Day 15: the degradation of discipline

My immense discipline and focus has begun to degrade. It started late last week with a couple "social" interactions that included some wine and consequent sleep-ins. While awesome and healthy to see friends and family, and arguably more important than my academic goals in general, I have allowed it to distract me from the matter at hand. I'm on to  crazy cutting and editing this week and seemed to have resigned myself to the content that is on paper now, the content that I feel I honestly wrestled with the last couple weeks. But it's time to cut my losses and forget about the potential "nobel-prize-genius" I could include in the papers for this exam if I just worked a tiny bit harder. I am still further distracted as I get excited to wrap up the semester and head back to Alberta for the holidays this coming Friday.

I'm actually okay with this "resignation" because it is important not to be too hard on oneself when producing drafts. Typically in academia you would never just produce something on your own. There would always be checks and balances, supervisory committees, peer-reviewers, older and wiser collaborators to help add to a publication and make it 10 times better, etc. I have thought a lot about trusting in my abilities to produce something of quality by myself, trying to internalise first place ribbons for writing at county exhibitions when I was in elementary school, award winning poetry in high school, almost a decade of A+  university papers, and encouragement and praise for my writing products from various academics over the years. However, while the longitudinal evidence supports the trust I try to have in my capabilities, doubt rears its head time and time again....but alas I think this might be a product of the nature of academia.

Top of day 9: In other health news, scientist finds glee dance party breaks cure for detached-head syndrome...

I'm officially so cranially engaged I started losing moments of my day to a point where I apparently moved an object from the top shelf of the closet to my bed at some point during the day and have ABSOLUTELY no recollection of physically doing it. When I walked into my bedroom later in the afternoon yesterday and saw this item on the bed my first thought was  "oh my god was someone in here??!!" After my heartbeat slowed down following this incredibly creepy thought, I reasoned that "no, I've been here all day and heard nothing out of the ordinary so I must have taken it down from the shelf at some point earlier in the day".

To balance this detached-head syndrome, yesterday it dawned on me how important it is to, at some point during the day, preferably multiple times a day, just be in my body. I've devised a couple excellent tactics: the first is doing yoga, intense and fiery Ashtanga in the wee hours of the morning and calm, cooling yin prior to bedtime, breathing and just being mindful of the energy and feelings within the body. The second tactic is a day time one I've taken to, of taking a dance break (stolen from Tina Fey on 30 Rock) at which time I chose two of my favourite glee soundtrack songs and dance like an asshole. I'm hoping to do this more in the coming days to keep myself "here" as much as possible.

This Sunday I started working on paper #2 which is the theory/research methods paper. It is most certainly more challenging to make an entertaining read on these kinds of topics than on topics that include politically charged real-life examples of things. Also, it is most difficult to avoid writing something that regurgitates the theories of old from the writings of others (ie. to actually be creative and have an original thought). This week I have found that one must simply trust in the intellectual process. Reading and reading and getting "theoried out", as one friend describes it, will eventually lead to some creative and original conclusions but they cannot be forced. Realizing that this is how I've been approaching academic writing for the last few years but finally having articulated what my writing process is.The work of reading and writing things out in a manner that seems trite, unoriginal, and disconnected, accompanied by thoughtful and intentional reflection will tend to always result in something you can be proud of, that you have integrated ideas in way that no one else has before. Although they may be small insights, they add to the larger theory puzzle.

How cozy a day to be cooped up in my festive christmas-y apartment while the remnants of a tropical storm is lightly battering Vancouver today.

Day 5: this is awesome!!

Spirits and attitudes remain solidly high as I begin day 5. My only real crisis right now is how the hell I am going to cut 4000 words out of the first paper.Yes, being non-verbose has never been a shortcoming of mine. After vomiting over 15,000 words onto the page in the first two days I've managed to reel it in to about 12,000 so the trend appears to be in the right direction.

I had a meeting with my supervisor yesterday and we were discussing how the process of writing this exam has been for me so far this week and I told her that it's been interesting really thinking about the questions and trying to figure out what the committee actually means by them. She responded "I'm not sure any of us on the committee actually know what we mean either." Awesome right?? With the weight of providing specific responses to the questions lifted, today I feel ready to get CRAZY.

