An Open Letter To: Myself

Hey dude-whats up:

You know, you didn't even want to blog tonight, I know what you wanted to do, crawl in the bed and read Kafka again, that's what you do when you feel down. You read Kafka and try to put yourself in the place of Gregor Samsa, lying on your back just as he did, and feeling like you don't belong in your own body. Well, I'm glad you opted to force yourself up and come write, because even though you don't feel like it right now, this will probably make you feel better.

Things are rough right now. You work 40 hours a week, plus an additional 5-10 teaching and preparing for class, you aren't used to that much work, combined with the pregnancy, its a lot. Not to mention that there are still house responsibilites and relationship responsibilites, you feel overwhelmed, and thats okie too, but you can't let this get you down.
Okie, so you can have some nights where you come home and do nothing but eat rich creamy ice cream and drink ginger ale, but you can't do that every night, and you can have some days where you throw your clothes around on the floor and kick shoes just because they are in front of you, but you can't keep that up or you'll never be able to find matching shoes and the fact that when the shoes end up getting the walls dirty pisses you off even more, suggests to me that you need to stop it. Now.

So, lets examine where your feelings of fear are coming from, and yes lets do it in cyberspace where all can see, because after all, this is supposed to liberating.Liberation, your favorite word. Well, there is the fact that you are responsible for bringing a brand new person into the world who will depend on you to teach them, love them, and care for them, for 18+ years, at least. Now, you have worked with kids before, have numerous cousins and have the uncanny ability to recall Mister Rogers' songs ('Your body's special and so is mine,' 'I'm a man, who manufactures, who manufacutues chairs, I'm a man who manufacutures chairs, I'm a man, who manufactures') and you still remember the name of all the creatures from the New Zoo Revue (Freddy, Henrietta, who could forget!) And above all else, no matter what you think, you are caring and compassionate and you've secretly wanted this for a very long time.

What else is there? Oh yeah, the PhD. Not to fear...you just got an email today from a PhD mom today who gave you tons of support and encouragement. You will no doubt have some very hard days, and some very good days. You will have days where you cry and stomp and throw books (much to the chagrin of baby I'm sure). And you will ponder the question, "Why the hell am I doing this?" But you know why. You know exactly why, everything you've done up to this point has guided you in this direction, to complete this degree and to work and to teach and to research and to help other folks out there who need it. You were given the ability to communicate and write and to show others how to do that and just why its such an important thing. What does my umi say? Let your light shine.

Why does moving bother you so? Because you've never done it before. You have never been out of a 10-15 mile radius of Terminal Avenue. That would be scary for anyone, but you got to break out of this, what are you going to teach your kid? You have to lead by example now, no more looking to others to do the dirty work for you. You are not leaving them forever, and hopefully once school is over and you have this degree behind you, you will be able to choose to come back closer to home, because you will actually have the ability to be competitive for jobs. Imagine, people might actually want to hear about your research interests, and you can talk about McLuhan and Burke until they run out of your ears.

And finaly, its easy to get discouraged, and its okie to cry, and to read Kafka, but you gotta pull yourself up too. Let your passion take you over again. You've got a very important person that you need to prepare for now, and part of that prepartion involves getting your own self in check. All you can do is the best you can with what you've got right now.

Now, if you still wanna read Kafka and pretend to be a roach, go right ahead, but I'd suggest listening to Mos and doing a two step.

Peace-
ilnizzzah