Why of course the people don�t want war. ... That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship ...Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.

For the answer, keep reading. And here�s some listerine. Homeboy is apologetic about his sometimes preference for the entries that come out in this format, but sometimes it is the only way I can organize my thoughts, or perhaps I mean that it�s too enervating even to try for coherent narrative � and sometimes my power of segue leaves me dangling like live bait � so you�ll get none of that from me. This, this is what you get.

1. I started an entry yesterday and am back-burnering it until next time because I got carried away doing something so different with this one. The reason I had to abandon ship is exciting, in a way � Dr. Carpool gave me some work to do that actually took longer than I had thought and posed a challenge to my editorial perfectionism. I got to learn some new software too, and I also got a killer writing sample for my portfolio and a few sexy bullet points for my resume. I am liking the supremely self-possessed and organized Dr. Carpool more and more.
2. In the commuter lot where I park, a mile or so down the road from the hospital complex, someone is going around smashing in people�s windshields and leaving a Post-It note, "Please call me about your car," with a phone number. There�s supposed to be a security detail at that lot, but the savvy van driver surmises that they are not making patrols today. She won�t tell us what the phone number is, though I am itching to call. She also assured me that my car was safe and that nothing would happen to it, which makes no sense because she told me this while we cruised around the commuter lot looking for cars that had been damaged since she made her last run fifteen minutes previously, and there were a few. I am trying not to worry about my car, which for fuck�s sake has been through enough these past few months already.
3. I just taught Dr. Blahblah how to empty his Deleted Items folder. He�s a little retardo when it comes to technology.
4. Also in the commuter parking lot, there was a situation arising because one of the unfortunate cars, a brand-new sporty number, bears a license plate that is registered not to the sports car but to another one the records for which have been destroyed, the bus driver told us. She has been calling in the plates all morning to the hospital�s transportation office so they can dispatch a live person to the vandalism victim and break the bad news, and that�s how this came to light. This is very irregular, and the police may have to step in and investigate. Sucks to be that guy today, doesn�t it?
5. It�s not so great to be me, either. I woke up freezing cold, feeling like someone had beat me up in the night and apprehensive from the palpable threat of migraine � Steve has been sick along these lines for a few days � so I called in. Then at breakfast my infector gave me a mild raft of shit about this which left me feeling so anxious and actively beating up on myself that I could not sleep or rest and figured I might as well get paid to slack.
6. OK, that is not 100% true. I did have to finish up the thing for Dr. Carpool, and I felt like a moron since at five yesterday there was only a little left to do, and I still have not put in my application for Level Threeness, very bad. Today.
7. Yesterday I called Number Two and said that I wouldn�t be able to make my appointment today, which incidentally is the first lie I�ve ever told her. I didn�t feel like going, is all, and after I cancelled I wondered whether my not wanting to yammer about my problems for an hour is a sign that they are dissipating or feel like they are (and is that the same thing?) � I felt no urgency with respect to shrinktalk � or whether, if perhaps I posed the question to Number Two, she�d say I was in denial. I�m kind of thinking I�d like to try going every other week, maybe, and seeing what that�s like.
8. Then again, after Steve went off on me a little this morning � he would not characterize it that way, of course, so, yes, in my Level Twoness I am experiencing fifteen percentness today � I had second thoughts about having crapped out. One of the things I dislike most about myself is that other people�s pontifications and unsought opinions about my life and how I�m living it, etc., really do make me anxious and self-apologetic and, this is what my reflexive response is, willing to abnegate the parts of myself that have been found objectionable and build them back up so they will be more attractive. I used that word on purpose because, fuck, I know that so often these criticisms I�m talking about come from a position of ignorance or superficiality (this is not necessarily a judgment, because I still have not slain the Minister of Information and don�t know if I ever will), but my first impulse is to do what is suggested anyway. That is to say, my first action impulse; my first emotional impulse is towards deep, deep shame. Which isn�t any good for me either. In a vacuum, my self-confidence is a well-oiled fighting machine. If only I could live in a world without other people.
9. I�m joking. But I was thinking about this over the weekend, things I don�t do and the reasons why. I never speak French because a guy I was dating made fun of my accent, and I only sing when I�m alone or around my sister because a friend of mine once told me how flat my voice was and busted up laughing. Adam used to go on about the flatness of my ass and was always trying to sign me up for his program of stiff-legged dead lifts, and I stopped wearing pants that were tight or even clingy because I didn�t want to hear it anymore, I didn't want to face up. But *I* don�t think it makes me a bad person to have a French accent and a singing voice that are more workmanlike than artful, and I know full well that the people in my family whom I take after physiologically happen to be towards the left side of the booty curve and therefore I could dead lift stiff-leggedly for months (I�ve tried, in fact) to negligible effect. The reason that I have let people take things away from me like this is that I don�t want them to have to be ashamed of me or of their association with me � it was really Adam I was trying to save from having to face up, I mean face up to me. This happens at a sub-intellectual level, so that until recently I wasn�t aware of these things as representative of a syndrome. Think about it, though: this behavior shows that I would rather abnegate myself than know that, in whatever ignorant or superficial way, I am being found objectionable; I feel terrible for being the person whose person is the wellspring of objection. Even if in my mind and heart I know the objection to at best bullshit and at worst something I should damn well take as an insult. Is this where I say, No wonder I�m so fucked up?
10. (Maybe I should move away and start all over again. Should I move away and start all over again?)
11. And maybe that�s the best reason yet why Todd and his paranoia did such a number on me, I mean the easiest way for me to explain it � because the things he would have had me change, the things that he found objectionable, for instance my secret yearning to date moneyed grad students and my pathological lying about my feelings for him, well, they were not there. I did not have them. But at that sub-intellectual level I was trying to change myself anyway, and the trying to change something contains the assumption that it�s wrong or bad or ineffectual the way it is, and I think that assumption must seep into you gradually, weakening you like runoff water does a retaining wall. I am sorry to keep returning to this subject, but it�s astonishing to me in retrospect how much shit I ate and for how long � and how eagerly, how I asked for seconds! � and for myself, I need to know how that happened. When I think about it, it still unnerves me to remember how quickly and completely my blinders lifted, so you can understand how I am able to freak myself out on a regular basis with the thought that maybe I�ve just traded one pair of blinders for another, since way back when I did not feel them growing over my eyes.
12. When I refer to this second hypothetical pair of blinders, don�t draw too facile a parallel between Todd and Steve. I mean, yes, I do wonder that from time to time especially after episodes like the one this morning � I�d be doing myself a disservice if I didn�t � but come on, it�s nowhere near the same magnitude, and anyway I�m wondering a hell of lot less than fifteen percent of the time.
13. And speaking of Todd, he has apparently put me on his humor mailing list. This morning there was something from him in my Inbox, addressed back to him, with the subject header "comic relief." Now that�s what I call objectionable. I deleted it without reading it (but not before sending along a screen shot to some of my ladies, with my own subject header "Incredibly gross and wrong!"). Right after the bust-up when I was in full-on bridge-burning mode � because after all, what newly unblinded soul would not have been, under the circumstances? � I set up a filter on my Outlook Inbox at home to send anything that ever came from any of his addresses directly to Dr. Blahblah�s new domain the Deleted Items folder. Then I reprimanded myself for being petty and furthermore for being so arrogant as to assume he would one day try to make contact again. Ha ha. Also, sometime next week I may be getting lunch or something with his friend Rich, the one who knocked me gratefully out in Linda�s a few weeks ago.
14. So here�s what I�m thinking. Maybe the thing to do is to ask myself what I�d do if I could find my way to that vacuum: what would make me happy, the me that is distilled and unadulterated? The question is impossible yet instructive. If money and time and the disparaging reactions of others were not an issue, what � at this point � would I want to be doing or start doing, rather than getting on creaky track to be an administration lifer? Because of course money and time are issues, and I might as well admit that since I�m such a delicate flower the third thing is too, but if I had an actual thing, an x, then that would be a Something worth fighting for, and on behalf of which also to try to fight against. That makes no grammatical sense, sorry, but I�m leaving it in. I�m going to try to do this, and I�m going to read the packet from the postbac program that arrived in the mail yesterday, and I�m going � dammit � to sign up for some kind of basic sciencey gig at the community college for the next available start date (I�ve just missed a cutoff, alas).
15. But how far to follow that paradigm? Like, if I didn�t have certain rather valid reasons for wanting to stay in Seattle for a while, where would I go? And if I could answer the question, would I have a responsibility to go there, even at the expense of the RVRs? I don�t know. How about if I schedule my fretting about that for a later date.

