Private Property

 I have never seen myself as being overly attached to my possessions but one of my housemates makes me feel possessive. Maybe we should have explained to him that we all have our individual cupboards. He just took a fancy to mine and started storing some of his stuff there. I wouldn't have minded but turns out he has been using some of my stuff too. Yesterday, he remarked that there was a giant box of tea bags on one of my shelves as he popped into one. He possibly thought it had been abandoned, and I wasn't too pleased at all. Just the previous day I had indicated that I didn't want him to use my boxes for food storage but had hedged my words so much that he possibly thought I was fine with him using my stuff. To be fair to him, he is always offering me the use of his stuff, but I would just rather we stick to our own stuff, although I do enjoy pinching his milk as a way of getting back at him for his annoying habits. So the question is what is to be done. It is unbelievable how my housemates find new ways to annoy me on an almost daily basis, and it is also unbelievable that I haven't exploded with rage at any of them yet. at least, with the Irish guy he doesn't realise he annoys me in contrast to Betty, who doesn't care or knowingly annoys me (although to be fair to her, she has been very quiet for the past few months. The calm before the storm?). So, I have decided not to say anything unless I am inconvenienced. My sense of private property can be damned. telling him not use my stuff would make me feel petty and possessive, and even if I am those things to some extent, I don't like being made to feel that I am. 

Fortitude Lessons From Sports Psychologists

 I read a piece in The Guardian yesterday which asked sports psychologists for tips on emotional resilience for people who are not elite athletes or sportspeople. Some of the lesson were fairly well-known--break-up big goals into smaller ones, positive self-talk, visualization. But, a less obvious one is thinking through all the possible outcomes of a nerves-inducing event. “I like to go through each consequence and put them to bed, so they’re not going over them in their minds when they need to focus. I’m always surprised that people don’t do this in real life – they just react to what is thrown at them.” I think that makes a lot of sense for overthinkers like myself who struggle if told not to think about something. When I am nervous about something, it often helps me to anticipate all possible outcomes and what I will do in each case. Instead of fixating on what might happen going one step further and thinking about what I will do if that happens. To think of possible solutions to possible problems. It often turns out the worst possible scenario is not that bad after all. And one can always change one's course of action. But, having a tentative plan helps me feel more prepared and in control. To be sure, I am talking of concrete problems and situations, else the list of possible things that could go wrong is endless. And, if one gets stuck in the loop of thinking about possible tragedies that are far-removed from one's current situation, one has to talk oneself back to rationality. I am proud to say that I have become much better at self-talk since the start of the pandemic. Reminding myself to breathe, talking to myself like a close friend would. 

Submitting My PhD And Visiting Home

 As I was lying in bed this morning, I suddenly realised how badly I want to visit home.  The only thing I want more badly is to finish my PhD.  So, that is going to be my priority for the rest of the year--to submit  my PhD and make a trip to India. I had been struggling with the uncertainties in my life--when will I finish my conceptual section, will my supervisor read it in time, will I find a job, should I ask for hourly paid teaching, and if so, when?. It suddenly struck me that the 'worst' possible outcome--no job and no hourly paid teaching wouldn't actually be that bad. I would be able to visit home as soon as I submitted my PhD. In fact, I realised it wasn't the 'worst' outcome, it was just a different outcome with different trade-offs. So, I have decided not to ask for hourly-paid teaching. If it is offered to me, I will think about it. Allow the universe to unfold as it will. I won't be gutted if I don't get a job or hourly teaching next semester and I won't be thrilled if I do. There are so many things that can go wrong that I don't even want to think about it, let alone write about it here. All I can do is focus on what is in my hands, and leave the rest to fate. Give fate a fighting chance, as Allison Krauss implores us to do. 

Housemates

 I never imagined a day would come when bonking Betty would not be my most annoying housemates. That honour now goes to the Irish guy. Earlier this evening, I experienced for the first time a fire alarm going off in England because he was frying burgers to a cinder. Earlier in the day, I was racking my brains to find a way to tell him not to use my food containers. He has plonked some rice into my biggest food container and popped it into the fridge, where I am guessing it will stay until its starts turning brown. He is not ig on private property and keeps telling me I should feel free to use his stuff, so it feels churlish to make him empty the container. But, he is just annoying, my new housemate is weird. Two days ago, he pulled me aside to ask me if he could get into trouble with the law because the Irish guy smokes weed. and, his second question was if he could get into trouble if the Irish guy hid drugs in his room. and, of course, Betty has been quiet as a mouse, like she usually is between explosions. A friend tells me I could write a book with all my housemates stories. At least, I can still find humour in my housing situation most of the time. Annoying housemates are any day preferable to adversarial housemates, who are any day preferable to adversarial live-in landlords. 

