February 25, 2010

• Everything is so messed up right now.

  I mean, not with graduate school.  Graduate school is fantastic.  The other first year and I successfully grew and purified our first batch of DNA!  Both of us had acceptable concentration measurements and we totally high-fived with our gloves on, the nerdiest kind of high-fiving.  Also, I'm becoming more and more excited about the fact that I only have a few more classes until I never have to take another class in my life!  It's all really exciting and I know I made the right choice coming here.  This is the place for me.  When I walk into the lab I feel as though I am walking into my future as a respected scientific mind.  I don't know when or how, but there is something deep inside my mind telling me that one day I will create something earth shattering.  I just wish I could say the same for my husband.

  He's the part that's messed up.  I guess I never realized, in all the years we were together before we got married, that he really has no work ethic.  If you've met him you can probably tell that he is very intelligent.  However, he graduated with a 3.4, and easily avoidable 3.4.  If there was an opportunity for him to slack off and waste time instead of doing homework, extremely simple homework in some cases, then he would take it.  When I first met him he was in some random blow off class, but because he wasn't doing the homework he had a really awful grade for no reason.  At first I thought it was kind of alluring.  This guy was extremely attractive and really smart, but he seems so "laid back" unlike me.  He relaxed me.  He still relaxes me, but when it comes to a real job he just can't cut it.  Everything else in my entire life has taught me that working hard and being proud of a job well done is a very important thing.  Earning your own money, taking care of yourself, these are footsteps on the path of life.  If you miss them then you get off track.  And yet I married someone who seems to think the exact opposite.  It's strange to say, but I don't really mind.  He's the part that's messed up because everyone else minds.  My parents, his parents, friends, other family members, all of them are constantly asking me about him and his job and why he doesn't like it and if he is going to quit. 

  My mother reminded me today that if he quits a job in this economic climate he will probably never be considered for another contested position ever again.  I hear about what a horrible decision it is for him to quit over and over and over and I'm just sick of it.  I know it's a bad decision for many reasons.  I know he could make lots of money and we could save it up for a great house someday.  I know it's not the "right" decision for a lot of people, but we've all made our choices.  He has every right to make his own just as he has given me the right to make my own and come here to this university.  If this stupid, pointless job isn't for him then I have no right to tell him he has to keep working, and neither does anyone else, even if to us it seems crazy for him to want to quit.  Everyone has the right to live their own life, "the pursuit of happiness" and all that.  I'm tired of telling people I want him to stay and convincing myself that torturing himself for money is more important than him being happy.  If my period starts in a few days we will go back to baby prevention efforts and he will have my full support to quit his job and enjoy his life instead of waking up each day to the realization that his terrible job is waiting for him with hungry dripping teeth, stealing his energy and happiness from him.

  I just hope that:
  1) I am not pregnant.
  2) I win a fellowship that will increase my salary slightly.
  3) we can still save up enough for a modest home somewhere even without his income.
  If these three things came to pass I would feel so much better right now.  As is, I'm really not in a healthy mental state.  Too many opinions and too many worries have been shared with me about our future that all I can think about is the negatives.  Sometimes people need to remember the "if you can't say something nice" rule of life, especially after they have already expressed their opinions.  I'm just...really tired.

  Also, I stepped in bug poison this morning.  I washed my foot but I can't get it out of my head.  That shit is poison to people, too.  We just don't die because we are a lot bigger.

  • 1:49 pm
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