I've also been debating with myself whether I should leave in some of the "funny" and the unintentional colloquialisms that emerged during the first initial vomit on day 1 and day 2. I think that I'm an adequate enough academic writer that the "funny" can actually be pulled off because there is actual substance throughout. I feel relatively confident they won't fail me and kick me out of my PhD for using the phrase "but oh-so-tasty" when referring to the junk available for students to purchase in schools.

As far as I can tell thus far, being a bit hermit-y is kind of my jam when I'm being really productive. Probably if I were just watching netflix for 21 days straight by myself I might feel some craving to be around other humans...and I loves me some netflix.

Bonuses to writing comprehensive exams so far:

1) It's a solid excuse for staying at home and not being sociable which would otherwise appear as unhealthy

2) I have spent no money this week

3) I love reading and writing and learning

4) I've allowed' myself certain junky comfort foods that I otherwise try to avoid (Miss Vikis and skittles)


Challenges to writing comprehensive exams so far:

1) a little something I call "finger overexertion". The etiology of this short-term disorder is typing for more than six hours straight. The symptoms include clunky typing techniques where your fingers feel like they are tripping over keys, misspelling of the same word over and over again as you constantly miss one leter due to exhaustion.

2) "chair sores"

3) having really important library books checked out that keep getting recalled by the library because some ass-clown has requested them...I mean, why the heck do other people need books about mixed-methods research during the holiday, right??? I've decided to bite the bullet and not bring them back until I am done with them-- which brings me to my next challenge...

4) library fines


Writing tip #1:
To avoid lame-duck syndrome (occurs when you work from the top of a document to the bottom and by the time you get to those last couple paragraphs you are being redundant and unoriginal) I like to undertake the writing process in a table of three columns, one column contains the points you want to make, then the adjacent cell in the adjacent column is the full paragraph on that point you want to make, and the third adjacent cell in the column adjacent to that column is just for notes about what needs to be done on that paragraph. This allows me to jump from top to bottom working on just individual cells (which contain like one paragraph about one point) and then the unoriginality and redundancy, as well as the really good stuff, is dispersed throughout the entire document rather than just all the good stuff at the beginning.

Day 2 of Descent into Comprehensive Exam Insanity

DISCLAIMER: I know I posted in another earlier blog from a couple years ago but just a short preface to say that I acknowledge 1) how self-indulgent blogging is and 2) that all of my blogs are "white-people-problem" blogs and I am a privileged young woman who barely earned any of it.


DAY 2: As soon as I began the writing process on day one I immediately felt the onset of impostor syndrome, an extremely useful label for a non-DSM neuroses. Impostor syndrome has been defined by the experts on wikipedia as the inability to internalise successes, therefore always feeling as if you're faking it all and tricking a lot of smart people. It is especially common in female graduate students. I've often described it as feeling like I'm the wizard in the Wizard of Oz and one day someone is just going to pull the curtain back and just find me...little me with no original and creative ideas, regurgitating information, being pedantic. As I delved into day one, the doubts about my ability to produce two doctoral-level papers and whether or not I was actually be able to complete these two papers sufficiently in 21 days. So I turned on the obsessive maniac side of myself to push through the habit and desire I have practiced over the last few years of never working evenings... finding the will through obsession to push through an intense, non-stop 10 hours of writing. The obsession with what I"m working on and to have it finished in 21 days is so great that I've managed to ignore the fact that I have a bag of Miss Vikis salt and vinegar chips in my cupboard and I've only eaten half of it in two days. This is not small victory for those of you who know me and understand my shove-miss-vikis-in-my-mouth-until-my-tongue-bleeds addiction. This is good. After my masters degree I feared I'd never be able to harness the kind of focus I once had for writing lengthy 'things'. I guess I can! This is hopeful!

