Well, i have been some kind of mental limbo for several months now. I just don't know what to do with myself. From the easy (blogging) to the difficult (research) i find that things are simply not right but it takes a lot of effort to change things. Oh, and the garden is a mess too. I watch my husband work constantly -- at work, on the house -- and i marvel. I cannot put my life in any order and look at him, busy bee, climbing up onto the 3rd floor & hanging off scaffolding just so that he can restore the original victorian trim to this house. Meanwhile, i can't manage to keep the weeds pulled and i have not been to the office in weeks. Literally, weeks -- and when i go there i putz around, i have not done anything productive in months. "I hate people who do nothing!" rants dh, about something at work, and i slink away.
So, because sitting on the couch analyzing a problem is easier than a prerequisite for fixing it, i have given some thought to what precisely is wrong with me here.
From the blogging perspective, i am annoyed that the blog is by invite only and that it has somewhat wandered from it's original intent of sharing pictures of Nicolas' garden. The problem with the invite-only is that really it is hard to get new readers, or readers with a different bent and now it is almost purely read by db moms. Which in itself isn't so bad but there is a lot of non-db stuff i talk about, especially with the babies and all, and i know that it can be difficult to read, depending on where you are. So i would like to get rid of the invite only, but then i am paranoid about 'security' so i would feel like i should also get rid of some of the things which really identify me. Like, ahem, my living children's names, pictures of my house, etc etc. I am also paranoid that someone is going to steal my pictures so i would get rid of pictures of the kids that show their faces, too. Not that my pictures are *so damned good* or anything but i know it has happened to people and you never know.
That would be fine to do, except it would mean going through like 3 years of posts. Carefully. What fun.
The garden, too, is an unholy mess. In fact, Nicolas' garden needs a little TLC because it just looks kinda neglected. The rose garden is actually doing fine. The vegetable garden is on the brink, but not as bad as it has been in the past. However. The other part of the flower garden, the daylily/shade border -- is horrid. I should take pictures to show you, but i am embarrassed. It is completely overgrown, looks a disaster, and basically needs to be totally dug out & switched all around. The daylilies have gone crazy and all my clumps are growing together. The rest of the bed needs to be tilled & created (i stopped in mid-bed, 3 years ago when i put it in, there is a pile of bricks there instead of a flower bed), all of the plants need to be dug out & separated & replanted in different places.
When am i going to find time to do that?
Finally there is the whole career thing. I am not planning on trying for more babies. I have been in this whole baby/motherhood mindset for the past 5+ years and i would like to move beyond that. Not that i am leaving behind my children but you know what i mean -- when pregnant, i cannot do work. When nursing a newborn (or two), i cannot do work. When grieving a lost baby, i cannot do work. Hell, i have effectively done no work in the last 5 years. I was able to publish & get tenure because i had enough half-finished projects from before Nicolas died that i was able to finish & publish them. And there was one 'new result' which was pretty bogus but we got some mileage out of it anyway.
You will notice that 5 years dates from when Nicolas died, in fact i did a pretty decent amount of work when i was pg with him. I even had a yellow book in tow when i went to the hospital because i felt no movement. Not many yellow books have been opened since...(as an aside, why the hell is Springer's website blue when all their damned books are yellow?)
But that is a change wrought by his death, i suppose -- when pg i am completely useless. I would like to structure my life a little bit so it is not completely about the children all of the time. I am being paid (in part) to do research, i ought to do it. But i hate my research, because it is completely useless and utterly bogus stupid shit. It was useful only to get me tenure, heh heh. (See, here is yet another post which will have to be, uh, modified, if i open up this blog to general readership again.)
Perhaps the utter uselessness of my research does not make me unique in the annals of academics, eh? But nevertheless it is a gall to me, i do not like it. That is not what i intended, when i went to graduate school, and when i pursued an academic career. But to change areas is, well, very hard -- takes a lot of work. I am not a fan of work, you know? I have to find something that i am truly interested in but, well, where? By the way i don't mean, you know, go back to school & become a surgeon or anything. I mean, change topics of research, still doing more-or-less the same general thing, that is, applied math. The word applied, you see, was supposed to mean useful. Applicable to a greater good. Rather than writing papers about bullshit mathematical models that are worthless anyway, which is what i am currently doing. Or, more correctly, currently not doing.
Because currently i am sitting on a couch in a room that is covered with a mess of toys, blogging about my life that i cannot seem to get any control of. When what i really should be doing is taking a nap. Or weeding. Or reading a yellow book.
