is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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hateful masterpiece of dire villiany.
I am currently trying to revise my job letter. I have to send out about ten job applications this week. Then for the next three to six months it will be the same story, ten to fifteen job applications every two weeks or so. So much work, on top of the already so much work. It is torturous, this cover-letter writing. Somehow I have to manage to capture, within 2-3 pages of Times 12 point, all of my accomplishments and ambitions and qualifications, as if such things should ever be said out loud! So much worse than trying to write philosophy! Such a fountain of self-loathing am I at this very moment! So self-hating that I would like to say to myself one of my favorite lines from Sophocles' Philoctetes: "You fire, you total horror, you hateful masterpiece of dire villiany, what things you have done to me, how you have deceived me!"
As I said to some friends at APSA last weekend, sometimes I wake up and wonder exactly what set of random decisions placed me RIGHT HERE, in the midst of a profoundly human absurdity. Other days all seems just fine, as if I planned it.
Everytime I begin to glimpse the top of my mountain of work, I remember some other task that I've somehow hidden from myself while concentrating on the present task. It is relentless and approaching panic-level. Still, it looks like I'll go to New York for one or two days this weekend, to see Yoktan and Wendy and whoever else will have me. It's not practical but it might be a smart thing to do. And I am certain it will be enjoyable.
I was talking to Yoktan on the phone late last night, describing an unfortunate situation I found myself in at the American Political Science Association meeting (which wasn't all bad, not at all), and he said, "Did you make them form a human pyramid?" I said, "Um, no. These were SO not the human pyramid types." And he said, "Well, we've been surprised before, haven't we?"
What can you do after such brilliance but pause?
What can I say? He's right. However, I think it was his power, and not mine, that made the human pyramid of professors form in May 2006. So perhaps that's the answer. Take Yoktan to APSA, and all will be well.
In other news, Evany wrote a really good article about the Drum Corps International. Maybe go there instead?
4:11 p.m. - September 06, 2006
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