However, shortly into day one, by 3 pm, after only 7 hours of writing, I noticed the beginnings of the degradation of my ability to make a decision. My friend and I discussed this idea last weekend as we talked about an article that had made the rounds on facebook about why successful people wear the same thing everyday. The theory is that we only have so much decision making capacity in a given day and minimising petty decisions, like your attire, helps the decision-making process from degrading as fast throughout the day. Over the weekend I also spent the entirety of my Saturday cooking all of my meals for the next 21 days because I know myself well enough to know that as soon as I'm feeling presssure to finsish something I will not take the time to cook but rather justify ordering Papa Johns from across the street costing me precious dollars and life-years. As my friend and I discussed this I realised that the underlying reason of why I chose to prepare meals for the next month in the first place was precisely so I didn't have to add deciding what to cook for dinner to my daily decision making. Anyway, I noticed the degradation of my decision-making when, after going for a quick brisk walk at 3 pm, I entered into my apartment and took my boots off. I picked them up to throw them in the closet and noticed I had dragged in some slush on the bottom of my boots. Now, I have this beautiful vintage hardwood floor to which I have already caused some extensive (and expensive) water damage in the past year. I have no door mats around the front door nor in the closet to absorb the slush from the boots. I held the boots in my hand and stared at the bottoms of them for at least 60 seconds as I was unable to decide what to do with them while they dried. I finally figured out a solution but had lost precious moments staring at my boots in my hand.

Lastly, I've already resorted to methods other than "Easy Now" sleepy time tea and yin yoga before bed to ensure I get a full sleep. As the excitement of writing my comprehensive exams have built up over the last few weeks I have been having some restless nights, falling asleep by 8:30 pm and waking up at 1:30 unable to return to sleep as sub-conscious stress simmered on the edge of my dreams. The night before Day 1 I did everything I could to ensure a naturally good night sleep but to no avail. I woke up at 1:30 am and finished reading Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World".  Last night, however, I will simply say that I found my "soma" (reference to the 'anti-anxiety' susbtance used in "Brave New World") in my freezer, leftover from this past summer and had an AMAZING sleep. We'll leave it at that because there might be a chance, albeit slim, that I'll have a disgusting desire to go into politics one day.

MY FAVOURITE THING I WROTE TODAY (which may or may not make final cuts):

"Where they [the American National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and the British Colombian school meal program for socioeconomically vulnerable children] differ substantially, however, is when it comes to the nationalistic underpinnings of the NSLP, both in terms of promoting domestic food commodity consumption and in terms of making sure children are healthy enough to potentially be drafted for military service. This was a key reason for the original enactment of the federal NSLP in 1946 and continues to be so today (cite too fat to fight) with politicians in recent years referring to the obesity epidemic as a “matter of national security” (Fed-up documentary). The US is often criticized for  exploiting impoverished demographics by disproportionately recruiting soldiers from some of the poorest areas of the US. It's fitting, then, if these soon-to-be recruits are being fed their school lunches by the state during their formative years so they will at least pass the physical once duty calls."

You were wrong Cat Stevens, the last cut is the deepest

Given the dismal returns from my old fall back internet dating site, e-harmony, I downloaded the mobile app, Tinder. It is a quick and free download from playstore. Upon logging in, the app first seeks out your location via gps and then seeks out all men within 10 miles of said location. Then pops up what essentially appear to be “collector cards” of men. These “cards” include their pictures, their first name, and their age. Underneath of their pictures is two buttons, one X and one little heart picture. After seeing their picture, their name, and their age, you then decide if you like them or not and press the heart if you do and press the X if you do not. If you “like” someone who also has seen your “collector card” and has “liked” you in return, then you have a match. Only then can you begin conversing via the Tinder messaging system.

Needless to say, this provided me hours of endless fun the first evening much to the neglect of my school work. It is literally a game of “hot or not” and various personal parameters emerge as you forage through these stacks of men or, as some republican leaders might say, “binders of men”. First, you immediately press the X (the “Nope” button) if they: a)do not have a face shot as their first picture but rather have a picture of their dog or cat; b)have pictures of them with a bunch of other women; c) if they only have a pictures of themselves with other people and you actually scroll through all their pictures and you still don’t know which guy is the guy; d) if there are only selfies both in the mirror and ones where they are laying in bed; and e) obvious other aesthetics are not up to standard. The last parameter, e, is where the real reflective magic happen. You do not realise how superficial you are until you start having to pick through, literally, hundreds of men. I found myself muttering to myself as I shopped for men, saying “nope, mouth too small, nope forehead too big, nope too many sporty adventure pictures, etc.”

