Apathy

You ever have one of those days where you just don’t want to do anything?

I have things piling up on my desk, tasks to accomplish that simply aren’t going to go away, no matter how long I stare at them. And yet I can’t seem to get started on anything. And when I do devote a little bit of time to something, I’m ready for a break after ten minutes. I just feel...apathetic.

I have three tests this week, including one tonight, and while none of them will be challenging, I think I’m uptight a little bit just about the prospect of having to actually take tests again.

And I still can’t get that nagging little voice out of the back of my head – that inner critic – who keeps reminding me that a year ago I was applying for Master’s and Ph.D. programs, and now I’m sitting in classes at a technical college working toward an Associate’s degree. And, in fact, I’m not even in the Associate’s degree program yet. I’m just in the LMR program, which is basically a series of classes to train you to take X-rays. It’s like being in vocational school.

I had expected, by September of this year, to be in graduate school somewhere. Maybe Houston, or Arizona, or Memphis. Surrounded by peers who shared my interest in writing, people who were intellectual and intelligent, people with whom I would have in common a love of writing, reading, and learning. I would be going to class every day on a beautiful university campus, seeing the pretty co-eds and enjoying that distinct “collegiate” atmosphere. Feeling good about myself because I was part of it, I was good enough, I had been accepted, given that nod approval by the powers that be. No longer would I be the only one of my college friends without graduate education. No longer would I be the only one of my college friends stuck in a dead-end office job. No sir. No more office jobs for me. Ever. I would be high on academia, proud of myself, feeling that I was somebody, immersing myself every day in my passion for writing.

Instead, it’s September, I’m stuck in a dead-end office job (again) that sucks the life right out of me, and I’m taking night classes at a technical college, surrounded, certainly, by some people who are intelligent, thoughtful, and hardworking, but mostly by post-high school nitwits hoping to find an easy path to avoiding minimum-wage jobs for the rest of their lives.

Oh, it may not be fair to say that characterizes most of the people I’m in class with, but it certainly characterizes some. I was sitting in a class last week, for instance, next to a girl who told me she had failed the class once already and was retaking it, and who kept complaining under her breath about wanting to leave, and who doodled the entire time on her notebook writing things like Ceclia loves Greg and Greg + Ceclia = 4-ever.

I’m not kidding.

I realize I’m just being down in the mouth with all my Sad Sam rambling, and I don’t mean to sound like I’m second guessing my choice to enter this program, because I’m not at all. More than anything, I’m just lamenting about not having been accepted to graduate school.

And of course, there is part of me that wishes I had done this already – this Radiologic Technology program – and gotten it out of the way so that I could be working in this field now, instead of just starting out.

I hate that I have to put my writing on the backburner. Even though I haven’t been writing over the past few years like I wish I had been, at least I’ve been making some progress. Now I don’t have time to write at all, and barely even have time to do much reading. It’s just a total lifestyle change for me right now...fourteen hour days, studying, working on papers and projects, no time to do anything I enjoy doing except on the weekends, and then I have to spend at least some of my weekend time studying and working on school-related things. Money is a stress, Hailey is a stress, working forty hours a week at a job that drains me of life is a stress. Melanie and I have some friction in our relationship too, not because of any problems between us, but simply because any time you both have a lot of work-, money-, and child-related stress, you are inevitably going to have some of that stress creep into your relationship. I still want to go out and drink like I used to, but I know I can’t for a variety of reasons: health, drunk driving, money, hangovers, no time.

I just feel totally off kilter.

It’s little wonder, then, that I have no motivation to work today. It’s pretty outside and I just wish I could go home and sit in the sun. I haven’t meditated or done yoga in what seems like weeks. I haven’t been walking or doing much exercise.

It’s like the life has just been drained out of me.

Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.