Screenless Evenings

This week, I was forced to spend an evening without my laptop. The evening ended with me dozing on and off from 8:30 pm onwards until I eventually went to bed at 9:30 pm. In ordinary times, I would have simply picked up my kindle. But, this week was not an ordinary week, and was feeling too mentally exhausted to read anything I didn't have to.  I had blogged from work, so I didn't feel the need to blog on paper either. I have never understood the romance of writing by hand. Typing on a screen allows you to erase and rewrite without scratching out words. I much prefer it t writing on paper. The only exception is when I make notes from academic books and articles I read. Taking notes on the computer has always felt weird to me. I think its more of a hand-eye coordination thing. Reading on the comuter and taking notes by hand seems like the most natural thing in the world, while doing it the other way around feels very unnatural. Coming back to the point, screenless evenings sound good on paper but are not that good in reality, especially if you are single and when your brain is fried.

Laptop Back In Action

 As I write this, MS Office is installing on my laptop. When the technician said yesterday that he might have to reinstall windows, I was worried that I would have to pay for a new MS office. But, I was able to reinstall both MS Office and my antivirus and remember my passwords for Netflix, Twitter, Amazon, Facebook and Google. After 48 hours, I am back to where I was when my laptop ran out of power and shut down. 48 extremely stressful hours, I might add, as my hemorrhoids flared up too and my stomach felt like it was being churned. That familiar anxiety symptom where your stomach does not fine but you can't point to concrete symptoms either. The number of times I felt like I was falling to pieces, I cannot count. But, just as I was leaving uni to pick up my laptop, the pain subsided as if by magic. And, I also managed to make some progress on my PhD. I know anxiety doesn't disappear like magic. I will continue to feel the aftereffects for a few days at least. Right now, I feel a weariness that no amount of sleep seems capable of alleviating. I sat down to open the tap of tears today, and a few did emerge but it wasn't the most satisfying cry I ever had. I often think about the year when the demons were dancing in my head and in my bod, when I would break into tears as easily as a pig grunts. Maybe I exhausted my tear wells during that year. 

Salvation in Work

This morning, I felt like I was falling to pieces. My laptop conked out last evening, and I was up past midnight trying to get it to work. One of the options, was disconnecting and reconnecting the battery, which entailed taking the whole laptop apart. It took me a good two hours and when I tried to switch it on again, it wouldn't even get to the stage where it was stuck at, which told me that I had screwed up. I spent an agonizing 30 minutes trying to figure out what was wrong, and getting from square minus one back to square one. Naturally, I didn't sleep well last night. A laptop conking out is not an earth-shattering thing, but coming on top of all the other past and present problems and trauma, none of which are earth-shattering on their own, it was too much for me. In the morning, I managed to find a technician who would look at it, but my nerves still felt jangled. Towards noon, I had started to wonder how long I could carry on like this and began to contemplate options stretching from going to India for a visit to tagging along to Cornwall with a friend this weekend. Then, I decided to tried a third option--work. I managed to spend a good few hours immersed in my work. Although my progress was not monumental, I felt much better. I often say to people how glad I am to have had a PhD to keep me occupied through the pandemic. However, over the past few months, I feel like I have stalled, making my PhD more a source of distress than respite from the problems in this world. Today, I felt that the only way to make myself feel better is to work. I don't feel like going to Cornwall, and I don't feel like going to India, not until I finish my PhD.  After two fieldwork trips to India, I had vowed that the next time I visit, it would be without the shadow of an unfinished PhD looming over me. The last time I ran back to India, it was in a different time and I was a different person, even accounting for changes to one's personhood with time. The spectre of that retreat will always haunt me in times of stress even though I have made peace with that event and ceased to be embarrassed by it. I know the pandemic has made everyone' s mental states very volatile, and I might feel very differently a few days or even hours from now. But, for now, the plan is salvation through work.