Anyway, I found myself securing 3 dates for the rest of the week. However, one of these young suitors could not meet on any of my other free nights so I cancelled the first date with one of the other men because I had a sense I’d like this other guy more. Too many options, really. So I go out on my first online date with a young man we’ll call “hummer-guy”. Before going out I shower and begin a massive hair removal escapade; legs and toes shaved, eyebrows plucked and shaped, and I check for stray old-man nose hairs. I smile at myself in the mirror and affirm out loud but with a tentative tone, “good for you for putting yourself out back out there!”

Hummer-guy and I met up at a nice cosy little pub on Broadway. We had a couple drinks and had a really lovely time. He was a bit ruggedly attractive, tall enough, fit enough, chatty enough, and energetic enough. He was warm and “touchy” as he talked with me and I welcomed this. He paid for our drinks and we walked arm in arm to his vehicle, yes, his little hummer. Ugh. Prior to seeing his monstrous vehicle, he did forewarn me and asked me not to judge him based on his vehicle because he is aware of how “douchey” it could be perceived to be. I obliged and climbed into it. We went for giant authentic poutines and soda pops on Granville street where we shoved poutines in our faces, talked, and laughed, and his warm and innocent affections continued. He drove me home. We planned to meet up in a few days later on Sunday evening for a pizza and wine night at his place. It ended with a small little lip kiss which was so nice and welcome.

Two things, I have never gone on a second date with someone I met online before nor have I ever kissed any of them. I felt that he and I clicked and that I would definitely like to spend more time with him. I was excited to see him again. I repeat, this has never happened to me before with someone I met on the internet.

After a long day of work-shopping at UBC the following Sunday I take the bus from the university to his apartment, his swank industrial loft in an artsy-hipster neighbourhood that was impeccably clean and renovated, like a real adult. We just chill, eat pizza, drink wine, watch baby animal documentaries, etc. He had even gone so far as to pick up some Miss Vicki’s Salt and Vinegar chips for me…yes folks, that is what is talked about on first dates, chips. I won’t go into details but it was a lovely lovely 2^nd date. It reminded me of why having a man-friend can be so nice, least importantly that he again paid for everything! The pragmatist in me started to think that dating is a really nice way for a young lady to have a social life and not have to pay for any of it!

A day or two later, I came to realise that this was the first time I had connected romantically with a man since my ex almost two years ago. This is a rare event for me to ever want to see a man for a repeat “performance”. I had felt extremely comfortable with hummer-guy, able to be myself, feeling drawn to him, to want to kiss him and to want to be affectionate.

The following week, I decided that I wasn’t going to just sit and wait for him to call me. I have sacrificed potential in the past, I think, because my pride would not allow me to pursue someone I wanted. We texted back and forth all week, I casually invited him over the following Friday. He said he already had dinner plans. I said what about Sunday, he said he was watching the Hockey game. Saturday morning I receive a text asking if I am free that night. I respond and say sure but I have a class on Sunday morning so nothing too late and rowdy. He does not respond. In fact I haven’t heard from him since. Weird right?? I was in a yoga class the following week and it dawned on me that perhaps he had up and died. Like the Sex and the City episode where the guy never calls Miranda back and she calls him to ream him out only to find his mother on the other line telling her he died earlier that week. Miranda responds “Carrie, they’re dying on us now!”.

As is the case with most women, no matter how confident or independent, I immediately think about everything I might have done wrong for him to decide he did not want to see me again. What is wrong with me? What did I do? Was it my enthusiasm for Miss Viki’s? My dorky wool socks? My love of baby animals? What??? Was I too opinionated? Was I too honest about my non-conventional true feelings about the meaning of Remembrance Day?? The only dating advice my mom ever gave me was “remember to just try to be a little more feminine”. I recall responding to her by asking “what in the fuck are you talking about? What is this the 1950s? Have you met me?”. She had meant that I needed to be less explicit with my opinions. My mom has been right more often than not and I do think she actually might be on to something. However, as I am in the midst of re-reading Jane Austen’s works, I am highly grateful to not live in a world where we are required by decorum to keep our uppity lady-traps shut.

