Or maybe not….

Okay, since I am currently incapable of thinking straight for myself, I’ve been getting input from trusted friends here and elsewhere, and the conventional wisdoms seems to be: do not make major and irrevocable life decisions when you are in a really bad psychological state.  I’m thinking L may have been right that quitting is a way too permanent solution to a temporary problem.  My fight or flight response is kicking in and flight just seems so much easier.  Not the first time I’ve been here, but I just can’t remember how I managed to get through the previous times.

But it’s not a decision I *need* to make right now, so better to keep my options open.

Which means facing the beast.  Seat of pants to seat of chair.  Nose to grindstone.  Trying to make something happen.

Jumping off the ivory tower

I’m seriously thinking about it.  There is something fishy about the fact that virtually all my major depression and/or anxiety episodes in the past 12 or more years have occurred at critical junctions in my academic research life.  I am tired of working alone most of the time, on a project that no one actually cares about but me, which I myself no longer care about.  I like teaching, sometimes at least.  But right now my classes are sucking because I am trying not to put too much effort into them because I have to work on the research.  I’m not spending enough time with my kid, because I’m trying to work on the research.  I’m a bitch to my husband because I’m stressed about the research.  And what have I actually gotten done on this project?  In the sense of coherent prose I could actually show to anybody, rather than random notes that barely make sense even to me? 

 Nada.

 Something has to give.   Time to think about my exit strategy.  And my next move.

I have no fucking idea what that will be.

Drive-in musings

We went to the drive-in last night to see The Heartbreak Kid, which in case you had any doubts is every bit as lame as you’d expect it to be, because it was the only even remotely appealing film showing.  The formerly rural theater is now surrounded by the lights of city sprawl, which fade out the picture quality, and last night was one of the few times there were no projection problems causing long stoppages mid-film.  And yet, I heart the drive-in, no matter how lousy the movie is.  Actually, it’s better if the movie isn’t too good, because there are too many distractions to really get into a serious drama, and the picture quality doesn’t do justice to a really good action movie or something else where visuals are really crucial.  So dumb comedies are about perfect.

My very first memory is of the drive-in: seeing The Million Dollar Duck with my dad and older sister while my mom was in the hospital having my little sister, sitting on the hood of the car and thinking it was the most amazing place I’d ever been.  I was 2. 

When I was in elementary school, my parents took us to the drive-in all the time–cheapest way to entertain a family of five.  We’d stay for a double feature–the second show was usually something vaguely smutty, in a 1970s way, but I’d fall asleep way before I saw much of it.  I remember seeing You Light Up My Life, several Cannonball Run movies, and a few with Clint Eastwood and a monkey.  When I was about 10, the last drive-in in our area closed down, and it was the end of an era. 

Almost 20 years later, the drive-in outside the town where I went to grad school was wrecked by a hurricane, but they reopened it.  I went to the grand re-opening to see Halloween H20.  I remember almost nothing about the movie, but do remember that the concession stand doubled as a gun shop–ah, the South!–and we were horribly disappointed that the sound boxes on the stands, wiped out by the hurricane had been replaced by car radio tuning.  Three years later, my now-husband and I took a road trip to Colorado and had read somewhere that there was a drive-in and determined to go.  The only thing playing the night we were in that town was a double feature of Road Trip and Big Momma’s House, neither of which I would ever have voluntarily watched under any other conditions, but the stars, the outline of the mountains all around us, and the glow of new love made it magical. 

Now we live in a city where the drive-in survives.  And when our son was a baby but past the age where he would snooze peacefully in a regular movie theatre, we discovered that he would fall asleep in the car on the way over there and sleep through the whole time while we ate takeout and enjoyed the show. It’s especially nice now that we have a convertible to enjoy the cool night air. Unfortunately, Henry has outgrown the magic sleep-inducing effects, and the drive-in is now the most exciting place he’s ever refused to fall asleep. The movie is relatively unimportant to him–fortunately, since that movie was way inappropriate for children and I was hypocritically judgmental about all the families there with elementary-school aged kids. But the theater is under the main flight path for the airport, and last night there were even some fireworks in the distances from a nearby football game. When he got bored with climbing all around the car, we could walk around the lot and see all the people–many of whom bring lawn chairs or rig up ingenious seating arrangements on the backs of trucks. And now matter how hyper he gets, nobody ever complains or shoots us dirty looks, and we never have to leave the theater. As the movie was near ending he had finally curled up and was about to doze in my arms. Should have stayed for the second film, I suppose. Probably would have been something smutty.