Reading my life away

I read, I read. Past or present, it's spelled the same and means the same thing for me. Every hour of daylight I have is an hour for pouring over poorly scanned articles for which I paid 25¢ a page at the copy store monopolist. The first week my goal was to finish all my work and take the weekend off; that resulted in about six hours of weekend work. This weekend, with the help of a cold and my California-origin storage unit arriving, I was easily working every daylight hour. Some of that went to scraping paint off the floor in preparation for my furniture. Two hours were lost this evening in a failed attempt to get my couch through the two front doors that happen to be ninety degrees adjacent and progressively smaller (yes we took the doors off the hinges of those two doors plus that of the upstairs neighbors.) One joyful hour was spent reuniting with my guitar, one of the few items that was not damaged or denied entrance to the house. I now have nothing but eight hours of my grad school job and another 4 hours or so of homework to complete by Tuesday, and by Tuesday there will be another 10 hours of reading to do, and probably some writing and a test to study for. It's not hard, it's numbingly fascinating. I like the readings, but it leaves me no time to even read the newspaper or a good novel.

I'm also being forced to turn down a camping trip this weekend, partly because I'm committed to a bike ride but mostly because I can't spend a weekend away and keep up with the work. I guess that's what grad school is all about. It's funny, I'd be disappointed if it was easy but I'm also disappointed that it's such a time suck. I hope it gets to the point where it's more intense but less time consuming because my brain has developed the ability to compress to a higher PSI.

I also wonder if I really want to become more of an intellectual. Aren't I just ostracizing myself from more conversations and finding myself attracted to increasingly witty and snooty people? Or will I still be able to keep dumbing it down for the masses?

I know I'm frustrated right now because I'm morphing into someone slightly different. My classes are developing my reasoning abilities, the city is exposing me to its culture and physical elements, and my housemates to fashion, parties, and next-generation reality TV (skipping that.) Right now I can't put cogent thoughts together, either in class or outwith. What I get at the end of these two years, besides being older and uglier, will be an intellectual achievement that suits my demeanor, and hopefully a social life that cloaks said suit.

I wish I had a picture of the couch jammed between three doors with five stupefied neighbors crushing plaster and splintering door frames. The poor couch now sits covered on the front porch awaiting its fate. I will certainly miss it. Craigslist feels so impersonal.