The Bitch is Back or: Picking up the pieces of my life without you on my mind
By the time this is released, I will have been working in my new position as the Library Director for the Longy School of Music of Bard College for 2.5 hours.
I went back and forth about what pithy almost-spiteful song lyric to title this week's newsletter. On Friday, which was my last day at UNH, I listened to Freedom! '90 by George Michael a lot. But that's very much a going-away song, in my mind. I was going for a "look at me now" vibe. So, I settled on two, both by fellow fruit Elton John: The Bitch is Back, and I'm Still Standing.
I'm going to focus on my reasoning for the latter. Forgive me, but I'm going to get a little personal.
On January 15th, 2022, my boyfriend at the time broke up with me. However, he left my place with us in agreement to work towards getting back together. That failed on February 16th, 2022. And that was that.
Also happening in late January and February was me returning to work after a bit of a nervous breakdown, caused mostly by work. About a week after I returned to work, I started applying to other jobs. A major factor in that was also a major factor for my relationship failing.
Both in work and my relationship, people weren't telling me when I was doing something wrong until it was in a context of punishment. In my relationship and at work, I had been doing something wrong and had no idea. Because nobody told me.
With both of these realms of my life ending for similar reasons and at similar times, how could I not link them together emotionally?
This breakup is the only one I've had that has lingered so long. I still have dreams, still think about him every single day, 6 months later. I do not have feelings for him anymore, and I realize how poorly-suited we were as partners. But I think the weird connection to the collapse of my job has made it stick in my head like gum in shag carpet.
On Friday, I told my therapist that I was feeling very vengeful about it all. He told me that was okay, but that maybe I should put those feelings away for 6 months. In line with my sense of humor and how I was feeling, he said I needed to have something to back up being vengeful, something to show for.
I like my therapist a lot.
To start the six months, I get to say:
- I got a faculty position at 24.
- I published a book at 26.
- I got a tenure-track faculty position at 26.
- I become enough of a recognized and respected authority in my profession by 28 that I was being invited to give workshops, presentations, and guest lectures, some of which I was paid hundreds of dollars for.
- I was asked to be in a podcast with some friends at 28, and through that have met and interviewed library workers, scholars, comedians, and other professionals for over a year now. Hell, I got to do an episode with Ben Miller from Bad Gays, which is my favorite podcast. I went to the author talk for the Bad Gays book this past Saturday night, and he got super excited when I told him who I was. (Masks obfuscate the face and voice.) Horror Vanguard had me on to ramble about esoteric Buddhist philosophy for an hour. When else do I get to do that? Doing this podcast has enriched me intellectually like nothing ever has because I am always exposed to theory and philosophy I might not have understood otherwise.
- And I'm a library director before I'm 30.
(We're gonna leave out the fact that I still have a hard time keeping my house clean because my ex made my trauma around that even worse.)
Here's to picking up the pieces, and here's hoping I will prove the bitch is, indeed, back.
✒️ What I'm writing
I'm really into this whole idea of embodied information lately. Finally found a way to combine my love of snooty cyborg feminism and opera. I think maybe I could get an article out of this.
Have me on your podcast to talk about queer opera cyborgs.
- How I use the Logseq Readwise plugin in my Zettelkasten
- Opera queens are embodied personal information management
- Scrapbooks are a visual, emergent, and generative self-archive of a person's life and memories
- top of mind
- 12 Favorite Questions
🎨 What I'm creating
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057 - The Man From Earth feat. laborkyle by librarypunk
I'm sleepy and have had a few glasses of wine, so I'm just gonna tell you to listen to the episode. More importantly, go listen to and read every single thing Kyle has ever done ever. He's the best and way smarter than I could ever dream to be.
📖 What I'm reading
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Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
There's this archived reading club called Infinite Summer where you read approximately 10 pages of Infinite Jest every day from June 21 to September 21. I've tried it every year for a few years, but something always happens around day 10 that makes me break the chain. This year, I said fuck it and bought the e-book so I can read it first thing in the morning when I'm still waking up. I can have it with me more conveniently than the incredible brick that is the paperback. Fingers crossed I'll finish this time.
Every time I've read it, I am always so struck by this quotation:
I cannot make myself understood.
Me, too, Hamlet. I mean Hal.
🎥 What I'm watching
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The Man From Earth (2007)
What a movie! And by movie, I mean extended episode of a sci-fi channel television series, by which I actually mean Star Trek. I didn't expect to like this based on how it starts. But it sucked me in with the philosophy and epistemology, dammit! I don't have much to say about it that we don't cover in the podcast episode. A thing to take away, though: I think it's important to remember we should always be questioning how and why we know things. Sometimes, self-interrogation comes from a place of paranoia and anxiety. However, when coming from a playful state of open curiosity, without judgment, I think constant self-interrogation can be fun and enriching.
I mean, isn't that the whole point of getting into snooty philosophy? We're all a bunch of masochistic nerds who get off on this.
🎶 What I'm listening to
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Tilt by Scott Walker
I started subscribing to some Pitchfork emails because I want to be hip to music as a music library director. A review of this album showed up in my email Sunday morning. I saw words like "operatic" and "experimental." Obviously, I had to check it out. Spotify doesn't have the first track of the album, so I started with the second, The Cockfighter. At first, it sounded like Nick Cave but a bit operatic. Extremely my shit.
Then it dropped into industrial noise, and my jaw hit the floor.