2012, Let’s Do This!!

Hey All! Happy New Year!!

Given all the 2011 hating I’ve seen online so far, I thought I’d write a little welcome note to 2012. Also, as I’ve been lax on posting lately, it’d be nice to put up something new besides film roll call updates. Not that there’s nothing good to read there–oh, there is. So much new snark for you, to begin with…but there’s something nice about a quick read.

I just thought I’d fill you all in on some stuff I’ve been doing, and post about some stuff I’ve been thinking a lot about lately.

1. My hair is red again.

The last time I did this, it was the first semester of my senior year of high school. I was clearly trying to shake the past as a few months later, I shaved my head and started dating my first girlfriend. This time, I feel like the red fits, and I think I’m going to keep it for awhile.

2. I started a new job.

Just before Christmas, I started a new job at Boswell Book Company. Against the advice of many, my first three days were the final three shopping days before Christmas. I learned a lot. In fact, I had A LOT of fun those three days. We were super busy and there were tons of people around to answer my noob questions with patience and encouragement. I came home Christmas Eve, all aglow and feeling awesome. I wanted to blog about the awesomeness of the job.  Maybe I’ll get around to that in the next couple of weeks when I’m not so busy.

3. One thing about people that’s problematic: when a person assumes everyone else is exactly like them and thinks like them. 

This is something a student brought up when we were discussing Watchmen in my comics class last semester…and it’s been gnawing on me since. I think the phenomenon manifests most heinously in families, where everyone assumes that similar living situations produce identical beings. Also bad is when you start a new job working with people you kinda know, and quickly realize you don’t *really* know them (and they don’t know you). Or you return to the job you’ve worked for years and realize that even though you’ve worked with these people for years, you don’t *really* know them.

I feel like I should give the people I meet a Mel Primer, so they don’t assume things about me based on the way I look. I’m not really the kind of person I look like. First of all, I’m Black under here. That’s a joke. Which is the first thing people should know about me: I find humor in many things people get their panties in a bunch about. It’s just me. I tend to seek out humor. I like to laugh. I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but we aren’t born knowing when and where the sense-of-humor-boundaries are for every person on the planet. So, I’d like to propose a negotiation period: everyone gets the first month of knowing someone to say stupid things and ask inappropriate questions so as to discover where the boundaries are…make that two months to two years for people like me who probably have Asperger’s.

4. I really want to finish my final degree program this semester without having a nervous breakdown. 

Included in this is emerging unscathed by the gauntlet known as the academic job market. For example: this weekend is the big deal MLA conference where most of the interviewing for the academic job market takes place. Now, with just about any other job (besides audition tapes for reality shows, I’ve learned), it would be considered rude and/or absolutely unprofessional for something that is apparently common practice on the academic job market: not letting people know whether or not their application has been received.

For example, I turned in applications way back in October that I’ve heard nothing about in the months following…including no indication of whether or not I should prepare for an MLA interview, and no indication of whether or not my application is in the “Hell No” pile. That sucks. But this is how it is, apparently. What to do? I guess, hope for best and send another huge stack of applications out into the ether this semester. Wish me luck…given the process so far, I’m defo gonna need it.

4.1. Recovery is awesome. And confusing. But mostly awesome. 

I’ve noticed that I’m doing things lately that I never would have done before I started working on my anxiety. First of all, handling a new job during the holidays without freaking out. Second, handling a new job during the holidays and enjoying it. I’m retaining memories now, too. And sleeping better. I hope this keeps up, as being a nervous wreck all the time is exactly the last thing I want to do. So maybe it’s dumb to be on the academic job market NOW, when I’m finally starting to enjoy recovery. But this is the irony of my life.

 

More on all this stuff in the year to come. Here’s to making it a good one. Four days in, I already know that 2012 is going to be full of change, which I’m just going to have to try to embrace. Not quite sure yet how this distinguishes 2012 from every other year of my life thusfar, though. Hopefully this one doesn’t distinguish itself by ending in apocalypse. But if it does, I hope I can be badass enough to survive said apocalypse. Or at least be less annoying than Justine facing the apocalypse in Melancholia.

Happy New Year, everyone!! Here’s to early 2013 posts that don’t hate on 2012.