Who can turn the world on with a smile?

Back in college, when I was depressed and took a semester off, I started watching The Mary Tyler Moore Show. This was the era of Ally McBeal, and I remember thinking "everyone praises this show for showing a single girl in a career... wasn't this basically Mary Tyler Moore?" To see if I was right, I needed to watch it.

We didn't have cable, so I got some of my sister's friends to record it for me off of Nick at Night (which now shows stuff like George Lopez and Roseanne!!! How old does that make me feel?), plus I bought the available box sets on VHS. I didn't see every episode, but I saw a lot of them. This was a show that I swear, helped me get through my depression. It was just one thing that helped, but it did help.

I recently got rid of my VHS box sets, because I hadn't watched them in a long time, and they were taking up space. I bought the first season on DVD, and then didn't really watch it. I had buyers' remorse.

Recently, I decided to watch it again, after probably not seeing it in about 8 or 9 years.

Damn, that show is funny!!! I was surprised at how funny it is, even though I watched it a lot 10 years ago. I had forgotten how snappy and hilarious the writing is, and how lovable the characters are. This show premiered in, what, 1970? And honestly, it doesn't seem dated at all. The basic premise of the show is one that still gets used today- single career girl tries to balance work with life- sounds like Ally McBeal and also 30 Rock, doesn't it? But the jokes are still hilarious- as much as I adore 30 Rock, I am not convinced that in 35 years, someone who wasn't even born when the show went off the air will watch it and think "Wow, this show is hysterical!" Very few of the jokes are topical- some are, like a reference to Eric Sevareid, or being able to give the plot of a John Wayne movie without having seen it ("Oh, you know... he won."), but not so many that you don't get it. Incidentally, 30 Rock did a great episode featuring Laugh-In as EXACTLY that kind of comedy- so topical that people can't get the jokes at all 30 years later.

The Mary Tyler Moore Show was this gently feminist show, touching on everything from men getting promoted because they were men, anti-semitism, the drudgery of being a housewife when you have ambitions to go on and do other things, being single in your 30s when everyone else expected you to be married, having a job that you like, and the fact that even good girls like Mary Richard had premarital sex, and she could do that and still be considered a "good girl." It wasn't ahead of its time, exactly, but it was definitely au courant.

I watch it and I STILL think "Wow, who wouldn't want to be Mary Richards?"

Why does my heart feel so bad?

So after my advisor had the "come to Jesus" talk with me two weeks ago, she asked for a new draft of my paper with the expectation that it would be beefed up and filled out. She also suggested that I "talk to someone" to figure out why I am having trouble working.

So I did just that- I made an appointment with a dissertation coach, who was very helpful just in the fact that it's someone that I feel understands how I feel about the whole process, understands that I don't like it, yet isn't telling me to quit and is supportive of the idea that I just want to FINISH the darn program and GET OUT.

She suggested that I do this two-week teleclass for overcoming procrastination. Procrastination is a big problem of mine. I don't do work because I don't want to work.

So for the last 2 weeks, I have been doing a great job of working every day, and I've gotten myself up to 2-3 40 minute blocks of writing/working every day. This might not sound like a lot, but considering that many days I do nothing.... it makes a big difference. I have written 10 and a half pages in the last 2 weeks. That is a BIG deal.

And yet... I am still going to miss my deadline (today). How depressing. Instead of feeling good about working consistently and making decent progress, I feel upset and angry that I am missing this deadline. I think I can have it to her on Monday. I just need to not let this depression and upset-ness prevent me from working. All I want to do is crawl under a rock and hide.

Memories of 9/11

Five years ago, I was working in DC, at a government agency, just down the road from the Pentagon. I had driven to work that day instead of taking the metro, because I was going to go look at an apartment, since I was planning on moving at the end of the month.

We didn't have internet in my office, but I had on NPR, and they announced that a plane hit the World Trade Center in New York. My initial thought was that it was some drunk pilot in a Cessna. Then, not that long afterwards, they announced that a second plane hit the other tower. We still didn't know what was going on. A second plane was suspicious. Some people will say that they knew right away when they heard that a second plane hit that it was terrorism. I didn't know that at all. We were confused; we didn't know how serious it was. Then, the guy down the hall came out and said that his daughter had called him and said that a plane hit the Pentagon. We had no idea what to believe- at that point, it wasn't on NPR yet, and there were so many rumors and so much speculation. I thought about leaving work, just b/c it seemed like a good excuse, not because I thought I wasn't safe.

