No one but me read my diary from the hosp server in 24 hours after I posted my last entry. This is a data point. My updating and posting schedule probably won�t be what you�re used to for at least the next little while. I�m also trying to keep away from Diaryland in case, I don�t know, there�s someone down in the IS grotto keeping track of what sites employees are visiting on the hospital dime and looking into those that don�t seem kosher. All right, maybe I�m paranoid. Every so often something becomes newly Unauthorized, like as of last week I can�t get to TV Tattle anymore, though Television Without Pity is free and clear. As an experiment, I am paying one visit per day to Media Whores Online to see what happens. It�s weird not to be reading other people�s diaries. I�ll catch back up one of these days, one night soon � maybe Thursday. Due to evening plans that were all kinds of best laid when I made them on Sunday and so you can probably guess the rest, Monday night was such a fiasco that I actually found myself in front of my home PC for about fifteen minutes, and I celebrated this by directing Kazaa to go pirate me some alterna-pop on the double. I was to have gone to see a movie yesterday that I said I�d review, but in the morning I was feeling so lousy about everything I�d had to let slide the previous night that I moved it to the next day, so tonight�s a double dip of steaming shit and then some palate-cleansing cocktails after with Mrs. R. at Hattie�s. Tomorrow�s dinner with Jeanne. Don�t even talk to me about the weekend yet.

I�m finally getting around to reading "Of Two Minds: An Anthropologist Looks at American Psychiatry," which Vanessa loaned me like a million years ago. It is verbose and unorganized but well-written and worth reading for the anecdotes. The part I was interested in concerned the life of a bench scientist. The reality of grant-grubbing, having to work on what�s getting funded often at the expense of cooler and more envelope-pushing stuff, and the, well, necessity of corporate tit-sucking is spelled out with clear dispassion.

Brunch with Adam on Sunday was interesting, interesting, interesting. I had some kind of a cognitive breakthrough on the issues of What are you going to do with your life? What are you going to do next? � by which I mean the questions not necessarily as posed to me but the questions per se. They imply an answer, one answer � a solution. This thing here is what I want to do, here is the endeavor by which I propose to support myself. But for me, and I realized also for Adam � so it became very easy to talk to him, in fact I realized that I was starving for that kind of being understood � right now, a solution does not present itself. Off the top of my head I can name ten things that I�d love to do, and no brag but I am fairly sure I�d be better than average at any of them. What I don�t have is a calling, like for instance Vanessa wants to be a lawyer and Wendy, I mean Teachers� Cocktails Wendy as opposed to she whom I will name-drop later, has never wanted anything but to be a teacher. And, not to disparage anyone in my opposite category because I�m just being analytical here, trying to pin down the signs and signals, there�s a sociocultural bias in favor of having a clear idea of what you want your future to hold: if you want x and you are working towards it, then you are considered determined, goal-driven, ambitious, a go-getter. If you don�t, no matter what you bring to whatever jobby-job you�re doing in terms of intelligence and dedication and creativity, you are indecisive about your "career," you are flighty and fickle, you will amiably never amount to much, you are (gag) "trying to find yourself." But what if that�s completely the wrong place to look for myself? What if I never get the secular version of a vocation and say, Oh, now I see, I was meant all along to be an American Studies professor and write snappy pop-cult books like Susan Douglas? Or, I was meant to study the history of public education and write my thesis on the rise of teachers� unions, I was meant to be a grant proposal writer for a biotech outfit, I was meant to go back to software and teach training classes to the non-techies, I was meant to write film and lit crit for the local paper, I was meant to be a corporate tit-sucker, I was meant to write the Great Seattle Novel and for that, my fine friends, I will need an MFA so if you will excuse me I must apply to graduate programs now. I don�t know what I definitively want to do and I don�t know if I ever will. However, at my age there are certain inalienable realities that cannot be ignored, like the necessity of funding an IRA and la la la la la, so pretty soon now I�m going to have to pick a lane and stay in it and be a grown-up and find a way to earn some grown-up money and � here�s the heretical part � this is not a concession. This does not diminish me, this does not mean I�m unworthy of all those good adjectives, this does not mean that people who have their next three moves plotted out are better or smarter or more evolved than I am. And there are two aspects to accepting this, the one where you stop answering those italicized questions from an apologetic and defensive posture because you want to show your interrogator that you don�t have anything to be sorry about and then the one where you actually believe this. (Note here the similarities to the decision I made some months ago not to let anyone tell me what I am and what I'm like, or to the process of finding out the extent to which that was operative on me. Ahem.)

