I've spent most of the last few days in a sort of daze. I get up, go to work, do the science thing, rendezvous with Zach afterward, read, go to bed... get up, go to work, do the science thing, redezvous with Zach afterward, read, go to bed...
The routine is... well... routine. But, my state of mind has been the "daze" part. I've been going through the motions with this slightly tense tone underlying nearly everythought, every action. I've been feeling... anxious. In both good and bad ways. I feel as though I'm approaching another large change in my life... graduate school. I applied and such, but never really thought I'd hear much from it. But now, I've started to hear back. One interview has been offered, and rumor has it the other programs I applied to will be getting back to me (one way or the other) within the next few weeks. So, as long as the interview goes well, this could be it. I'll be moving... again. Doing the student thing... again.
So, I guess I've been wandering around with my head in the clouds. My mind hasn't been in the present much. It keeps flashing forward to the future. Or, at least, the future I'd like. I keep picturing two possibilities: grad school back in Iowa, or grad school here in Seattle. I'm switching back-and-forth between the two possibilities, much like how I used to flip channels with the remote back when I had cable.
Of course, being inexperienced with the "grad school thing", my fast foward episodes don't factor much with research, labness, and the like. Instead, I'm preoccupied with (as usual) the Little Things (or, dare I say it, the Small Things). Since I'm familiar with both Iowa City and Seattle, the Small Things are pretty easy to picture:
1. scraping ice from my windscreen after another nasty Iowa winter storm
2. playing with a cat I'd like to get
3. walks in the zoo to see (Zach's favorite) the bears or (my favorite) the primates
4. ferry rides
5. drives to Illinois on I-80 to see my mother
Just snippets, really. Nothing to lose sleep over. But, I'm starting to realize more and more that graduate school probably will be in store for me by this fall. I took a chance, went through the motions, and now I'm getting what I asked for: a chance at a Ph.D. I suppose I was naïve... I didn't really think I'd make it to this point. But now, I'm starting to imagine what could come. Moving, and all that comes with it. New people, experiences... knowledge. The prospects are quite distracting, and even a little disturbing. I've also been suffering from an unusual stream of headaches the past several days. They may be coincidental (Zach even thinks I'm somehow cutting down on my already-low caffiene intake, and that I'm merely suffering from withdrawal), or somehow connected to all that's been on my mind lately.
A friend once remarked that, when I walk, I tend to "lead" with my nose and face. That is, my posture is such that I "point my cranium forward, with the nose leading the way." She joked that this makes me (literally and figuratively) forward-looking, and that I do everything with a pronounced sense of anticipation. Another friend joked that, since I always seem to wake up anywhere between five and fifteen minutes before my alarm goes off in the morning, that I must have some sense of precongition... that I always, even when I rest, am making plans for what-is-to-come. So, I guess they were right. I'm anxiously awaiting the future. But, it also wouldn't hurt for someone to pull me back into the present!
Posted by James at January 8, 2005 11:29 PM