I was bored

I've been bored lately. Why? I don't really know. The weather? No, I actually like rain. I guess it's partly because now we are in the house and there isn't anything to work on, think about, plan for, ya know? I feel this kind of general unease that always erupts when I don't have enough to do. I suppose we all need something to look forward to, something to plan for, must be human nature, or at least my nature.

Last night I went to the last meeting of a graduate class that I started in January. I was auditing it. It was taught by an old teacher, whom I idolized. She is that kind of smart that makes you grimace while you listen to her, teetering on the brink of understanding her, wanting to stretch your own mind to at least meet her halfway. My brian used to hurt after class (when I was an undergrad), but my post-pregnancy brain? It is just not as eager to stretch as it used to be. The class was called "Trauma Narratives" and her area of special interest is the Holocaust, so our interests match. The class looked at some critical essays and some duh, narratives. But, I just couldn't get into it. About two weeks ago, we were talking about Jean Amery's essay "On Torture", an essay that I had found I could access through a personal experience. He talks about, among other things, how torture places one completely in their coporeal being and that thought is pretty much absent. I remember labor and delivery, the first time I was ever completely in my own body. Obviously, the essay talks about more than that, but the body bit, that I got. I was terrified to express my pedestrian understanding of the essay but I did, and everyone politely disregarded me. Fair enough. But at that moment I realized that I do not want to be in academia. I just cannot ignore personal understandings of others work. Access. This is huge for me. I always thought that while I wasn't actively pursing it, eventually I would find my way there. Nope.

So, I started thinking about what I do like to do and what I am good at. And you know, it wan't hard for me to formulate what that was and what I could do. And I'm really excited!