Dammit, my wife and I love each other. That’s got to count for something, somewhere. Doesn’t it?

So many of the young people who enter graduate programs do so because they care about something deeply, or are interested in something deeply. And much of the conventional wisdom about, say, “getting a Ph.D.” is that you should only do it if you care deeply about the subject.

This is actually bullshit.

Academics is a terrible place for people that care, whether about the world or about a subject. I’ve seen (and closely known) far too many smart, driven young people—who deeply cared either about a cause or about a field—get absolutely pillaged in the academic world, and leave it embittered and disillusioned, absolutely without correlation to their level of achievement. They couldn’t hack it not because they weren’t smart or learned enough, but (frankly) because they weren’t ruthlessly amoral enough.

Make no mistake, academics is a place for hard-nosed climbers who are determined simply to do something—anything—that is intellectually interesting, and who have nerves of titanium and the grit of a large-scale industrial power sander. Today it is not a place for people who feel… anything, frankly.

My wife and friends will happily tell many that I am capable of being both more horribly rational and more gritty than most of the people that they know. Sometimes, when push has come to shove, one or two of them have even told me that it would be nice if I’d grow a heart. But even though I completed my Ph.D. I was nowhere near hardassed, single-minded, unattached, and steely-eyed enough to really make a go of it in a traditional academic career.

No, sending idealists and topic enthusiasts into academics is like sending young fodder to the Somme. A bloody waste of life.

That’s not to say that there aren’t pleasures in it. I find myself wishing I was there all the time. It is an intoxicating and stimulating sphere. But the fact is that even I was far from being competitive, not because I wasn’t capable (my apologies to the many that had high hopes for me) but because in fact at the end of the day I wasn’t willing to do the very practical things required to make it stick. Effectively abandon my family and spouse entirely. Move from place to place to place every year for years on end, without attachments of any kind. Network relentlessly and ensure that conversation is always exploitable from the career perspective, rather than merely congenial. Cynically hop on the latest journal fad and ride it with as much trite overwriting as possible. Backstab. Exploit. Reappropriate. Pursue.

In general, in fact, the path to success in academics demands that you care far more for “academics” as a field and set of titles than for the integrity of the field of knowledge that you’re in. There are experts. And there are academics. Sometimes these two things overlap, particularly amongst the old guard who entered at a different time. But they are not at all the same thing.

Professors ought to stop selecting for recommendations the students that are smart, or driven, or enthusiastic, or idealistic, and send instead their most unflappable, unattached, and unapologetically resolved students. The ones that say, in abrasive and cold tones, “I don’t care about this topic, I don’t care about anything, and I don’t need anyone. I’m just here to get a grade.” The students from this cohort that get an ‘A’ are the best candidates for the current academic career trajectory. They have a chance of being successful, and of not doing too much damage along the way.

None of this is to say that I’m bitter about academics. I’m grateful to the institutions and fond of many of my professors and contacts. I still find “The Work” both tremendous and exciting.

But I do wish faculty that teach undergrads would stop sending so many into the killing fields. It’s not a place for the starry-eyed. For the older generation, it was; it was a job; it could be done like any other job, with hard work and dedication and integrity and care.

But times are different. The market is different. The logic of the marketplace is different. The field of labor is different. Now, academics is a journey into 1970 Cambodia, and it takes a Captain Willard or a Colonel Kilgore or a Colonel Kurtz to make it out the other side alive.

That’s the task of the moment.

There is nothing else that can be done. Just be, me. Just be.

No energy to say it.

I’ve said it all before over all these years.

A person’s life is like a melody; there may be variations here and there as it plays out, but the basic melody remains the same.

— § —

The alphabet song will always be for me both beautiful and tragic.

— § —

Another tic mark on the wall. For what it’s worth.

If I was an extrovert, I’d be typing paragraphs and paragraphs here right now. But instead, my inner self wants nothing more than to stop typing. So I will.