So a week goes by, and I have not tried to contact him anymore as all traces of his phone number have been erased from my phone as a mechanism to save myself from myself and avoid any inebriated texting-mishaps. I tell myself comforting facts about him to make me like him less like “pffttttffww… he drove a hummer anyway!”… or “he works in oil and gas anyway!”… or “he really actually likes hipsters!”.. I go out one night with a good friend of mine and he tells me that, for the last month, his I-phone has registered my phone number as an I-phone and has been defaulting his texts to me as I-messages. Because my phone is indeed not an I-phone, I have received none of his messages. He had even invited me to his family’s house for thanksgiving. I never received that text. I just assumed him, and MANY of my other friends, had been really sucky at responding to texts I was sending. There were a number of other friends who had also told me that they had sent me texts that I had never received. I wake up the following morning and think… could it be? Had hummer-guy been trying to respond but I never received his texts? So I looked him up on facebook and sent a very non-threatening query as to whether he had tried to respond but received no response from me due to the shitty technology of the I-phone and that his replying to the facebook message was totally optional. I still have not heard from him soooooooo…. Cut my losses.  It is interesting that when a rejection happens, no matter how small, it tends to pick at the healed wounds and exacerbate the response. Luckily it is a short-lived response.

Ultimately, there have been so many men that I never called again. I suppose I view this as a bit of a karmic retribution for my heartlessness when it comes to men. In my early 20s they never called me again, since my late 20s I stopped calling them again if I didn’t actually want to see them again and many have complained to me about never calling them again. I always justified it by saying “so many men have never ever called me again and I never complained so these little pussies need to suck it up and get over it.” Ha! Even as I write those thoughts and that justification… truly a bit of karmic retribution. But good for you for putting yourself out there, Adrienne. Slow-clap.

Next stop: Programmer-guy and disconnect between texting and real life person.

 

Where have all the cowboys/rig pigs gone???

First of all, I’d like to follow up on the last blog post regarding some of the more “controversial” things that were written. I acknowledge that men also face similar issues in obtaining a secure financial position, particularly while we are in the midst of a market failure. I also want to say that I sympathise with this extreme pressure on men to ensure the health and needs of the family, both here and in more extreme patriarchal societies. Having been working on issues of gender the last few years, although in a South Asian context, I realise that similar gender structures still continue to exist here. In particular, the dependence of women on men’s income does still remain, albeit in a less oppressive way. In Pakistan, women are almost universally dependent on men’s income to support the household. In cases of extreme poverty, women certainly obtain informal employment as cleaning and cooking staff in rich people’s homes or in labour intensive work like brick breaking. In so doing, they bring shame upon the family and expose themselves to harassment, physical and sexual assaults.  This is perhaps a key reason for things like the tragic numbers of farmer suicides around the world who have become slaves to big agribusiness and are absolutely unable to provide necessities for their families (a terrible and problematic paradox). I suppose the one difference between the northern and southern context is that here, women actually have some agency to get out and help bring the bacon home if need be largely without fear of being raped on the way to work or from bringing dishonour upon the family. Finally, I am also acutely aware of the career benefits later in life (minus maternity leave) that come along with being a single woman with  no other obligations except herself; work hard and play hard.

Okay now that that is said, let me clear up my intentions with dating, why I have returned to the awfulness that is dating (specifically awful, in my opinion, is online dating), and tell you of my initial experience here in Vancouver with the online dating scene: it’s not pretty.

While the last post was mainly focused on trying to hunt out a partner to set myself up with a double income so I can feel more secure in taking risks like doing a phd, this is not the only, nor the most important, reason.

