where's my bright, beautiful tomorrow?
Jul. 29th, 2004 12:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rosawSometimes the adage the future is not fixed hits me over the head with an anvil. And not a soft, cushy, pillow-esque anvil, either. A big, hard, solid, you never know what's coming around the next corner anvil.
22% rent increase. With, by the way, no pay increase for California teachers in 3 years. In the past 3 years, my rent has increased 43% and my income has not increased even 1% because of the state budget crisis. Apparently, I can't afford to live and teach in California.
SO's adviser really testing SO's resolve and will to live. He sends horrible and mean criticism designed to hurt rather than instruct. Apparently the "german method" of dissertation directorship does not include constructive criticism, let alone supportive commentary.
My own progress is unavoidably affected by the trauma in R's life. It's impossible to know how to be the best partner possible in these circumstances. Really, it's impossible to know anything in this process. Possibly, it's impossible to know anything, but I'm not quite that depressed. Yet.
I would like to believe that there's some way of knowing what will happen -- that R will finish and we'll have academic jobs and his adviser will be the nice man I remember rather than the invisible force of evil I have come to loathe, and that some day we won't have all this financial and academic trauma -- but there's no way to know. And, despite Sting's cynicism, history does teach some lessons. Those lessons do not make the future look bright enough to warrant sunscreen, let alone shades.
I think I'll go to Disneyland tonight and watch some fireworks, maybe ride the tower of terror. It's bound to be at least a different quality of scared. And maybe it will shake me out of this funk.
22% rent increase. With, by the way, no pay increase for California teachers in 3 years. In the past 3 years, my rent has increased 43% and my income has not increased even 1% because of the state budget crisis. Apparently, I can't afford to live and teach in California.
SO's adviser really testing SO's resolve and will to live. He sends horrible and mean criticism designed to hurt rather than instruct. Apparently the "german method" of dissertation directorship does not include constructive criticism, let alone supportive commentary.
My own progress is unavoidably affected by the trauma in R's life. It's impossible to know how to be the best partner possible in these circumstances. Really, it's impossible to know anything in this process. Possibly, it's impossible to know anything, but I'm not quite that depressed. Yet.
I would like to believe that there's some way of knowing what will happen -- that R will finish and we'll have academic jobs and his adviser will be the nice man I remember rather than the invisible force of evil I have come to loathe, and that some day we won't have all this financial and academic trauma -- but there's no way to know. And, despite Sting's cynicism, history does teach some lessons. Those lessons do not make the future look bright enough to warrant sunscreen, let alone shades.
I think I'll go to Disneyland tonight and watch some fireworks, maybe ride the tower of terror. It's bound to be at least a different quality of scared. And maybe it will shake me out of this funk.