Because I was interning and volunteering the last two vacations, it was only this last December, after my third semester, that I found myself spending a vacation like a real vacation.And so I discovered how much going back to school has forcibly changed my lifestyle. The way I lived this last December was closest to the way I always have — and which I had, since coming back to school, almost forgotten I ever lived: self-contained internal joy just walking around in the city, warm light and soft breeze; to be reading things I wanted to which have nothing to do with work: new poetry, new fiction, new theory; to get up and say today I shall go to see an exhibition, a film, a ballet, and to do so, without hesitation and without needing company; to have long lingering meals with good friends too, and tipple and cake and pie and coffee too, because that is how one ends meals with good friends.And once having recovered that lifestyle, even for a few weeks, having become aware of having lost it, I became fearful of losing that all over again. No I say, no, I must reincorporate that into my life. So this last week I made social plans — it was my birthday week afterall — so many friends to meet and have meals with. And the weekend before I managed to go to three or four Art Stage related events — two exhibitions, a film, art stage itself. The result? At the end of both weeks I was not only behind on my work but was far too tired to try to bulldoze through what was ahead.
The semester is partly to blame: I have the kind of sprawling schedule that requires me to be in school for 8-9 hours at a stretch. The class format is all seminars and workshops, which means being on your toes all the time.The reading load is heavy (well, not much more than grad school, but then in grad school I only had to be in school 6 hours a week). And while I’ve always appreciated the high level of simulation in our legal skills courses, the client-driven project model is very draining (I mean, there is a reason I don’t want to be a corporate lawyer!) But I am forced to concede that while term is in session one has to choose between the life or the work — school is simply not compatible with that life I yearn to have again. And while it was easy to balance all of this when I was younger, it isn’t possible if I were too preserve my aloneness too. And that makes me shrivel a little within.
Best of the Transparent Hummingbird