The discussion with my supervisor described in the previous post was described to me last night over beers by my Brazilian friend, Dais, as perhaps being the final drop in the bucket that caused it to overflow. I have been so excited and happy to be here doing what I am doing, having a little honeymoon period and all of a sudden, WHAMMO!!! One small word making me question what the hell I am doing here?? Why did I leave my friends, my family, my university??? I went home on the bus after this metaphorical drop hit the bucket, trying not to bust out in tears and be the creepy crier on the bus. I wasn’t able to quite articulate why I felt so emotional until I went home, drew a bath and put on a Tara Brach podcast dharma talk about vulnerability. In it she both acknowledges the evolutionary functionality of vulnerability but criticises our aversion to feeling vulnerable or allowing anyone else to know we feel vulnerable. As I soaked in both my feelings of utter vulnerability and my baby-soft chamomile bubble bath, I wept uncontrollably (felt AMAZEballz). Emerging from this bath of vulnerability (which I fully made the choice to sit in) was the realisation that I actually am really uncomfortable with the idea of spending the rest of my days without a man-friend.  However, I must deconstruct this last statement so it doesn’t come across as desperation, inability to be alone or as “loneliness”. Loneliness, surprisingly, is not something I have experienced in a very long time.

Imagine a world where people didn’t latch on to just one other person and then spend all evenings and weekends and holidays together as a pair, to the exclusion of everyone else. Would we then feel such pressure and desperation to also find ourselves a match so that we don’t end up becoming the one that is excluded? I suspect not! I feel that one key reason I feel so much pressure to ensure I find a life-partner (even the term kind of bugs me out) is because that is what everyone else is doing and if I don’t join the band wagon there will be no one left to spend time with because they’ll all be spending time with in their own exclusive pairing. Or pairs will spend time with other pairs and then complain about how hard it is to find other couple friends. In my life, I have been fortunate to be the single friend to a number of couples who have taken me in as one of them, even so far as to jokingly refer to me as “2^nd wife” or their “adopted adult child”. However, they still have their own intimate and real life together after I leave, that does not involve us committing to each other financial support or support in moving cities on the advent of a new career, etc. Furthermore, the permanent-ness of their own relationships is not necessarily guaranteed either, as I am coming to discover.

There’s an old saying: “white people problems”. This actually is a real “white people problem”. If we continued to surround ourselves, live with, and be intricately connected to our parents, siblings, and extended families througout our lives, would these feelings of exclusion and disconnectedness exist here?  Instead we “move away”, buy our own place to live, buy our own furniture and TVs and kitchen stuff, and are mocked by MaClean’s magazine when we end up back living in mom and dad’s basements at 30 years old and termed as the "failure to launch" generation. This is in stark contrast to other places in the world and the benefits of having one’s identity completely wrapped up in a collective identity with a larger family network, providing financial and social security.

So, with my intentions for dating being made clearer and less sociopathic, I rejoin the world of online dating.

This is not my first foray into the throngs of the online dating world. I have tried it a couple of times before for short periods with a negative attitude and, consequently, negative outcomes: me feeling doubtful about the quality of the male species and like I am a total loser at the same time. I have been saying for the last year and a half that I will never do online dating again. I use reasons such as “It is just too goofy for me”, “I am waaaaay too good/cool/attractive for that”, “Oh it’s fine for others but not for me”, “I have never had a problem meeting people in the ‘real’ world”, etc. I always articulated these negative attitudes and how they impacted my ability to open up to the possibility of someone I met online as, “I view them as lame-o for using online dating and then remember that I am also online dating and therefore I am viewing myself as totally lame-o”. Real nice, right? Not only have I been inadvertently judging myself, but I have been judging these innocents who are putting themselves out there and genuinely seeking a partner (or a mommy for their 2 children, as in the case with a lot of the dudes in Alberta).

Here is why my attitude was changed a couple of weeks ago: In a conversation with one of my dearest and wisest friends, a mentor and an inspiration, we broke down my negative attitudes into manageable pieces. First, we are concerned with how the rest of the world views us. Secondly, we attach meaning to finding a partner in the “natural” way; that if we meet someone “naturally” it means we are desirable and if we don’t then conversely we are not desirable. Thirdly, when we go on a date with someone we meet online, we wonder about what the rest of the world thinks of us when we are out with that person, that person we met online. For example, I for years have said that I won’t date anyone under 5’9 because I don’t want others to look at us and think we are a munchkin couple. The implications of self-consciousness are an inability to be in the present moment and focus. My friend shared with me how she herself was going to attitudinally approach her own online dating experience once she starts. She said that she was going to approach each and every man she goes on a date with as an opportunity to practice mindful presence and connectedness. WOWEEEEE! Rather than view each of them as potential partner-meat, she will try to view them just as they were without self-consciousness getting in the way. We could ALL use more practice in mindful presence while in conversation with another. Have you ever been in the presence of someone who is actively engaging with you; when they’re with you they are WITH you and not checking emails/the time/texts on their phone or having their eyes darting around the room as you talk?  It is pure love, even if just for a few hours, and it is a sacred space. This was the “aha” moment.