Then my mom called me at work, crying, because she had heard that the Pentagon had been hit, and begging me to go home. I distinctly remember saying "Will it make you feel better if I go home?" and she said yes, while sobbing. I told her that if it would make her feel better, I would go home.

I tried to call DH (who was just a boyfriend at the time), but he hadn't gotten to work downtown yet. At that point, we started realizing how serious it was, so I started getting scared. I couldn't get hold of DH, so I decided to just leave without getting hold of him. I was scared, because I was in a government building, and we had no idea what would happen next.

I refused to take the highway home; we seriously had no idea what would happen next. DH called me on my cell when I was in the car, so I drove to the closest metro station and waited for him until he got there.

Sept. 11, 2001 was about five weeks after my best friend died, and I was still really raw emotionally. My DH remembered reactions that I had to the attacks that I don't remember at all, that sound really crazy now, but were a result of just not thinking straight. The two events are always pretty closely associated in my mind, and it seemed unimaginable that my best friend wasn't around to see the world changed so much for the worse. In a way, I was glad that he didn't have to see it.

Finally got my password back!

I lost my Blogger password, and only got a new one a few days ago. So I'm back!

I'm trying to get back in a work groove lately. Working 20 hours a week on school sounds totally doable in theory, but in practice, it is hard for me.

It's been really hot where we live, and our AC is pretty crappy. No fun. This has made it even harder for me, because I will go somewhere else to do my work, only to find that I've left my power cord at home, or my data set is in my email account and I'm in a place where I don't have internet access, or I don't have a copy of the survey I gave to students, etc. So after at least three of these episodes, I have my act together, and I've done the tiniest bit of work, which is mostly cleaning up my data set and running a couple of little things. Hey, it's a start.

I had to have a short "Come to Jesus" talk with DH. I am going to try to go without anti-depressants. To do this, though, I told him that it would be a significantly more expensive proposition, because it means things like weekly therapy sessions, and a dissertation coach to get my ass into gear. These are not cheap propositions, especially compared to the $30 a month that anti-depressants would cost. I needed to make sure he was on board with all this money, because things are tight right now.

I currently have a prescription for a new brand of anti-depressant that I filled, but haven't taken yet. We will see how the drug-free, expensive route goes.

Self-sabotage, again

Today was rough. I found out from my advisor that there are a couple of professors who don't want me to be their TAs b/c I've missed deadlines/had problems with followthrough.

There is at least one professor who has a legitimate beef based on a bad experience with me, when I flaked out on something I was supposed to do for research work. I don't have a defense for it- I just spaced out. I felt so bad about it, and was really, really angry at myself. Really angry. REALLY angry. It was a low point, for sure.

I have wracked my brain, and I can't think of anything else. My advisor thinks that it may be another professor who is pretty flaky and scatterbrained himself, and also very difficult to work with. If this is the case, it's not really a problem. I can't think of anything concrete that I would have done to anger this professor, but he tends to make lots of last minute demands, and you have to rush around doing the very best you can to appease him. So it's possible that I missed something among the many, many things, but if I did, it was very minor. And I really don't think I did, by the way!

Ugh- so bad for morale. I hate academia.

Insomnia

I got 3 hours of sleep last night. Why? Because I started taking Lexapro yesterday. I took it way too late in the day (around 4:30), and it kept me up all night. This happened when I started taking Celexa a few years ago. I'll start taking it in the morning, and the situation should resolve itself.

I finally decided to go back on antidepressants because I can't change anything that is bothering me about my life until either DH or I leaves grad school. I am not ready to quit (although I am always wishing that I had never started).

We will see how the meds go. Celexa worked great, except for gaining 10 lbs and losing my libido. Lexapro is just another form of Celexa, so I am wary of these side effects again, and will not hesitate to ask the psychiatrist to put me on something else if either of these side effects show up.

Started my project for the Knitting Olympics last night. I frogged it this morning, and I'm starting over, though. I'm doing the Midwest Moonlight scarf from Scarf Style in KnitPicks Elegance. I think the pattern as stated is too wide, given this yarn. So I'm making it narrower.