Adam was also talking about a friend of his who has apparently dedicated many months to the kind of writing and self-figuring-out, oh, and reading, that sounds like the equivalent of a home psychoanalysis kit. This guy made a commitment to cataloging all the varieties of emotional detritus with which his upbringing had left him, to make note of how they work on him and what they do to the way he�d rather be living his life � he�s an engineer � and then to try to banish them. I love that the writing-about was key. For instance, Adam�s friend was raised Catholic, and his metaphor for the cycle of internal self-judging and self-abasing that characterized so much of his life on that account (he believes) is that of a tribunal. The challenge is to recognize the tribunal for what it is and not to listen to it. I like the way Adam�s friend puts this too, he talks about the intellectual and the emotional response and notes that when you catch yourself before the tribunal it is easy to say, "Wait, I�m judging myself again, and I know that�s not rational. Therefore, I will stop." But in your experience, Dear Reader, does this work? Hell no. And the reason for this is that the act of judgment has nothing to do with the intellect, it�s all tied up in your emotions, and if you wish to cure yourself of it, you�re going to have to roll up your sleeves and be willing to get your hands on a whole different engine.

(Fine, this may be kindergarten obvious to you. But it means something to me.)

And for the first time in a long time I had a sense of my own tribunal that didn�t make me so afraid that I backed away from the inkling of it. Maybe this had to do with the act of naming it and/or giving it that name in particular � when Adam used the word an image burst into my mind of a group of figures with a mien that was part Supreme Court justice and part King Friday, half sharkalligator half man, and I had, so strongly, the sense that Adam had described something that was already there, and this was a relief too: the relief rolling into the permission, and also something about the taking back of authority, so that what had been the tribunal�s � and this all happened in an instant, and I�m sorry I�m not doing a better job on the play-by-play and also if it sounds stupid � suddenly became Adam�s and then, because he was talking to me and because of the way in which he was talking, also mine. I do this all the time, I don�t want to count how frequently I catch myself doing it here in my diary and can�t help thinking of myself as a broken record, I talk about how I something makes me feel x and then on account of realizing that I am feeling x I also feel y, and for y read ashamed, ridiculous, pathetic, idiotic, worthless, I hope I need not go on. I have often admonished myself that now now, this derision is not reasonable and it makes no intellectual sense, but then when I haven�t been able to snap out of it after repeated self-bitch-slaps along those lines, really it becomes one more retroactive justification for the name-calling. The tribunal, the emotional and not the intellectual, the fact (not the argument) of adulthood, recognizing the bias � I don�t know, somehow over the course of the conversation things began to come together for me in a way that they haven�t in a long, long time. I feel tentatively hopeful and smoothed out in the sense that it will reduce drag. Even in the past few days I am not so broken up about the things I can�t help.

And also, weirdly, more clear-eyed about the things I can. The adverb is because this is on account of "Of Two Minds," and of one of the anecdotes I referred to earlier. The book mostly concerns how one trains to be a psychiatrist and what it means to be considered good at that; the "two minds" are the behavioral and the psychopharmacological. What struck me, though, was some random quotation from a psychiatrist who was worn down by how the training and habits of mind carried over into every aspect of her cohort�s lives � every gesture was relentlessly and mined for analysis, she said, up to the point where when people started leaving their empty coffee cups on the table in the physicians� lounge, it led to a long discussion among the doctors as to what they subconsciously wanted this oversight to say about them, what public declaration was inherent in the not-doing of putting cups in the sink, and also why they felt they needed to make it. Obviously this is the sort of thing that can be carried too far in a hurry, as perhaps the junior shrinks did, but then again the paradigm could be helpful to keep gently in one�s mind for when we are not doing the things we know we should: why do I blow off balancing my checkbook for weeks at a time, why do I even try to go to TV Tattle instead of copying out German vocab? I mean, not that I want to become a Vulcan or anything and construct a philosophical proof for the superfluity of bourbon � a little more self-awareness is all I�m talking about. An even-handed investigation to replace the bitch-slapping. A self-awareness that exists in its own dimension rather than boomeranging out to the sociocultural biases and the tribunal and god only knows what else and then coming back to crack you in the head. The checkbook and the schoolbook are another category of things that make no sense when you examine them with the lens appropriate to intellectual phenomena. But there are, always, other things in play.