I proceeded to reactivate my e-harmony account and was happy to have found a really cheap deal. I edited some of my photos, my location, and my occupation, proudly typing in “PhD Student”, proud of possessing this kind of cultural capital. This might have been my first mistake but I digress. I set my preferences: matches only within 20 miles, no religious types, between the ages of 26 and 38, etc. E-harmony retorts back telling me in not so many words that I am actually being too picky and tells me I should “broaden my settings”. “No way”, I think, “I am not quite there yet”. I paid the tab and then sat back in hopeful waiting. In Edmonton, during my previous e-harmony experiences, I would have 10-plus messages in the first few hours from men wanting to meet. Either I got uglier or older looking or whatever but I waited and waited and waited some more and heard nothing for two to three days. What was I doing wrong???? (It is always my fault and something I did wrong, by the way…. vestigial beliefs from previous relationship). I remembered the fact that the demographics in Edmonton are slightly more in favour of women than perhaps Vancouver is. Perhaps less young men in Vancouver are looking for step-moms for their oil-rig-two-weeks-off conceived children or maybe more young men are confirmed ski/climbing/sailing bachelors. Who knows!!??? Disconcerting and a little bit hard on my ego.

I confided in one of my new Vancouver friends about this strange revulsion men seem to be experiencing as a result of my e-harmony profile. She says “oh no one in Vancouver uses e-harmony, you have to download the tinder app, that is where all the hot guys are”. I went home, downloaded the app, had three dates in two hours: confidence superficially lifted! But this is fodder for the next post.

Next stop: the new “Hot or Not” and my newly discovered distaste of small mouths and large foreheads.

The Quest for the Holy Grail: the Double-Income

I have just begun yet another journey: the journey of dating. This one MOST likely won’t result in weird eye, nose, or throat infections or some sort of gastrointestinal cholera-like “issue” or sleeping with cockroaches… or maybe it might! Though it may appear self-indulgent, I want to share this quest for a partner, fundamentally a quest for connectedness, with the blogosphere for three reasons: 1) it is better than talking it out with a UBC psychology graduate student (all I would be able to afford) or bothering my most precious friend resources too much; 2) Because when I am experiencing fear, vulnerability and insecurity, I find solace in hearing other people’s experiences and to find that we are all going through the same shit; and 3) fun to practice non-academic writing (okay so it is MOSTLY self-indulgent but I’d argue that cat pictures are more self-indulgent).  

What is this drive for connectedness that drives us into the arms of another, or multiple others? I have caught glimpses of this connectedness, feeling true freedom, while in moments of meditation or while in the throes of debilitating “love”. I recall a moment of freedom from a little over a year ago, meditating outside at my parents little northern Alberta acreage. I experienced a fleeting second of knowing that I am made up of the same “stuff” as the rest of the universe, the rest of the earth, the other animals (my earth brothers and sisters, as I refer to them while at the same time being shit-my-pants scared of wild animals), the trees that were around me, the wind, etc. I remember thinking, “if I am all of this and this is all of me, how can I ever actually feel like I am alone???”. We are soooo not separate from the universe but rather embedded in an infinite network of energy and intertwining cosmic fascia. Like I said, it was a fleeting moment of feeling fully connected. At the time, I was voluntarily not employed and being cared for and looked after by my mummy and daddy in the forest in northern Alberta where peace and quiet (and Mormons) abounded. To say that maintaining this sense of connectedness was challenging upon re-engagement in society a couple months later is both a euphemism AND a paradox.

