Malaise

Tonight I went out with my favourite gays to eat Indian food. Somehow I still managed to order a concoction of chicken and bread. What is it with me lately? That's still basically all I can eat, or all I want to eat. I hadn't been to Bombay Palace in a while, and I really love that place - if you live in Nashville, you should give it a try - the chicken tikka is pretty amazing.

I have a new job, for which I am grateful, as far as the money issue goes, but this working 8-5 day in, day out thing has me thinking about what I want from my life and what I need from a job. The whole set-up just leaves me feeling empty - there's nothing to think about when I come home. I just go in, mindlessly complete the tasks set out for me, and come home. I can see how some people could find that somewhat freeing, but I just bemoan the lack of vocation it takes. I'm trying to at least get some adjunct teaching gigs, and I feel like the flexible schedule plus the creativity and control over my own classroom is much more in line with my personality and with who I need to be. Except for showing up to teach class at an assigned time, I can do grading and planning on my own schedule, and I really like having that freedom. Right about now, the colleges are starting to think about hiring professors for next semester, and some might even have summer classes. All my applications are in, and I am going to start bugging them this week. The squeaky wheel approach has worked wonders for me in the past. I can't continue to do a job that requires so little from me mentally and has me boxed in for eight plus hours a day in a room full of cubicles and no windows. Is that what life is really about?

Don't talk to me about pipe dreams either. I just want to get out of here - just take off travelling around the country. I know it's highly impractical, but my brain is cooking up escape plans, some more ludicrous than others, but I don't want to look back at my life and think about all the things I wanted to do but didn't because I was afraid, or because I worried what other people would think. I always wanted to be the person who did the things other people just talk about. If those things are somehow within my means, I should at least consider the possibility of making them happen. It just seems that the world is such an interesting and unpredictable place, and I am stuck here, travelling the same route every day to and from work to sit looking at the same cubicle walls and computer screen. Something will have to give soon or I may go crazy.

I am so behind on film developing that I'm almost scared to take more pictures. I wanted to go out tonight, but I now have six rolls that I can't afford to get processed. I have to slow it down some. I can just take them and just have a backlog, I suppose. Next week, when I get paid for an entire week, I will start chipping away at the mountain of canisters. I have mostly 35mm, so at least those are cheap to get processed and scanned and they do produce more numerous results than the medium format, but lately, my heart lies with the high resolution and the retro delight of the square image. There's just something so deliciously restraining about composing within a square - it makes you think differently, and if there's something I need right now, it's the new and different.

Part of my malaise is because I was supposed to go out on a date tonight - well I don't know if it was a date or just a hanging out kind of deal, and I was actually looking forward to it. Last time I got out of a relationship, I didn't do the whole rebound thing, and I really don't want to this time, but it just feels good to go out and hang out with a straight guy and have good conversation, so I was a little disappointed when his life got in the way, but hey, it can't be helped.