New Haven.

My evening gym trip today was plagued by my sudden awareness that New Haven isn't quite as safe as I'd felt it was (that is, of course, only considering my post first semester freshman year feelings, because way back when I pretty much believed I was going to be mugged by people who turned out to be docents at the art gallery and classics professors). Surprisingly, this has nothing (or very little) to do with my off-campus living situation, as comparatively few of the recent crimes have taken place outside the Yale bubble. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the crime rates off campus have stayed status quo, while on-campus residents appear to have been plagued by increasingly bizarre and horrific trespasses.
Now when I walk down Howe, I wonder if I will be bludgeoned by teenagers (all between 5'3" and 5'7") with milk crates.
Now when I jaywalk across "the most dangerous intersection in the world" (ie: the corner of Elm, Whalley, Dixwell, Tower Parkway, and Howe, right by the Shell station and El Amigo's) I wonder if I will be struck by a hit and run driver.
And while I'm on the elliptical machine, trying not to think about my back spasms or my homework and focus on the episode of "Lost" on my iPod, I worry that someone is scrawling death threats in blood on my walls.

Today's To Do

Things I absolutely, no questions asked, should be doing today:
Seeing "Darjeeling Limited"
Eating healthier since I can't go to the gym because of my back
Reading Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Finishing Housekeeping
Finishing a draft of a short story for my fiction class


Things I have done today:
Taken a cold shower because our heat isn't on yet and for some reason the water also wouldn't get above lukewarm for the first twenty minutes of my shower
Gone to Guitar Center
Been asked if I played the guitar
Been asked if I sing
Been encouraged to learn to play any instrument, "even the recorder"
Laughed sheepishly
Eaten at the Pantry
Written about four pages of my short story, all of which did more to derail the plot than progress it
Started adding all my old movie reviews to External Reviews on IMDb
Finally received a George Foreman grill in the mail that it's inexplicably taken me about a week to obtain
Debated quitting the gym entirely
Quibbled about edits to a piece, which is usually not my style

Day two of recuperation.

Things that help:
Walgreen's brand Heat Wraps
Showers
600mg Ibuprofen (basically three Advil)
Laying in bed

Things that do not help:
Homework
Brushing one's teeth
Going to a fiction class to sit in a hard chair and your intelligence is insulted by a fellow student who said she "just didn't want to" develop her story past two unconnected sketches about ants
Fruit flies

Things that do not help as much as you'd think:
500mg Methocarbamol (a non-habit-forming muscle relaxer, allegedly prescribed to me by "Dr. P. Martinez" who I never saw, ditto "Dr. Barbara Kinnane," who is apparently the radiologist who discharged me).

Fact: I fell off a horse yesterday night, spent four hours in the Yale-New Haven emergency room with a seventeen year old Caucasian male named Charles who had ingested "a lot of mushrooms."

Fact: As such, I spent much of today in bed, catching up on work, watching "The Incredibles" and recuperating.

Fact: It was nice.

Wild Speculation: I will feel slightly worse tomorrow than I did today, but I will make myself go to at least one class, because I can not reasonably permit myself more than one day of utter laziness, even if it doesn't really count as laziness because I'm injured.