Here�s the thing. If no one�s lecturing me over coffee, as I tentatively begin to ask myself that what-if question I have to say that things could be a lot more heinous than the Gastro gig. Yeah, the pay�s crap, but I�d find a way to be making money later and the job is so secure, and in theory one could eventually find another position elsewhere in the system � actually the Wife of Bath said that this place prides itself on hiring from within the vast majority of the time. If I were taking classes, say, I could spend downtime doing homework instead of writing this kind of rotrotrot all the time. If I wanted to do anything science-oriented, I could also find a way, from this very workstation, to amass more killer writing samples, more sexy bullet points, and the goodwill of more good people (and good people to know) like Dr. Carpool. There�s health insurance, eventually, and I talk a good game about the banana and the grapefruit but it�s also nice to know that the people around you understand the comfort value of an occasional donut. The research library, to which I have full access, is Candyland. Especially if I move when the house lease is up in September, I could ride the bus and not have to worry about my windshield or another hit-and-run � it�s a piece of cake from the U District, for example. Even though I�ll lose the window office in July when Dr. Whipped moves to town (I�ll tell you about his wife sometime: whoa), I�ll still have internet access, my own printer, office supplies, and the same cushy job that doesn�t demand much of me nor judge me for not being much demanded-of. If I could make myself forget or not care that to many people the fact of a ultra-low-paying administrative job is the alpha and the omega of me, the Gastro gig could become, paradoxicallly, something you'd have to call a constituent element of the good life.

Or am I just rationalizing?

I am going to go fill out that application now. Wish me luck.

I stole the epigraph from Jan Herman. Here�s where he got it from. (By the way, thanks, Stuart, for the link to my previous entry.) And am I a terrible person if I miss cable?