Achilles overtaking his future
I feel like I'm always planning ahead to the next step, never quite fixed in the moment. I'm an ambitious planner, so it fits me. Right now is no exception.
I'm planning on spending only one year at TS, to get my MS, and then moving down to one of those hot and humid states to study chemistry again, for my PhD this time. Weirdly enough, it works, although the environment will be very different--going from a small department at a 6000-person school to one of the biggest chemistry departments in the country. I'm excited about the research being done, and I'm excited about moving to said hot & humid state because, well, I'm moving in part to be closer to someone.
The program is good; it requires some teaching, which is good for me (I've been sort of bemoaning the fact that I probably wouldn't teach at TS), the research is nifty, the funding is pretty good, and it looks like it wouldn't take me forever to get my degree if my research goes well (such a big if).
So life is good. And I am constantly planning.
Anticipating the future is most of what I do with my head. My biggest fear, I think, is losing the sense of connectedness between moments but not the ability to anticipate. The idea of being stranded forever in a moment that's just before another one, locked there and unable to move forward or backward, knowing other moments exist but I am solidly here & now forever for the purposes of my own consciousness--that's just terrifying.
I experienced this, for a while, once when I'd been sleeping three hours a night and stressed out of my mind for a few months. It was just as scary as I'd always thought it would be, of course, and now that I've come in and out of that experience it's simply focused the fear.
I think about it most when walking to someplace I've never been before. Specifically, it always comes to me when I'm walking down the jetway to an airplane. What if I come loose now, and this version of my conscious mind never gets there? Because I fly alone, getting on a plane is usually sort of a lonely process, and one I don't like much, so the recurring idea of being stuck there is probably a product of that feeling, my strange fear, and having not much else to think about on the way down the jetway besides practicalities: Will there be someone in the seat next to me? Will a kid be kicking my seat the whole way? Will there be space for my bag above the seat?
Thinking all of these things and realizing simultaneously that they are totally mundane and that they are really the only real questions I have about the universe at the moment--I don't tend to think about planes crashing or why I'm taking this trip or anything big like that--underscores the strangeness of going somewhere or doing something with only anticipation on the brain. The fact that the thoughts aren't big, life-changing ones means there's room to worry about, say, becoming unstuck in continuity and spending the rest of my conscious life in this spot, then the rest of another life one inch closer to the plane, and so on, never actually having a sense of having gotten there.
So yeah. That's what I was thinking about a couple of days ago.
Does anyone else have fears or thoughts like this? Do you think about them often, just when you don't have anything better to worry about, or in response to specific parts of your life?
-Jenn-
I'm planning on spending only one year at TS, to get my MS, and then moving down to one of those hot and humid states to study chemistry again, for my PhD this time. Weirdly enough, it works, although the environment will be very different--going from a small department at a 6000-person school to one of the biggest chemistry departments in the country. I'm excited about the research being done, and I'm excited about moving to said hot & humid state because, well, I'm moving in part to be closer to someone.
The program is good; it requires some teaching, which is good for me (I've been sort of bemoaning the fact that I probably wouldn't teach at TS), the research is nifty, the funding is pretty good, and it looks like it wouldn't take me forever to get my degree if my research goes well (such a big if).
So life is good. And I am constantly planning.
Anticipating the future is most of what I do with my head. My biggest fear, I think, is losing the sense of connectedness between moments but not the ability to anticipate. The idea of being stranded forever in a moment that's just before another one, locked there and unable to move forward or backward, knowing other moments exist but I am solidly here & now forever for the purposes of my own consciousness--that's just terrifying.
I experienced this, for a while, once when I'd been sleeping three hours a night and stressed out of my mind for a few months. It was just as scary as I'd always thought it would be, of course, and now that I've come in and out of that experience it's simply focused the fear.
I think about it most when walking to someplace I've never been before. Specifically, it always comes to me when I'm walking down the jetway to an airplane. What if I come loose now, and this version of my conscious mind never gets there? Because I fly alone, getting on a plane is usually sort of a lonely process, and one I don't like much, so the recurring idea of being stuck there is probably a product of that feeling, my strange fear, and having not much else to think about on the way down the jetway besides practicalities: Will there be someone in the seat next to me? Will a kid be kicking my seat the whole way? Will there be space for my bag above the seat?
Thinking all of these things and realizing simultaneously that they are totally mundane and that they are really the only real questions I have about the universe at the moment--I don't tend to think about planes crashing or why I'm taking this trip or anything big like that--underscores the strangeness of going somewhere or doing something with only anticipation on the brain. The fact that the thoughts aren't big, life-changing ones means there's room to worry about, say, becoming unstuck in continuity and spending the rest of my conscious life in this spot, then the rest of another life one inch closer to the plane, and so on, never actually having a sense of having gotten there.
So yeah. That's what I was thinking about a couple of days ago.
Does anyone else have fears or thoughts like this? Do you think about them often, just when you don't have anything better to worry about, or in response to specific parts of your life?
-Jenn-
posted by Jenn at 7/15/2006 06:33:00 PM
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