anti-climax

I think I just finished my incompletes. I've sent everything to the professors, at least. There's a chance that they'll ask me to do more or they'll say that what I did was unacceptable, and they'll send it back, but let's hope that doesn't happen.

So now what? I've been in this situation before--finishing work anywhere from a year to two years after it should have been completed (hell, I didn't finish my Master's thesis until the semester I started my doctoral program)--and it is nearly always anticlimactic when I actually get the work done. There's not a huge sense of accomplishment. I think this is partially because I know that I should've done the work earlier--it's my own fault that I'm doing it so late, so why should I be excited about screwing up? I think it's also partially because the completion of the work doesn't coincide with the semester being over, so there's always more work to do. Oh, I just finished four incompletes in the span of a couple of weeks...now it's time to read 100 pages by Tuesday and grade 90 papers in 2 weeks and take my general qualifying exam in less than a month and...it's not as if I'm really done. Finally, I think the lack of a sense of accomplishment is due to the fact that I'm not as proud as I could be of the work I've turned in. I don't think what I turned in was bad, necessarily, but it wasn't my best, because my goal here was to get these incomplete grades changed as quickly as possible. So I wanted to do what I had to do to make that happen, and nothing more. So it's not awful work, but I could do better.

I just heard a minute-long rumble of thunder. It's been raining here for a few hours, at least, and it's been so comforting. It was a great night to stay in and listen to the rain fall (a sound I absolutely love), though I'll admit that I would've rather done it with a bottle of wine and a movie or a good book or my journal or a good friend than with my laptop and surrounded by 15 books I was putting into an annotated bibliography. But. The work's done. That's what counts.

I'm off to Chicagoland tomorrow, should return Sunday for Spring Cleaning day at the dwelling. And then break's over, school's on, and some of the pressure that's been pushing at me these past months will finally be relieved.

Part of the reason I'm up this late (1 am) is that I took an hour and a half break from the work today at Borders to talk to a dear friend of mine. She called, I picked up, walked outside the store, strolled around, and talked to her for 90 minutes. We hadn't talked in a few months, and it was a wonderful conversation. Sometimes I wish I talked to certain friends of mine more often, but the conversation today made me realize the benefit of not talking to somebody for a while: it gives you the chance to recap the past few months (or more!) of your life in one shot. I updated her (and she updated me) on our past...2 1/2 months, I guess...in 90 minutes. When you compress the time like that, it tightens up the story and the contours are a bit more noticeable. You start to see how different things seem now as compared to then because you're really putting them directly side by side. You realize what the major events were, because they're the things you include in the story. You cut to the chase, so only the quite meaningful stuff gets told.

Talking to her reaffirmed my contentment. I know I'm not quite as happy as I could be socially, but I am pretty damn happy, overall. Deeply happy. Even when I'm a little bored or irritated, I'm happy. And I think part of the key to my social problems...

...here's what I've realized. I hope I haven't said this before here. I've realized that I need two aspects to my social life to be happiest. (1) I need an entity who I can hang out with all the time. We don't, necessarily, but we could. This has sometimes been a girlfriend for me and it's sometimes been a small group of a few people. The members of the entity are ultra-close, ultra-comfortable with one another. (2) A rather extensive web of good friends. People who I love, but only see every week or two. When I do see them, we have great conversations, good times, lots of laughs--they all 'serve different purposes,' I guess--but we won't see each other more than once every couple of weeks. This is just how things work out. So I think I need (1) because I like to have that strong support, that thing that you can always count on. But I think I need (2) because I like to have people fill many different roles in my life and I like to know lots of different Types of people. Combine (1) and (2), I have my ideal social life. I wouldn't even need a girlfriend, I don't think, if I had a small group fill (1) and a web for (2).

So what do I have here? I don't have (1) (a small group or a girlfriend) and, while I have (2), my (2) is scattered all over the country, the world, and so it's hard to see them every week or two. I can't. And that situation is the one thing I might tweak right now. Things might change, but I know what I need to do to handle this one thorn in my side: I know enough people here where I think I could hang out any given night if I wanted to, so that sort of makes up for (1); I fulfill (2) by going on small road trips every other weekend or so to visit my friends who are within driving distance...or I could even fly. I think that's key for me, socially. So that's the one thing getting to me a bit, but I know what to do about it.

Things are good right now.

And congratulations, Ryan.