Tuesday as usual.

I could, if I wanted, blame my lack of decent sleep last night on why I cried a bit in therapy today, but I really know it's because any time I dwell on or talk about the amount of travel the rest of my family's done, I get very sad, very easily. I have to be in a very good mood for it not to get to me, and I wasn't today. We'd again been talking about how I'm not doing much and how this is a hell of a gap year, and how it doesn't properly qualify for one but there's nothing better to call it.

The idea of throwing in the towel on looking for library work came up, too. It's not so much a calling to me as it is something I'd enjoy more than a lot of other things, and I picked it out of a lack of other options for decent day jobs that'd let me keep work at work and not take anything home with me that also wouldn't have me wanting to curl up under my desk to avoid what it is I've got to do for that day. Outside of a few small boxes, there isn't much that career-type people can help with, especially in middle and high school. She mentioned finding an end date on which to start looking for non-library work, and right now, it doesn't sound like a bad idea. I told her about something someone posted recently, about how many people with PhDs work as janitors - I was a bit wary of it because it didn't say how many janitor-PhDs there were out of all the janitors and all the PhDs, so there wasn't any chance to see the big picture beyond a headcount - and how I wouldn't mind being a janitor. I say that now, of course, and I also say it while remembering Raymond Carver wrote in a janitor's closet.

We also talked about energy flow. Vibes, mojo, chi, humors, whatever it might be called. How sometimes after doing a couple of hours' work on the job hunt - sorting through listings, working on letters - I get sharply nauseated and drained to the point where I want to lie on the floor and not move, or just shut down for a while and stay sitting at the computer. Doing something physical breaks me out of it, like going to the gym or cooking dinner, and if I time it right it's okay. A couple of weeks ago we'd talked about the ideas of vim and vigor as they relate to cover letter writing and how it can be hard to bring those feelings into play, especially if I'm just doing a letter for a job that seems all right, rather than something I'd actually enjoy doing. After I mentioned that, I told her about something else I read online, about how one of the best ways to waste time while job hunting is to look for jobs one doesn't want. Sometimes it's hard to remember to be selective. Not every week is going to turn up an interesting listing for a local museum, but I don't have to look down every single path, either. I told my therapist how maybe narrowing it down to ten jobs a week might help me figure out which ones would actually be good fits, and that might help with what I'm trying to do.

In the game.

Day nine is one-third written and will probably call for a beta-reader as well. Meta is tricky stuff. So in the meantime, here's this.

Day 10: In your own space, talk about a creator. Show us why you think they are amazing. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Michael Chabon - "Shea as in Shea Stadium, Bon as in Bon Jovi." One of my favorite authors, and my dream of who I want to grow up to be: someone who writes what he wants to read and gets other people to want to read it, too. He clearly loves language and putting words together, and besides his ability to comment on the nature of being human in all its facets and myriad ways, knows how to tell a story, which is a skill that seems to be getting harder and harder to find.

He treats his writing as a serious job, which I admire and keep trying to emulate. He's doing his best get genre fiction on the table where it belongs with everything else, and for that alone I'd love what he does.

As wonderful as his works are, from melancholic introspective pieces to gung-ho adventures to short autobiographical essays, and as much as I love reading about the stories he makes up, it's the language that he uses that keeps me coming back. I still remember the first time I read his description of Hebrew from The Yiddish Policeman's Union: "That sort of language is never employed for human conversation. It's only for talking to God." After I read that, I had to stop for a moment, because I knew if I ever wrote anything that good and true, I'd know I'd done something right. I need to keep going to get there, and reading his books makes me want to fire up the laptop and hit the keyboard.