Sinking

A general feeling of malaise has settled in over me.  I suppose it's been growing for some time but I can feel it now.  Can't quite shake it off.

I wonder if it's due to going off the pill.  Hormones are such a tricky thing.  I don't think I've made note of that here.  This whole fertility/pill/egg freezing thing.  My mother wants me to see if it's possible to freeze any eggs.  I feel... ambivalent about this.  But I agreed to see the doctor and get more facts.  Of course just to see the stupid doctor you have to be off the pill for four months.  So I stopped my pills, and it's been four months.  I need to make an appointment.  I don't have particularly high hopes for this endeavor given that I only have one ovary left and am 38.  But facts and knowledge are better than ignorance.  I suppose I'll have more to say about this, when I know more.

But in ways it's related to the malaise and in ways it's not.  It is because I see that all of my friends of age have children or are having children and that I am not in any position to even be considering having children in any way shape or form at the moment.  I have that sense of running out of time.  Although I look at babies and small children (especially) and I find I have no interest in them.  But I did always think I would have a family.  It just hasn't worked out that way.  My life is great in almost every other way, but not this one.  And there's not much I can do about it, and certainly not much else that I'm not already trying to do about it.  So there's that.

Then I'm coming in to the last year of the PhD.  It's unsettling and I feel overwhelmed and like I'm not capable of pulling this off.  Like I've just been fucking about for three years and I'm about to exposed as the fraud and lazy sod I sometimes feel like I am.  This one worries me less.  I know I'm just overwhelmed with the amount of work I need to do in the next year, and right now it all seems a big ungainly mess.  But once I settle in and start actually doing some work I think I'll feel better about it.

More worryingly is the sense of isolation I've been feeling.  Which isn't necessarily sensible, as I spend a lot of my time socializing with people.  But there is something missing.  I feel removed from my friends in some way.  Separate or outside.  Not when I'm with them- not when I'm out doing things.  But when I have time to myself which, despite the fact that I am busy all the time, I seem to also have plenty of.  Sort of.  I guess I count work time as 'alone time' which maybe is because the PhD is such a solitary thing to be doing.  Even when you're with other people, for example, in my of office in Cambridge where all the PhD students sit together, you're still just working on your own thing that no one else is working on.

Of course there's also the cold and the weather and the dark.

It's sort of depression, although not, I don't think, the crippling clinical depression that people are afflicted by.  I don't think drugs or therapy will help me.  Just need to muddle through.  Acknowledge how I'm feeling right now.  Keep an eye on it.  Keep doing everything I'm supposed to be doing.  After all, what else can I do?

Drifting

Just read my last post and it seems it's entirely what I could say today.  Time has moved forward, writing has not happened.  Again, I can succinctly recall a list of highlights and other moments will be lost to time.  But it's true you know.  The older I get the less things seem to matter.  It used to mean a lot more to me to write things down.  Not just to write things down but to write things to other people.  I feel I have become more and more introverted.  I don't feel the pressing need to write things down as much as I used to.  I don't feel the pressing need to reach out and be in touch with my friends like I used to.  Which isn't to say that I'm not in touch with friends.  My social life at times seems to be ridiculously busy.  But it doesn't mean as much to me in terms of needing it as I think it used to.  I'm not sure I can convey what I mean succinctly.  Because I still crave contact with others.  Maybe I'm just more secure in it now.  And maybe I fight against things less.  Adult apathy has set in?  Not exactly.  I am still someone who holds very strong opinions and is fond of conveying them to people.  But something has shifted over all this time.  I know it.  I just can't put my finger on it.

Without further ado, the list of memories.

• The Olympics were awesome.  I can't believe in fact, just how awesome they were.  I don't think I would ever travel to a city to see the Olympics, but to have it in my own city, and to end up with numerous tickets, mostly due to S, was incredible.  I went to four events and caught the woman's marathon in town.  I went to three Paralympic events as well.  It was a truly uplifting and inspirational series of events.  And the weather was good.  I can't wait for the park to re-open as a park.  The regeneration of the Stratford site as a park was exceptional.  Good memories, good times.
• S and T came back from Australia and I got to hang out with S a lot which was good.  Olympic tickets and all.  There was drama, because with them there always seems to be some drama.  I miss S.  I miss having him around.  I hate that they're in Australia.  And I'm sad that they don't seem to love it all that much.  But they're there and saving money and have fallen back into a groove.  So we'll see.  S said he'd buy me a ticket to come visit them out there, so that's currently in the planning stages.  Long ass flights.  That's all I have to say.
• My mom was here for 20 days.  and overall it went pretty well.  Only a few minor melt downs and one short big one.  Which really isn't bad for that length of time at all.  We went to Copenhagen, we went to Cambridge.  I got used to having her around, and I was sad when she left.  I am keenly aware that my time with my parents is less and less.  One day they will both be gone.  While I'm not super close with them in the sense that, we don't talk all the time.  As an only child, I know I will be sad in a way I cannot fathom now when they are truly and actually gone.  So I was glad to have what was, overall, a good experience with my mom.
• Copenhagen was awesome.  God I love that city.  Not having been there since I was 20, it had obviously changed tremendously.  But some things hadn't.  And the city itself is just so liveable and comfortable, although ungodly expensive.  That was a great trip.
• Which of course included a trip to NOMA.  Wow.  Just fucking wow.  Wow wow wow.  I can't believe we got the reservations.  I can't believe we really got to go.  I can't believe I spent that much on a meal but it was absolutely worth it and I would spend it again.  Amazingly unbelievable.  Wow.
• After my mom left, I took a trip to Bordeaux with N.  Ostensibly it was to practice my french, which I have kept up with, but it was also to just have a real holiday holiday without family.  It was great actually.  Bordeaux is a lovely city and N was a fun traveling companion.  We stayed on budget which was awesome.  We ate a lot of duck which was awesome.  We cycled bikes which was awesome.  I'd like to make more excursions to France.  What would really be cool would be a residential language week.
• My work continues to truck along.  It's getting there, albeit slowly.  P is now officially my supervisor and A is gone.  That was awkward.  I still feel it's a very lonely and solitary exercise this PhD malarkey.  I will be glad when it's over.  I will also be in a state of disbelieve, I'm sure.
• S had her twin boys two months early.  The little one has heart trouble and will need open heart surgery but they all seem to be okay at the moment.  I hope she's happy.  The more I see people with kids, the less I want them in reality, although I would still like a family in theory.  As there is no dating going on in my life, that's a distant prospect at best.  In fact I feel fairly conflicted about the children issue.
• Although other friends of mine are still having ongoing children issues.  What I want is for my friends to be happy.  I'm not always sure that children make you happy, but what I want is for my friends to be happy, so I try to support them, in whatever they are trying to do to achieve their happiness.
• I have some teaching work which is great.  As I only have a year left on the PhD give or take, I'm starting to think about work things.  The future is a murky place.

I think that's a reasonable catch up since my last post.  Like I said, I'm sure there are many things I forgot.  Things of importance.  Things of note.  Now lost.  It's silly to say I'll try to write more, because it doesn't really matter.  I do want to write more.  I have things on my mind.  Maybe I'm being defeatist.  I don't write because I've given up hope that anything will change.  We'll see.  A bien tot.