Friday, February 27, 2004

The new philosophy

in three main parts

1) For me, the whole world boils down to this:

What will you do, and refuse to do, to please the people you love?

Anyway. So.

2)My biology will eventually undo all my ambition.

My job is so stressful that at the end of every week I can't believe I made it through again, and every Monday I sort of have this heaving feeling of: "Well, here I go. I can do this. I can make a difference. I just have to make it through another week."

And, miracles of miracles, four days later it's Friday, and I'm free.

My feminist philosophy is constantly undermined by the never-ending references to women who have left my field to be full time moms, and the sick, nauseous feeling I get whenever I realise that the second I get pregnant, I too am doomed to leave my rewarding, demanding, stressful job for a much more rewarding life...where someone will throw up on me daily and I'll lack financial independance. I want this more than anything else in the world, like some sick invention of William Moulton-Marston, a woman wanting to be free by asking for more imprisonment.

3)I am done with snow. Forever.

We got our once a year snow here in Atlanta this week. You could see the grass sticking up through it but that didn't stop the little kids who live all around me from trying to sled. Out in the park they ran their little plastic discs up and down the hillside. But the friction and wieght of their sleds melted the thin crust of pricipitation, meaning that after their fun the hillside was nothing but a mess of muddy streaks by early afternoon.

I resented even this thin crust of snow despite the joy that it brought so many others, which led me to realise: I really am never going to move. So no big appointement to NARA for me, no on to the Smithsonian or back to Harvard or even away to UCLA. I really love Atlanta, and the South. My own native cell structure has undermined me.

And the sick thing is, I don't even mind.

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