I don�t know. Things to think about. So I will think about them.

Blah blah blah: I think it�s hilarious that in the party-animal photos that will probably cost Larry Eustachy his job he is drinking Natty Light. I saw "13 Conversations About One Thing" last weekend and it was lovely and just what the gastroenterologist�s assistant ordered on a Friday night of much-needed emotional battening-down. Clea DuVall, though not my girlfriend, is someone I like a lot. I�m pissed as hell that "Winged Migration" doesn�t open here until mid-June, proof if I ever needed it that Seattle is a fake of a city. I am in possession of the phone number of a grown-up, well-adjusted, interesting and engaging female who actively wants me to hang with her and her roommate sometime. My crush on Keith Olbermann is in full swing again just from reading about his show, not even watching it. Dinner with Jeanne on Thursday is at her house. I had brunch with Rich last weekend and it was great � we are both big Paul Auster fans and we totally geeked out. He also digs Chabon but has not yet encountered �The Mysteries of Pittsburgh.� He returned my copy of "A Model World" and I read it again and it was if anything more marvelous than I remembered and then I got out "Werewolves in Their Youth" and it is if anything even more pretentious and insufferable; and, Michael, what happened? Why can�t you write a good short story anymore? Rich may move to Seattle in the summer and then sub for a year while he figures out whether or not he wants to take on the responsibility of a class of his own, and I admire him very much for his perspective on the matter and wonder whether the same perspective on the same matter might work for me but I�ll think about it more some other time because the last thing I need right now is one more Hey What About This option to deal with. He was interested to know exactly when I started dating Steve. I don�t know whether he believed me or not when I told him, which is only understandable. I love the new White Stripes and the Lucinda Williams, like the Jayhawks slightly less, am having a Goats/Vanderslice renaissance, and am sorry but can�t seem to get into the Yo La Tengo. I turned out to be less blas� than I had thought over Seven Year Wendy�s visit � I mean, I didn�t throw a tantrum or anything and I�m not even sure that it was perceptible, but, man, I spent the Sunday afternoon she spent with Steve, rescheduled from the original dinner plan, with one hell of a sick anxious ugly feeling in my gut, feeling like I had no claim to anything (not even my town, see). At brunch with Adam I spent a little while trying to quantify this or put a name to it � Jealousy? No. Mistrust? No. Etc. � and then decided it was a project on which I would spare myself the responsibility of investigation. I had to spend an amount in the non-small hundreds on my car this weekend on account of, I just learned this and share it here that it may guide you too, you can replace the brake shoes all you want but (a) they�re only going to last a year at most and (b) the underlying damage is done and will progress if it�s your rotors that are worn or cracking. You should have your rotors checked at 40,000 miles and at least once a year thereafter, and don�t assume the garage is doing it because this is an unpleasant job and they might be slacking and just changing your shoes since that�s easy and plenty lucrative especially if your worn rotors are going to get you in there more regularly. I am in the process of paring down my wardrobe and I think there might have to be a rule that every time I am in my bedroom for longer than some number of minutes TBD, I have to cull at least one article of clothing for the bye-bye pile. How you know I�m hardcore about this is that said pile already includes two pairs of shoes. Jerry�s dinner party Saturday night was the location for the following exchange: Mindy: "Wait, are you a Coug too?" Steve: "No, I went to Western." Mindy: "Oh. Then you smoke pot." Jerry�s dinner party Saturday night was a tour de force. I have become a paper clip snob and urge you all to try the majestic Acco Regal No. 3 and see if the same doesn�t happen to you. My sister sent me a big box of love in the form of, among other things, an orange wallet, a pair of new Nine West heels that she concluded with regret didn�t fit her after all, a tangle of tights, the grass-green fishnets she swears are the bomb, and a bunch of skivvies from her company�s new product line, including an ingenious contraption that is black thigh-highs already attached to a lacy elasticized garter-belt-looking thing so you can just pull them on and go. "Big If" is out in paperback.

I think that�s all. I wrote this thing over two days but I felt like it all had to go together, if only for my own reference. And now we�re basically caught up, right?