The Spring Fugue

I lied. I'm not posting pretty pictures this time because I don't have my phone/camera nearby and that is where all of my photos are presently stored (or on instagram and I can't do much with those to this, I guess). I do have photos of trips we took in 2012 (Seattle, Alaska, Canada, and probably other places I am completely spacing on at the moment) to post before 2013 gets too far behind me.


Instead, I'm going to tell you a story that is a bit sad. Life is full of disappointments, isn't it? It is also full of joy and random bits of happiness and amazing-ness threaded through. But today's story is a confused, emotionally tangle of a thing because, quite frankly, I haven't fully allowed myself to come to terms with it. Le sigh.

I do have a number of posts in draft mode that I hope to get kicked out for you all soon, too. These lags are terrible, but my writing has been requested elsewhere (thank you, work!).

If you followed the flurry of posts through that rather dreadful spring funk, you know it was low. And for me, low means quite, quite low. Throw a heap of anxiety on that bit of depression, and I was a tangled, mangy mess of a girl. Like stare-off-into-space, existential crisis mess. A mess that, I think, had my mother concerned (hi, Mom!).

big breath

So. Here's what that was a bit about. I had planned to apply to a PhD program--a single, solitary program. It was (may still be) the dream if-I-got-in-I-might-die program. I told some people about the plan. I had application readers. If I were accepted, I would have started this summer. People asked what my summer plans were, and I smiled and told them I wasn't sure yet because I had a little secret, and these kinds of secrets are dangerous. If they get out and things don't go as planned, they hurt over and over again as you admit that things didn't work out. I always felt like an ass when this happened when I was a kid, so I began not talking about it as much, clutching it closely.

I had my ducks in a row, and I was saving my pennies because for this (amazing, incredible) program, I had to put down a deposit of a few thousand dollars. I was diligently working away at the application with two readers who were offering very helpful feedback and were very excited about this prospect of more education (and travel! and things to study! and yay!). I had my rec letters requested and sent in. It was going swimmingly.

And then work slowed to a trickle, and a month later so did my income. My savings went to ensuring we could pay rent, make the car payment, bills, and the other banalities of life. And I agonized over the decision to apply to the program. I held on and held on to it, like the string to a balloon that kept wanting to whip away in the wind. There was a night, I think I was washing dishes, staring forlornly out the window, when I realized that I had to let go of that string because it simply wasn't practical (how I despise practicality), and, oh my heart broke. It broke, and I cried. I wept. I let myself feel that pain acutely. I hurt fiercely. I wanted this, and I had let myself hope and dream. And it was the blasted money--always the damn money, isn't it?--that got in my way.

I worked on other projects, some work shifted and I took on new duties and tasks I hadn't done previously, and I began some new enterprises that I'm still trying to figure out. It wasn't a total loss.

I don't know. Maybe this weird roadblock that was The Taylor Spring of 2013 made something shift in my life. Maybe there is an unseen that only years down the road will I think "that was an interesting circumstance that led to this more amazing, incredible turn in life." Perhaps I'll apply again once the finances even out; at the moment, I don't know. We'll see.