![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Some mornings I wake up, and the enormosity of why I'm living in this place dawns on me, in one of those, "Now how did I get here?!" sorts of ways.
Trying to grasp the full extent of what I am doing here is overwhelming. On the one hand, perhaps I'm here with a single purpose, trying to develop a story about ants that fits into a greater story about the world around us. But if that's the case, my life is one-dimensional and even the food left sitting out on the counter for my lunch is subsumed into some alternate monstrosity. I've never been that skilled at the relentless pursuit of a single thing. I've always needed multiple channels to express my personhood. When I tell my alternate, real story, which skips around in its imperfect way, it reveals something different. I resist becoming completely consumed by my work, though indeed it alters me.
There's a certain bleakness to this lifestyle because its expectations are unrealistic. Some days, the only hope I have is the knowledge of an eventual ending of graduate school, whether for lack of funding or care, or for a sense of completion and accomplishment.
Trying to grasp the full extent of what I am doing here is overwhelming. On the one hand, perhaps I'm here with a single purpose, trying to develop a story about ants that fits into a greater story about the world around us. But if that's the case, my life is one-dimensional and even the food left sitting out on the counter for my lunch is subsumed into some alternate monstrosity. I've never been that skilled at the relentless pursuit of a single thing. I've always needed multiple channels to express my personhood. When I tell my alternate, real story, which skips around in its imperfect way, it reveals something different. I resist becoming completely consumed by my work, though indeed it alters me.
There's a certain bleakness to this lifestyle because its expectations are unrealistic. Some days, the only hope I have is the knowledge of an eventual ending of graduate school, whether for lack of funding or care, or for a sense of completion and accomplishment.
