Holiday Glam

The holidays feel...remarkably un-holiday-ish this year. This is my first year of being officially on Christmas strike, and it's really pretty anti-climactic. For some reason, Thanksgiving, a holiday to which I've historically granted very little interest, was much harder than this diva of holidays, Christmas. I got up at 9, went to the gym, did my usual 7 mile run, went home, had some grapefruit and leftover yam biscuits, talked on the phone (to my mother--twice), watched a Sandra Bernhard special that I'd rented, blah blah blah. The eeriest thing about this is that it feels, in most respects, like a normal day. The primary thing separating it from MOST of the days in the year is, together with the absence of my loved one, the fact that I'm still not really working very hard. Luckily, that neurosis is haunting my peripheral vision and little bit more each day. Soon, it's likely to manifest in some kind of all-consuming despair and sense of worthlessness for my apparent inability to get anything at all accomplished.

ABD: Freedom Is Real. Of course, it is real in that sense in which we are all free to languish in that hazy middle ground of the subjunctive. I can think of at least a few people in my acquaintance who have made cozy little nests for themselves in this ABD land, happily or unhappily (usually, depending whether or not they've had kids and that sort of thing) adjuncting at whatever college or university is closest at hand. Hell, four sections of composition a semester (and that fat, sweet 20 grand I could make a year doing it) sounds like bloody paradise. Emphasis on the bloody, of course.

What else--besides the ubiquitous work drama, which does, of course, pursue me through most of my waking hours, especially when I sit down to write something about my immediate life and experiences--could I possibly have to blog about? Really, anything else I'll write will simply smack of complaining, and the most non-productive variety of that. Check, please.