Used-Up Words

I can't write. 

I've reviewed and reread and revised some of my most recent work and it's official: I can't write today. Even as I write this blog I'm upset at its quality. But that could just be hubris.

Today has been a full day of flip-flops between bursts of inspiration and hope for my near and distant future brought crashing down by self-indulgent thoughts of apathetic despair. Accented, of course, with arrogant crying fits while prostrated on my bed. Melodramatic, hyperbolic, pompous, jealous, and full of self-retching ego. Oh, did I mention verbose?

I miss advanced English class discussions. I miss big words strung together in an attempt to clarify a metaphor that finds meaning only through its complexity. I miss mental exercise. 

I currently work for a call center where I spend four, ten-hour days repeating the same script, several parts verbatim, approximately thirty-five times. While on the phone, I have to take notes on what the caller is saying so I don't accidentally think I'm on the previous call. It's deadening. 

http://www.flixya.com/photo/2263651/smile-while-talking-with-customer-call-center-girls

And I think that I have lost my brain. 

Words, heavy, multi-syllabic words, keep assaulting me at work. On more than one occasion I have slipped in a "unilaterally" or "unmitigated" into my freestyle portions of the call. I've alienated a lot of my callers by using words they don't care to understand. And I don't blame them. 

But I've got to use these words. They roll around in my head that's used to thinking and make me bad at my job. They pop up when I'm trying to express my feelings, making communication all but impossible. 


I want to read. I want to write. I want to play videogames. All in my pajamas and all in the same day, if possible. And I DON'T WANT TO GO TO WORK AND REPEAT THE SAME CONVERSATION OVER AND OVER AGAIN WITH THE SAME USED-UP WORDs! 


And that's why I can't write . . . today.

Sim Life: a Modern Barbie to Help Me Avoid Reality

I played 4.5 hours of Sim3 today alone. Yesterday was a bit more productive, I only played for 3.

In this 8-hour chunk, I hosted two weddings, one child birth, and witnessed three of my prodigies get imaginary raises at their imaginary jobs. A Sim has never died under my watch and I am close to achieving my biggest hirrah yet: in three more Sim-days ALL six of my Sims will have achieved their Lifetime Wishes. I, on the other hand, am exactly one step FARTHER from achieving my own Lifetime Wish: I did not get the job for Writer Assistant-ship ("assistantship," by the way non-employer, is NOT a word!). And yet, I feel a small sense of achievement even in this wake of professional failure.

http://www.thesimshub.com/the-sims-3/console/the-sims-3-ps3/

What is it, you may ask, that causes me to push my own life-tasks to the side and play with virtual dolls? It's a coping method I've used since childhood.

I don't like to fail. For a long time, I was able to either avoid failure or to avoid my failures to be public. Academic or "adult-noted" failure, I should correct. Socially, I have been failing for years. There was even a time I lied so successfully about portions of my life to my everyday peers that I had to quit my jobs and move to avoid finishing my death shroud. At the end of it, I vowed never to lie so big again. And I've kept my promise and returned to socially inept. 

For social satisfaction I go, as I did as a young girl with few friends, to my dolls and their perfectly color-coordinated reality where interaction is almost always successful. 

http://xbox360.ign.com/dor/objects/61011/the-sims-3/images/the-sims-3-20100520002203727.html

My husband made an acute, as always, observation today: in the total time spent playing Sims over the past two days, I could have written a complete story or revised something ready for publication. And I could have, it's true, but not without risk of failure. With Sims, I'm just one re-load away from a redo. With Sims, I puppet my dolls to love and hate and forgive all in five minutes. With Sims, I cannot fail. 

And so, I'm one more job away from my dream of writing without want of comfort. And 7.5 hours older with nothing tangible to show. But at least I'll still go to my dead-end job tomorrow. I've staved off total despair by disappearing for a day into a world I can control. Too bad all I've got to show for it is 100,000 simolean dollars and head empty of stories. Ugh.

How College is Ruining My Mental Faculties--Part I

My husband thinks about whatever he wants too. He's probably at home right now, thinking freely about the broken washer or maybe the Sun's affect on Global Warming, or even conspiracy theories regarding the "true" Paul McCartney's death in 1966 (covered up by the Beatles with a double and extensive facial reconstruction). He may be reading something fascinating online right now with only the whim of interest to guide his thoughts, unhampered by the prospects of writing a term paper later. He, uneducated and unemployed, has the freedom to wander with his thoughts: his brain is his own.

I am not so lucky for I am being educated: I am being taught how to think.

You may think I am ungrateful (my husband does) and you may find my complaints nothing more than the incessant and dispassionate whining of the educated bourgeois. And you may be right. But you are, unlike myself, entitled to your own thoughts.

Perhaps you need only to know my major to understand that I will be no better off than the uneducated in terms of livelihood. I am a Creative Writing major, five-year senior. I stayed in school an extra year to avoid the economic recession (like it was going to get better in a year) and am being educated with a full-ride, merit and need-based scholarship. I work 23 hours a week and am the sole provider for my family's (dis)comfort. After May, I must subject myself to the mindless duties of hourly-wage to maintain the level of life we are accustomed too. With all these wonderful prospects on my horizon, is it too much that I own the majority share to my brain?

I came to college with two goals. First, to learn how to think. Second, to then have a safe environment in which to test out my new skill. 

I have not been disappointed on the first front: I have successfully had three classes through which I have, more or less, learned how to best use my most valuable asset: my brain. These classes are, in order of my enrollment: PHIL 100 Critical Thinking, PHIL 206 Knowledge and Existence, and E20-something Theories of Literary Criticism. 

For perspective, let's look at the amount of total hours I've spent in all the classes I've taken as required to obtain my degree: 129 credit hours. That's 2,451 total actual hours I've spent in classes. Now, since I'm a good student and actually pay attention in class and do the homework (well, that is, up until this semester) we need to add hours I've spent doing homework. We'll say, conservatively, 3 extra hours each week per class, which doubles the amount of time I've spent thinking about the topics covered in my classes to 4,902. 

4,902 hours of brain-power taken from me by higher education. 

Of course, not all of this was time ill-spent. I have had several class sessions enthralled in learning the topics and theories presented. However, all of this time has been spent in guided and specified study. At the the end of my degree, I'm beginning to wonder when I get to explore something of my complete choice. When will my brain be all mine to use as I see? When will this machine be used for my cognitive musing?

STAY TUNED: next post, I tackle the question of a safe place to think . . .