� 2003 report of the National Commission on Writing in America's Schools and Colleges, quoted in Tamar Lewin�s "Writing in Schools Is Found Both Dismal and Neglected" (NYT today)

And speaking of Jane Smiley, I read in the invaluable Entertainment Weekly Summer Movie Preview that there�s an adaptation coming out of her novella about the dentists, the one I always forget the name of. Bad ASS. And it�s my boyfriend Campbell Scott and my girlfriend Hope Davis starring as the dentists, a casting coup so genius even I might not have thought of it. And speaking of Campbell Scott, am I the only one who thinks that his girlfriend, Patricia Clarkson, bears a more than slight resemblance to Colleen Dewhurst � that is to say, his mom? Their bearing, posture, and voices are similar. And now that I am remembering, Steve once told me that I look something like the high-school pictures of his mother, whose birthday is only two days after mine, so maybe I should just shut up.

Hi hi hi. First of all, I feel badly if I gave the impression that anything "happened," some event or emotional shakedown or anything like that. No. What did happen is that two Friday evenings ago, from home, I was messing around in my diary and I looked at the stats page and what I saw is that someone had accessed my top page, from a hospital server, around 6:30 pm. I panicked because � and here�s where I wish I could link to it; I can�t figure out the privacy-folder thing because as I type I�m also trying to click to it in a browser window and I�m not getting the dialogue window that asks for login and password, and that is not cool � the entry of two Fridays ago is about as incendiary as a diary entry secretly written from work could possibly get. On an intellectual level, and because I don�t get out much, I sometimes enjoy the way my diary is an ongoing experiment about the processes of being frank with myself and allowing myself to be vulnerable versus the risks of disclosure and accountability. Also how I don�t like to think of it as a vanity project but how I get hurt when I find out people aren�t reading it anymore, say, or how when the crisis does come, as it did that Friday, I realize that I didn�t have to be quite so honest, I could have made my points to myself without going into such self-implicating detail and, um, talking trash and stuff. These disconnects are fun to navel-gaze about in idle moments, but on the non-intellectual level on which they actually manifest, they can hit you in the gut like a cannonball. So I freaked out and page-protected every past entry one by one, working so madly I didn�t realize I was still wearing my sunglasses � in the house, around 8 pm � until I�d finished. Then I spent a panicky, acid-stomached weekend wondering what would happen to me on Monday, would I get in trouble, was it reasonable to rationalize that nobody important ergo no one who would give a rat�s ass was on the premises Fridays after 4:30, and that in turn led to an invigorating spin around the dancehall of self-disgust because of � another disconnect � the degree to which I was torturing myself versus the absolute value of the job. I had hosed my diary, maybe permanently, and for what? For a low-paying, no-rewarding temp job I could do with one lobe of my brain tied behind my back, yet, the market being what it is � and bring on the $550 billion tax cut, is all I can say � a job I had to admit I was crazed and desperate not to lose. I watched myself self-marinate all weekend in that crazed desperation and I partly wished I could drown in it and die. Speaking of levels, there really is one on which my life these days feels like the definition of abject humiliation. Fact: I should not be in the position of having to care so very very much lest the hospital find out that I am not the shiny happy worker bee I appear to be. (I should also not be talking trash in my diary. OK, that�s a fact too, and I offer you no counterargument. Ideally I think I should be working in a place where there�s no significant trash to be talked, or where I�m so happy to be installed that the sacrifice of not talking what trash there is in karmic return for my continued installation doesn�t even feel like a sacrifice. For instance, I think Mrs. R�s gig sounds pretty enviable. But what if I worked somewhere that made me happy except in that it didn�t give me slack time in which to maintain a diary in the first place � would I trash it then, on that account? I don�t know. Don�t bug me.) So that was depressing, and some other things started to be going on that made me other kinds of anxious � more tk � and by Tuesday when it seemed that HR or my secret reader would not after all be lowering the boom and I finally could have unclenched myself enough to write, I felt so grateful that another kind of sacrifice seemed merited, and I decided not to write at all that week, not even to visit Diaryland, instead to sit and smile and practice buzzing so that I could make it sound more authentic and make myself not hate myself as I did it. That was not a recipe for a happy week. And on top of all that and the other thing as well, I was missing Catharine and my sister so much, and it occurred to me that if I hadn�t met Steve when I did, I probably would have found Rebecca another tenant, packed a truck once more, conceded victory to Seattle, and moved back East. But I stayed: again, and for what? And I am more undone than I will admit in public by the things that have been making me flash back to Allison�s parties in high school, and I am ashamed of myself for that. And then I did hear from the W of B, and now I have a real start date and a real hourly wage (the drinks are on you), hearing which started the same old cycle of relief and abomination. And, I don�t know, I�ve just been feeling so homeless, so inconvenienced by my own life � if I wanted to go to a gym I�d have to have two duffelbags with me always and my car gets broken into so often that I�m afraid to leave anything in there so I�ve lost any dignity I might have possessed and have instead become a fucking pack horse, food I buy keeps going bad in the refrigerator because I�m never around to it and I forget to pack my lunch and that just makes me eat junk which makes me feel fat and toxic, I owe everyone e-mail because my home account is Outlooked on the PC I never use anymore except for Friday night diary panics and now that I think of this why am I even paying for a land line since everyone calls me on my cell phone and oh right it�s for Rebecca who doesn�t pay for it, I resent my cat for needing attention and then I want to punch myself for being that selfish when it�s poor Marcus who�s suffering � oh, argh, ugh Here�s the bottom line: my life is far from ideal right now, and it�s not going to get any better, in any capacity, for at least a few months.

The main existential crisis, then, is how not to take this personally, how to still like myself OK while I�m an impoverished monkey-working pack horse with a lonely cat. (Necessary prerequisite: Facing It.) The May Sarton was because I�m trying to make myself see, on the emotional level as opposed to the intellectual one � I had brunch with Adam yesterday and he gave me some things to mull over along these lines � that none of what I�m dealing with approaches actual agony, though I may want to feel like it does. I like her phrasing because it both soothes, yes it is the case that I am not in agony, and gives the reader permission to feel depleted and worn down: yes everyday life is not kid stuff, and if you want to be present for it and in it, it will cost you. (And then soothing again: yes I will pay, of course I will pay.) I think Julie gets this, I mean grasps this, better than I do. The Smiley was because it contains a matter-of-fact, appealingly Protestant exhortation to accept the contents of one�s everyday life � at least it does to me � and its briskness suggests a conflation of the facing it and the dealing with it, so as not to have to think of these things as two distinct labors, and the fact that you can be brisk about something implies that with proper resolve you can also dispatch it with like alacrity, that briskness � as opposed to say, weepiness and wanting to die � is not inappropriate to the task at hand. If you dig. Also I would like to imagine that somewhere, metaphorically, someone � hypothetically � could offer me a cup of tea, too.

One thing I learned is that for me, not writing for a whole week =, in its own way, a world of pain. That is useful information on several levels. But really and fundamentally: I�m fine. I�m getting by.

And speaking of a rat�s ass, one day last week there was one, the ass and the rest of it, in the waiting room of the clinic. A big one, about eight inches long without the tail. In a doctor�s office! In a hospital! Isn�t that about the most disgusting thing you�ve ever heard? Steve says it�s a sign. Deb agrees. Maybe they are right.

Oh, and here�s the punchline: I�m not 100% sure anymore about the security breach.