still on the mortal coil

gave practice talk for germany conference.
it was fine.

my school anxiety dreams have now been replaced by unpacking anxiety dreams. boxes everywhere, looming over me evilly, and nowhere to put anything. moving is hard! let's go shopping instead.

oh wait. i hate shopping.

c&i will be spending xmas in minnesota. she's the first girlfriend i've brought home...and she is jewish. i absolutely adore the thought of her making latkes in my mom's kitchen on xmas morning. i want to walk with her at night down to where my childhood home was, and stand there and show her where all the rooms were. with snow falling all around, muting everything.

student life

in two weeks i have to give an hour-long talk on a research project that i barely have my brain around. i don't even have a solid first draft of the paper. between now and then i have to turn in another paper, write a short abstract for the january conference, draft my fellowship essays, go on a three-day fieldwork trip, and move house.

please send drugs.
stimulants preferred.

people keep saying i'm ahead of the game but the truth is that i haven't even figured out the rules yet. but i think there's a personality type, maybe a somewhat perfectionistic or obsessive type, that always feels like they have everyone fooled into thinking that they know what they're talking about. it's called impostor syndrome, and it has a wikipedia page so you know it must be real.

there was this really awful talk on it at the institute this summer that devolved into basically a group therapy session that made me want to stick a fork in my eye. one girl: "oh sociolinguists are so inTIMidated by syntactians!" some guy: "no, no, we're intimidated by YOU!" (actually...no, we aren't. syntacticians accept that we are a superior life form.)

anyway, i think i definitely have a touch of the impostor syndrome, but i am trying to just ignore that part of myself 'cause it doesn't seem to get me anywhere and i think it's just a little more self-indulgent than i want to be.

(...she says, wrapping up another introspective blog post.)

ps. it's almost time for NaBloPoMo again. can you handle the truth?

yellow

we are moving in twelve days.
breathe.

had a moment to catch ourselves this morning, she made waffles and we leaned against each other on the couch in a pool of sun, melted butter warm. talking of the new york times. heather said once that love has a common language, and she was right. she was right about a lot of things, she was the only one i (almost) believed when she told me i'd have this again. thawed hands, a working heart. auden: "all you lived through, dancing because you no longer need it for any reason." hmm, i may have misquoted that, but i am too lazy to look it up at present.

she painted the office yellow for me.
melted butter warm.
sunshine warm.