I’ve thought myself in circles for a while now.

Time to wrap up and kick the can down the road for another day. After all, what is life but kicking the can down the road until one reaches the bucket?

— § —

“All the molecules
Every single one
The atoms
Their spin
Their charge
Their charm
All and every one
In circles.

All the molecules
All the single ones
The atoms
Their spin
Their charge
Their charm
In circles
In beauty—”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-nL2lqtCqI

Experience teaches everyone, sooner or later, that sometimes nothing can get better unless you just throw up your hands and stop what you’re doing.

This doesn’t guarantee that things will get better, but there comes a point at which throwing up your hands is the path to the best possible outcome, whatever that is.

It’s hard to do this, despite the relatively low mass of arms and hands, because (a) you tend to forget if it’s been a while since you’ve had to do so, and (b) sometimes it’s hard to face the thought that you have so little control over things that matter that in fact the best you can do is to become nothing more than a passive observer of life.

For those of us that want to do good, it can be hard to face the idea that you just can’t do any more good—that anything you try do from here on out will actually be bad.

But it is what it is.

— § —

“Begin at the beginning,” the King said, very gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”

— § —

I’m looking at you, pirate. And at a million, maybe a billion others.

— § —

A big part of growing up and becoming a better person is letting go of the idea that you have to get yours. Realizing that “fairness” isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. That you can enable others get theirs rather than you getting yours, because you’re going to be okay if you don’t get it and maybe they’re not. That you can survive without fighting for what you don’t actually need, and there’s no shame or secret disadvantage in letting need matter a bit more than equity.

Sure there’s pain and sadness. But those are neither here nor there at the end of the day.

I have a nearly infinite number of posts over seventeen years with the word “life” in their titles.

Seems to be something I think about a lot.

— § —

I just finished binge watching the entire series The United States of Tara on Netflix, after my wife suggested the show.

I mean, binge watching. Three full seasons in one day. Walking around the house doing stuff with the show playing on my phone. Not stopping for breath.

It was either a theraputic thing to do or an unhealthy thing to do. These days I think the world may actually be nuanced enough that something can be both. It’s possible that I’m starting to believe that everything in life is both.

— § —

I’m not talking to anybody. Since sometime in early March, I have cut nearly everyone off without meaning to. I’m not sure why. It’s not that I’m running from people or from things. It’s more that I feel like I need to be able to be in the room with myself and just myself again, keep myself company, and get to know myself.

I want to slow things down somehow.

Between arriving in New York in 2006 and the present, everything has been chaos. Everything has happened at the speed of light. Changes and decisions and constant striving have surrounded us like a tornado, with us at the eye of the storm.

Slowing reality to a crawl seems like the only way to get sanity back.

— § —

I need to go to bed.

In general, people don’t like anything that shatters the illusion that the universe, and the things in it, are stable and unscathed quantities.

But in fact, things are fragile. Almost anything and everything that you can name is infinitely fragile. Damage is easy. Damage is the norm of things. Nothing is stable. Nothing is “real” in the sense that it is durable, unchanging, stable, lasting. Anything and everything can be broken, and broken easily.

And this bothers people. Really bothers people.

Me, too, frankly. But it is what it is.

I’m a massive online buyer, and have been for more than a decade. I buy almost everything online. Cool stuff, boring stuff, household stuff, whatever.

It’s been a tough year. I don’t think I’ve ever had to return so many purchases due to defects, incorrect item delivered, whatever.

Is this something to do with the economy? Is it coincidence? What’s the deal? Return after return after return. Constantly shipping stuff back. Even in the early days of e-commerce it wasn’t this bad. Weird, weird shit.

Funniest thing is that the Chinese sellers have been the most reliable. They always deliver. The American sellers? Not nearly as reliable.

…it means that you are thinking of yourself too much, and of the world at large too little.

There is a big world of dreamers and opportunities out there. If you’re stuck in your sadness, you’re forgetting to join them.