Low Ebb

Some days you wake up wondering what its all for (usually after you went to bed wondering the same thing).  I feel like I have so many balls in the air these days, my life is a careful choreography that takes maximum concentration.  But right now, I seriously wonder what is the point of keeping all those ball up in the air?  Living two totally separate and all-consuming lives simultaneously is not easy.  I keep trying to steal more and more time for the life that matters to me--the one I live at night and on the weekends--but it isn't working.  Teaching that one-off lecture at the university the other week reminded me why I spent the first 35 years of my life preparing for that career.  It has been 15 years since I had to face facts that the world was not going to make it possible for me to be a university prof.  Now, in the face of significant layoffs at universities and art museums in the US, I have to wonder, even if I had been lucky enough to get such a position that did relate directly to my degree, would I still be able to work in the field?

It is on days like today that I feel like I have slipped between the cracks in life.  I'm too different from the folks I spend 40 hours a week with in my day job to have any contact with them outside of work.  (None of them shares any of my interests.  I am unable to talk about any of my interests at work.  It has even gotten me in trouble.  An academic interest in the male nude, my ongoing struggles to learn Cantonese or my complex relationship with Leslie Cheung have managed to alienate me (at best) and get me into some serious trouble (at worst) at work.  I do know quite a few people via the Internet who share one or another of these interests.  But the Internet will never replace face-to-face contact.  Those relationships are necessary to me, but are not quite sufficient.  I think many of you know what i mean.

So, here I am wasting one of my precious weekend days when I get to be the "real" me feeling tired, depressed, despondent and wondering why I put myself through all of this.  Why can't I be like other people, content to put in my 8 at work and then go home and down a beer while I watch the latest reality show, so I have something to talk to my co-workers about at lunch the next day.  Why do I have to be "different"?  What am I supposed to do with this fact?  Does anything about my life, in the end, matter anyway?  The utter meaninglessness of everything I am and try to be and do is what I am most aware of today.  It is thoughts and feelings like these that make me doubt everything today.  I hope this phase doesn't last too much longer.  I'm tired of looking at the world from the end of a long dark tunnel.  The light and color look so enticing, but is so far away right now.