~ disappointment on my knitted brow ~

At the moment, I am super excited about all of these items which I lack the time to pursue. For a time, I have been working on the Nantucket Jacket which I started working on strong, but have had to place aside for days (and weeks) at a time for work and school. I've recently had an opportunity to take up the needles again, and I must say!, this is a very fun pattern to work on. The pattern has enough going on with it that it is plenty interesting and fun, what with the alternating cables and lacework, but is simple enough that I do not have to constantly be reading the pattern. Which is another way of saying that I have had the opportunity to watch numerous quality episodes of Star Trek: the Next Generation. Nevertheless, I still have to finish my two sleeves and then must learn some basic crochet skillz for the edging.

I have also been excited about being able to do some bicycling. Unfortunately, the weather has not been consistently glorious and I've gone to the gym a few more times than I would prefer. Also, I have been a bit disappointed in this female-only mountain biking group with whom I am aligned. There has been nary a group-ride scheduled and I continue to desire more estrogen on my mountain bike rides. I have exchanged several emails with the female who shares my given name, who I went road biking with several times last year, and we are trying to schedule a tough girls mountain bike ride, but scheduling has proven to be an issue. Also, I have received some good news and some not-wonderful news regarding my acquisition of a full suspension mountain bike. The good news is that the bicycle shop owners were feeling particularly generous and have offered to let me buy the bike at an incredible deal. The not-wonderful news is that somehow the bicycle is not currently available and it might be a whole entire MONTH until I can get it. I know, I know! A month! I, too, have no idea how I'm going to survive what I have determined to be approximately thirty days! I mean, what am I supposed to do? Ride the perfectly servicible bike that I've been riding for two years??? I AM NOT A BARBARIAN!

On the other hand, I don't really have time (or, I shouldn't have the time) to do these and other things that I would like to...what with the whole school thing. Boy, am I looking forward to summer break! The best part about school is not being in it! I know that I'm only taking two classes, but trying to have a quality life balance and working full time plus is a challenge. Additionally, I'm simply not all that excited about being a student. I mean, it's neat in some ways, and my program is much more interesting than I was expecting, but I feel very OVER being a student. I hypothesize that my undergraduate experience totally burned me out from academia and I feel very DONE with the whole thing. Of course, part of the problem is that I've got something of a Type A personality and I simply have to do my best in everything that I do. Oh sure, I'm pleased that on all three of the research papers so far this semester that I received the highest grade in the class and the professors were just RAVING about how good they were, but the process that it took to do so well on those papers involved a drastic reduction in the quality of my personal life. Not that I don't think it's great fun to get up at 4:00 a.m. to work on my paper for four hours before going to work and then working on my paper again when I arrive home from work until midnight for a week and a half...but lately I've been reconsidering the important things in life and at the end of the day I don't think that getting the highest grade in the class is meaningful or indicative of a quality existence. Rather, a measure of quality existence would probably involve the successful achievement of qualitative happiness along a moment-to-moment continuum. The happiness that I felt at finding out my paper grade was significantly less happiness than if I had had some fun and enjoyable experiences during the week and a half that I spent writing the infernal thing. And the same thing goes for how I've been handling my work load at the job. In essence, I should abandon my Type A need for perfection and get a life.

Posted by jennifer at 11:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)