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kind of a lot of feelings
Feb. 8th, 2015 10:36 pmI have kind of a lot of miscellaneous feelings, and maybe writing about them will help sort them out. Or maybe I'll just free-associate for a while.
On paper, at least, life is going really well, and I feel guilty complaining.
But I've been unhappy in a lot of ways, and I need to fix things.
A lot of it is anxiety about my PhD, and honestly a lot of anger about how my doctoral work has gone. My experience at IU was not good, on the whole. When I finish it, it's going to be largely driven by spite and defiance, like "you think *this* was going to stop me? ..." [0]
... except that nobody really particularly cares about my research one way or the other. It's not going to help anybody; my advisor is about as checked-out as an advisor can be while still claiming to want me to finish. I strongly doubt that he's going to be able to deploy any kind of MT system for the developing world, like we had said we were going to; we had such big plans, and I wonder in retrospect how much I believed we were going to be able to accomplish.
It seemed so far-fetched, but then we did go to Paraguay and we really did talk with all those people in the schools and at the Secretariat of Language Policy. That was real.
But I feel stuck, in a lot of ways. I need to feel like I'm moving forward.
And kind of isolated, a lot of the time. I end up alone in the house a lot, at least when I'm not working.
As a related complaint: my online interactions haven't been great, and I don't feel like I have a good venue for complaining. I actually often don't feel like I'm *allowed* to complain. My problems seem insignificant, and isn't it my job to help people, rather than whinging?
I actually look at a lot of Twitters, and I think "Jebus, why are you griping about everything in public? STFU and do something worthwhile." ... and I don't want to be that person.
I need to get my thoughts in order, STFU, and make something worthwhile, or at least finish my doctoral work so that I can move on to making worthwhile things.
I recently read Bowling Alone, which is a sociology book about the declining stocks of "social capital" in the US in the latter third of the 20th century. It's super interesting, and I would heartily recommend it. But the book was published in 2000, and I get the impression, at least, the the issues outlined in the book (the gradual erosion of trust and community bonds, and the myriad problems this causes) haven't been reversing; getting involved in local politics, joining a bowling league, and even knowing your neighbors all still seem quaint and anachronistic. Putnam writes about how (at that point, in 2000) it's still unknown whether online communities are going to help kickstart a broader sense of community in the country.
From my tiny experience, I don't know whether online discourse is helping. My battle cry -- I say this in person a lot -- is that everybody on the Internet with any opinion is Literally Hitler.
The place where I see the best, most civil, thoughtful disagreements these days is actually G+. LJ has historically been really good for this. Twitter seems engineered for drive-by snark-sniping; I'm on indefinite Twitter hiatus, if you didn't notice.
In any case. Maybe I'll complain more here or on IRC. A good kvetch is good for you, right?
On paper, at least, life is going really well, and I feel guilty complaining.
But I've been unhappy in a lot of ways, and I need to fix things.
A lot of it is anxiety about my PhD, and honestly a lot of anger about how my doctoral work has gone. My experience at IU was not good, on the whole. When I finish it, it's going to be largely driven by spite and defiance, like "you think *this* was going to stop me? ..." [0]
... except that nobody really particularly cares about my research one way or the other. It's not going to help anybody; my advisor is about as checked-out as an advisor can be while still claiming to want me to finish. I strongly doubt that he's going to be able to deploy any kind of MT system for the developing world, like we had said we were going to; we had such big plans, and I wonder in retrospect how much I believed we were going to be able to accomplish.
It seemed so far-fetched, but then we did go to Paraguay and we really did talk with all those people in the schools and at the Secretariat of Language Policy. That was real.
But I feel stuck, in a lot of ways. I need to feel like I'm moving forward.
And kind of isolated, a lot of the time. I end up alone in the house a lot, at least when I'm not working.
As a related complaint: my online interactions haven't been great, and I don't feel like I have a good venue for complaining. I actually often don't feel like I'm *allowed* to complain. My problems seem insignificant, and isn't it my job to help people, rather than whinging?
I actually look at a lot of Twitters, and I think "Jebus, why are you griping about everything in public? STFU and do something worthwhile." ... and I don't want to be that person.
I need to get my thoughts in order, STFU, and make something worthwhile, or at least finish my doctoral work so that I can move on to making worthwhile things.
I recently read Bowling Alone, which is a sociology book about the declining stocks of "social capital" in the US in the latter third of the 20th century. It's super interesting, and I would heartily recommend it. But the book was published in 2000, and I get the impression, at least, the the issues outlined in the book (the gradual erosion of trust and community bonds, and the myriad problems this causes) haven't been reversing; getting involved in local politics, joining a bowling league, and even knowing your neighbors all still seem quaint and anachronistic. Putnam writes about how (at that point, in 2000) it's still unknown whether online communities are going to help kickstart a broader sense of community in the country.
From my tiny experience, I don't know whether online discourse is helping. My battle cry -- I say this in person a lot -- is that everybody on the Internet with any opinion is Literally Hitler.
The place where I see the best, most civil, thoughtful disagreements these days is actually G+. LJ has historically been really good for this. Twitter seems engineered for drive-by snark-sniping; I'm on indefinite Twitter hiatus, if you didn't notice.
In any case. Maybe I'll complain more here or on IRC. A good kvetch is good for you, right?
