Gradness Madness

I’ve gone through chapters in life where I’ve felt very isolated.  Grad school has been one of these - although my cohort was made up of friendly people, I was in a strange town in an unfamiliar part of the country, far from family and friends.  My schedule and workload made it hard to have a social life - and, to be honest, in retrospect I can see that I made some poor choices there.  I had opportunities to be social, but I always used the excuse that I “had to work.”

In my new town, and my new job, I’m taking a different approach - I’m realizing that taking an hour or two, here or there, to enjoy myself is not going to make a huge dent in my workload.  I might have spent that hour watching TV, instead of working on my dissertation, but now I’m choosing to spend it having lunch with a coworker, going to a flea market with colleagues, or even - this past weekend - donning a costume and going to a Halloween party.  I haven’t done that in years.

There was a time in my life when I was very social, had lots of friends, and went out all the time.  Then came grad school, when I enforced some weird kind of exile on myself (I think it was a martyr thing - see how hard I work?)  Now, I can sense the pendulum is swinging back the other way, and I long to be with people again.

This is typical of me: I go through phases.  I’ve learned not to beat myself up for it.  Perhaps this is how we experiment with life, trying on different identities: the social butterfly, the recluse.  We don’t have to be the same person all the time; we change and we grow.  We reflect, keep some things, and discard others.

I’m in a “people” stage at the moment, and I’m enjoying myself.

- Flynn