Work

I've been trying to push myself to get the financial aid ball rolling, but am still waiting on my school to publish its tuition for the coming academic year.  Plus, they're updating websites and some of the links aren't working, which is frustrating.  I'll have to just get in touch with the admissions office, find out what programs people have qualified for.  That's worked much better than trying to navigate the school's myriad of web links to this point.

At least all of the financial aid and visa application material is printed.  I realize just how stumbling ignorant I am about finding the right information: I've been very fortunate not to need financial aid in the past, but even if I had, it wouldn't have been for a school outside the United States.  So much of the information I've found seems to be geared towards students making a much larger transition from countries where it's assumed that there aren't the kinds of financial resources that a Sallie Mae would provide.  (Though I know that I'm the one doing that assuming, which is a whole different story entirely.)

I felt somewhat out of sorts after my workout last night and decided to order a couple of books online to get enough for Amazon's free SuperSaver shipping.  (Yes, I know Powell's is there, but I went with the biggie this time.)  I ordered "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis, which had a great excerpt in Vanity Fair, and "Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace" by David Lipsky.  The former book I'd been meaning to buy; the latter was a happenstance find after getting into an online vortex to get to the $25.00 SuperSaver requirement.  As it turns out, I may have felt out of place due to a dehydration/muscle tension/brewing migraine stew that I fought off between 5:30am and 6:30am, but the books themselves represent two very different sides of my interests and personality: the financial crisis has touched everyone and I've been as fascinated by its roots as I have been in the past with studying such treasure troves as African-American history and literature.  But the second book, a long-running interview with the late author, appeals to the kick-a-hole-in-the-sky part of my personality that feels cooped up and fenced in, awaiting the big change coming in four months but drudging through the seemingly numberless (but truly numbered) workdays full of people running around in a panic like fire ants, palpable stress everywhere that never eases for long.

Plus, I tried to read DFW's "Infinite Jest" several years ago, and thought it was obnoxious, sprawling, unfocused work that could have benefited from some judicious editing to attain the clarity and incisiveness of prose of other writers I admired and still admire (such James Baldwin and Bill Bryson).  But in the course of willfully banishing myself to cube-land and out of band-land, I've felt like I've given away a lot over the last year - maybe too much.  I want and need to get back to that place of optimism in work so as to better launch myself into my new future, and a sprawling work may do wonders for the mental straitjacket I feel, using the same scripted and habitual language over and over during the week.

My girl is helping too, spurred on by feeling much better physically of late, and perhaps excited by having sent in her passport last week for renewal, which will soon have a dependent visa sticker added to it.  Spring is in the air, and I am doing my damnedest to catch onto whatever renewal and rebirth I can find, to let it carry me through, help me to let go of presuppositions, enable me to more casually embrace the unknown and replace the first thought of "I have to be prepared for this in case something goes wrong that I could have potentially controlled for" with "things are going to be alright, things are going to be awesome, the future is bright, a new tribe of millions awaits us just a thousand miles away."

But "things are going to work out" will work just as well, and in truth, it's that which I've been taught so well to doubt.  Jen has that frame of mind, and I'm trying very hard just to let go and embrace it.

For letting go, ironically or no, is hard work, at least for me.