Negative Nellies

Man oh man.

I'm starting to feel sorry for anyone and everyone who is exposed to my social media feeds. People have been emailing me being like, "gee, seems like you're having a rough couple of months!" and every time I see a post title (see my last one about funks) I feel a twinge of surprise. Much the same as I did when I got those emails.

See, the thing is...I'm an ungrateful bitch.

The Schatz's Mum has carpal-tunnel in one arm/hand and just broke her other upper arm. My dear boss is in the hospital after having lymph tissue removed, waiting for her biopsy results. Her sister died young of cancer.

And all I can seem to do is bitch about an overabundance of opportunity in my life.

"Ooh, will I get into the law program I want? Will it allow me to keep all my good paying private teaching gigs, or will I have to cut back? Will I get permanent residency in the country of my choosing?" LORDAMERCY.

It's luxury complaining is what it is. Damn it, there are people in Japan who lost everything, people die in bombings every day or die fighting for basic political freedoms (Syria, Egypt, etc.) and all I can do is piss and moan about not having *enough* extras in my life.

Sure, I'm sad that a good friend is doing a 2/3 move to some crappy city over an hour away and won't have as much time for me in the future. Yeah, I'm kinda sorta stressed about defending my early childhood ed thesis on Thursday but not enough to actually really DO something about it and gee, I'd love not to have to worry about how I'm going to finance my rockstar lifestyle while in law school. But really? Really? I'm fine. I'm better than fine--things are fcking fantastic! My life is great, not average and certainly not fcked.

I'm obviously lacking perspective. I need to be shipped back to the homestead posthaste for a good, swift kick in the butt from my yankee Mother who would knock some gratitude back into my self-absorbed skull. Or I need to go spend a few weeks meditating with Deepak Chopra, getting in touch with myself and the universe.

I follow Yoko Ono on twitter (seemed like a good idea when I reactivated my account a few years ago) and she drops these trippy pearls of wisdom on humanity. You know, things like "Write a list of everything you're afraid of. Burn it. Pour sweet-smelling oil on the ashes". Which I usually take with a grain of pink himalayan salt or completely ignore. However, she recently tweeted something along the lines of "Try not to say anything negative for 3 days. Then a week. Then a month. See how you feel." She kind of got me thinking, Yoko did. Or her ghost twitterers. Whoever. I think when I get lowdown and mean, I keep my self down. I bitch about my coworkers, my future mother-in-law, my too-many-chances and everything the Schatz does or does not do. I wallow. Seriously. And I've been doing it more on than off for MONTHS now. This aggression will not stand, man (to quote someone with a far healther lease on life than mine at the moment). So it's time. I'm going to follow Yoko's and my sainted Nana's example and try to quit talking smack. Slowly of course...gradually. Because I come from good solid smacktalkin' folk. Apart from my great-grandma, that is. But I think it's got to help. And two out of the next three days are weekend anyway, so that should be easy. I think.

...maybe I should start with three hours.

Wish me luck.

Who's got the funk? Does being in a funk count?

Oh my poor neglected blog!

Terrible how busy I've been.

All the things I listed off in my last post (months and months ago, I know) have served to keep me effectively distracted with all kinds of whatnot.

This weekend is the Berlin half marathon--which I won't be running this year, although I signed up. The winter was essentially one cold after another for me and my doctor advised me not to train with any kind of upper respiratory funk. So I didn't. Which meant I didn't wind up doing too much training. The Schatz is planning on running, I think he'll pull of a much better time than last year. It was hard for me to admit that I wasn't going to make it, but the amount of junk on my plate at the moment means that every day that isn't a war of attrition is an exercise in prioritizing. So whatever. There are other years and other races.

My Facharbeit is due Tuesday--I've got it done, now there's really only the fine-tuning left. It's been so long since I've actually had to organize a paper over ten pages that my structure is kind of junk. Got to work on that. I'm not that proud of it...despite the topic being near and dear to my heart. Time and resources didn't allow me to make it what I really wanted it to be, but perfection is the enemy of done. And I really do want to be done.

After that, there's the defense of the paper--in about a month, and then two exams in mid-May. If everything goes according to hoyle, I won't need to have oral exams and I'll be done. I've submitted a round of planning for the rest of 2011 and 2012 at the adult education center where I do some freelancing...we'll see how that works, not knowing any details of my potential university schedule.

Work at the moment is a battle. Right now we've got a decent amount of staff (two precious interns both born in the 90's, one of whom is forever in my good book for complimenting my make up) so it shouldn't be that stressful, but somehow it is. It seems like I'm throwing my energy into a bottompless pit every day. When I'm not there, I'm thinking about how to solve problems we have, how to deal with difficult parents, coworkers, etc. I love the kids--they are really everything, but it really is time for me to be done with this job, before I drop dead of exhaustion. I hardly have energy to hang out with friends--the Schatz has to drag me out and persuade me to have people over, both of which are unheard of circumstances. I'm hopefully that it'll have an end soon enough, though. Keep your fingers crossed that I hear something from one of the universities soon (it probably won't be until July, realistically speaking). Le sigh.

The good news in this dreariest quagmire of work and stress is that spring has finally sprung in Berlin. I love springtime in this city--the buds on the trees are ready to burst open with those first pale leaves and the days are getting so lovely and long. It does really make life at this latitude worthwhile. I'm counting on the sunlight and steadily increasing temperatures to get me through my exam prep and these last few months of work. I've started counting down the days...

I feel kind of terrible that I've not posted in so long and then when I finally do, it's just full of ennui. Life isn't all terrible--we were in Switzerland at the end of February and it was delightful. We're getting a return visit in mid-June which I'm looking very forward to. We'll also be headed back to the Harz for Easter with the Schatz's grandparents. I already had to give his grandfather our estimated arrival time so that he could start his menu planning. I think I'm going to start fasting now.

I'd like to be able to say with some certainty that my next post won't be so long in coming, but until I'm done with this certification nonsense, I can't promise anything.

I hope everyone's well.