For those of you who know me well (and perhaps those of you who do not because, evidently, I am “cool” with telling anybody anything), one of my intentions for the last year and a half has been freedom. Freedom from thinking that my life “should” be different, that I “should” be different, that I “should” be “further along” on the life road map laid out by our culture (think Hasbro’s board game, Game of Life where we were either pink or blue little stick men driving what appeared to be Sebring convertibles). These “shoulds”, according to Buddhist philosophy, are the source of all desire and therefore the source of all suffering. By coming into mindful presence and a peaceful acceptance of the universe unfolding imperfectly perfect we can detach from the concocted story of how things “should” be; each of our lives is exactly how it is, perfect in its imperfectness. No “shoulds”. However these “shoulds” are the product of our culture's value system and are imprinted and profoundly embedded profoundly in our psyches. They are no joke. 

In particular, over the last year and a half, I have been seeking freedom from the paralysing belief that when I find a partner, THEN I can do all the things I want to do. I experienced a traumatically disappointing breakup in the spring of 2012, the kind that causes you to actually leave your body as a self-preservation mechanism with the resulting emptiness being first filled with fear, doubt and bitterness before light and wisdom re-emerge to displace these poisons. One of many pieces of innate wisdom that emerged was that this belief in a partner being a priori to me achieving my goals was a belief I had held for my entire life. This belief manifested in my behaviour as I sat and waited for someone to choose me all the while acting incredibly desperate as I just wanted to get my life “started”. This insight has indeed made the last year and a half the most positive, productive, exciting, and confidence-building chapter of my life thus far.

An event occurred last week triggered my old friends, insecurity and vulnerability and perhaps desperation. I moved to Vancouver a few months ago to begin a phd program. I rent a nice comfortable one-bedroom apartment, I cook nice meals for myself, have some savings for a holiday next year, some savings for retirement, do some yoga, swim lanes at the community centre, sit in nice coffee shops and work, plan my garden for next year, etc. You know, a nice single 31 year old existence as budgeted for in accordance with the increasing income that comes with more and more training. I have yet to be awarded a grant for my studies so I work full-time in 3 separate wonderfully invigorating and challenging academicky part-time jobs. In a meeting with my supervisor last week she first asked if “isn’t just working 2 of the 3 jobs enough of an income for you (2000$/ month)?”. I responded confidently with resounding  “no”. She then tells me that “theoretically you shouldn’t be working so much”. I respond by telling her “I don’t know how to respond to that comment. It is what it is”. This event  may seem like “so what’s the big deal, Adrienne???”. It shook me. It did not sit well with me for two reasons. First, it forced me to remember how vulnerable and insecure my position here actually is right now and then of course I proceeded to dwell on the accompanying worry. Of course, as I often do in times of worry, I totally neglected to remember how insecure and vulnerable my position has been for the last 7 years and how it has ALWAYS worked out. I began to panic, to feel homesick for the security of Alberta and my friends and my family, and even my university there; homesick for connectedness and grounding. Secondly, as I asked around to other graduate students I work with about their experiences with working and supervisor expectations, the majority of them had not had to worry about earning less income while in school. This majority had partners. These women have or had partners in their life during graduate school. These women had a double income household to buffer the insecurity. They then almost all solidified their security by having a baby while writing their dissertations. Babies equal relationship cement (debateable?).  I am simply trying to make a life for myself that does not assume I will ever have a double income. I am very honest about this, but one of the reasons I am doing a phd is not only because I have tended to be good at academia and I find it incredibly stimulating as a potential career, but also because it could one day allow me to earn an income as a single woman that might facilitate me in buying a piece of land in rural Alberta where I can grow a food forest.

All of this has triggered this strange desire to find a partner, as if that will make me feel more secure financially. Ha. Crazy right? Nope. While I am no victim-blamer, I am fairly certain I, along with a number of beautiful, intelligent, still- single friends of mine, am wrestling against a long history and deep-seated ethos of women as the helpless dependent. This historical ethos is perhaps not so historical and, I would argue, still influences the mechanics and structures of our present institutions. This event that has retriggered my fear, doubts, insecurities, and vulnerabilities is the first time in my life that I have ever felt like I may not be able to succeed at what I am doing not because I am a woman, but because I am a single-woman.

Next stop, travelling to the beginning of my online dating/prowling in Vancouver: The crap, the crappier, and the crappiest.