Rage

I have realized that I am angry. Really angry. Anger has been a tough emotion for me to learn to deal with. I used to think I did not get angry, now I have come to understand that I do get angry, VERY angry, but that I have learned to stuff it way down inside me, where it eats away. Learning to recognize when I am angry has been a process. Having to keep up appearances in grad school and please please please everyone has also taught me to stuff my anger even better than I did before. Now I need to unlearn some of those tricks.

I know I am angry because I start withdrawing. I shut people out. If I were a little kid, I would be taking my toys and going home. I stop returning phone calls. I spend a lot of time by myself. I jettison entire segments of my life. I push the eject button on friendships. I add name after name to my every-growing interpersonal blacklist. All of my former colleagues and professors at Prestigious U. are now on there. Maybe they will not always be on there, but today they are. This is probably not the healthiest way to deal with anger. I am not quite sure what alternatives there are. My shrink has people beat on chairs with a tennis racket and scream. I feel silly doing that but I do feel better afterward. I've thought about picking up some kind of martial art. One of the ones where you yell a lot.

Why am I angry? Or perhaps better to ask, what am I angry about? I'm angry that a bunch of irresponsible politicians and bankers wrecked the economy while I was in grad school. Thanks a lot, assholes. I'm angry that no one was more honest with me about what academia is really like. I'm angry with myself for spending so many years doing something that was making me unhappy. I'm angry with myself for not recognizing that, to some extent, a job's a job, so better to have something thats in demand and gives you options. I'm angry with my ex-partner for pressuring me to finish when I wanted out after three years. I'm angry with myself for letting him sway me. I'm angry with faculty for sitting fat and bloated at the top of the mountain rather than retiring and making room for someone else. I'm angry with university administrators for turning our institutions of learning into credential factories for the privileged classes and training grounds for corporate robots. I'm angry at everyone for putting up with this. I'm angry at the culture in the U.S. that says that your career defines who you are as a person. I'm angry at the Protestant work ethic for making us all work 50-hour weeks and have no lives even though we have so much material abundance already. I'm angry at corporate America and insurance companies for blocking a single-payer system that would give everyone more a sense of autonomy and safety in their lives, like they could throw off the shackles of oppressive hateful jobs and actually follow their dreams without worrying about getting sick and not being able to afford a doctor. I'm angry at Obama for not being radical enough. I'm angry at Congress for standing in the way of anything that could possibly be useful or mean real social change. I'm angry at my exes for not getting me. I'm angry at the most recent ex for working so hard to get me only to toss me aside. (That's a whole other boiling pot of rage.) I'm angry at my friends for not really understanding. I'm angry at God for putting me through this. I'm angry angry angry.

I've hired a life coach, someone who specializes in helping academics transfer out of academia. Ze has encouraged me, before I start seriously looking at "next step" options, to deal with the emotions that are coming up. My tendency has always been to barrel ahead, forget about emotions or stuff them down, and get to whatever comes next. A favorite maxim comes to mind, however: "When in doubt, do nothing." I have a job. I have benefits. I have a roof over my head. I have a PhD, for God's sake. I can choose to tread water for a bit, feel the feelings that I'm having about all this, and trust that inspiration and guidance will come when I am ready for it. So today, that's what I'm going to do.