tenuous

This morning, I'm thinking about my depression and anxiety in relation to my perma-temped job.

I am in my 13th year of teaching at Cow State Santa Claus as a temporary faculty member. I do not have the opportunity for tenure, and have very reasonable assurance that I will never have that opportunity. While the support for humanities education collapses, and while 75% of college faculty nationwide are similarly positioned, my PhD gets staler and staler, and I become more and more un-hirable as a starting assistant professor.

Among tenuous-track faculty (my gag name for those of us in perma-temped positions), CSU "lecturers" enjoy probably the best working conditions, wages, and benefits of anyone. What that does not do anything to resolve is the humiliation we're constantly subject to, and, for me, the added humiliation and despair over my status.

For instance, it is very hard to believe I am really worthy of a tenure-track job, despite having a longer and stronger publication record than several of my tenured colleagues. Psychologically, this is due to my position at the university being one in which I am constantly given that message on a daily basis.

I always worry. I am always concerned that this academic year could be my last, and that, given the landscape of faculty work opportunities, the last of my career. I have a very strong feeling of being temporary, of not being at home, of not being able to have a home, and of having nothing between me and the catastrophic loss of my employment, career, and what I am often rueful to regard as my life's calling.

What struck me particularly about this this morning is how difficult it is for me to sit down and read a book. I'm best at it around 9-10 am, sitting quietly in my work room at home in a blue armchair from Ikea (grad student furniture). But there's always something else I feel I should be doing, something that I have to do in order to try to save, or resurrect, my career. I cannot just sit there and read, not when tomorrow the university could begin disciplinary proceedings against me over a trumped-up charge, and nothing can stop them, because I don't have tenure.

(That's not a paranoid thought, by the way. I've seen it happen several times to temporary faculty, and as a faculty rights rep, I've had no way to do anything about it.)

need a break

Well, ladies and gentlemen, Doc Nagel is in a bad way. I blame a large part of this on the confluence of recent events - the department tenure-track search, looming budget cuts to the CSU (yet again), daily news of the unconscionable exercise of power. I blame another large part on the unrelenting propaganda demonizing organized labor, in particular in public higher education. It feels lately as if everything I care about is threatened or under attack. No exaggeration: the ideal of education, my own job, my loveliest, the cat, my favorite hockey team...

On the other hand, obviously the largest part of my terrible, doomed mood is sui generis. Everything I care about seems to be under attack because I feel truly terrible about myself these days. A few people who regularly read this have known me long enough to know that that had been a constant until Lauren came into my life. And although it is very hard to feel terrible about myself with her around, somehow I'm managing it.

For me, this often takes the form of a sort of voice constantly telling me the same thing, no matter what happens: "You're a terrible person." I've checked a book out of the university library, but it's been sitting on my shelf unread. "That's because you're a terrible person." A class session went poorly. "That's because you're a terrible person." A class session went well. "That doesn't change the fact that you're a terrible person." I committed a typo in an email I sent. "That's because you're a terrible person."

It gets old after a while.

But hey, do you wanna know why I get depressed, and why I feel this way despite how wonderful Lauren is, and how basically good life is right now? I'll give you a hint: It's because I'm a terrible person. That's what I've heard, anyway.

Taking a break from this is kind of a weird task, because this delightful partner in dialogue is, of course, me. (Hey, wanna know why I'm so cruel to myself? I'll give you a hint...)

album of the day: Wincing the Night Away

Is angsty pop-rock really necessary? What happens when angsty pop-rock grows up?

The Shins offer answers to these questions in this 2007 release. The first is, yes. Whether you think so or not. The reasons angsty pop-rock is necessary are basically twofold. As a civilization, we're still producing new generations of angsty teens and young adults. That happens when people reproduce, apparently. Plus, somebody's got to give vent to melodramatic emotion, which, it would seem, continues to exist as a psychological and cultural phenomenon.

The answer to the second is, it doesn't. And that's the way it should be.

"Australia" is what hooked me. I was downloading Shins tunes, following a musical hunch, looking for new stuff, and the first one I started to grasp was this one, brimming with energy. Not every track had the same bounce and spirit, but everything I found felt alert, upright, anxious and at attention. Not just energy, but welled-up, tensed energy, ready to spring.

(Which, along with the band's name, reminds me of an elementary school playground game we used to play. It was our own version of those games where you throw an inflated rubber ball at someone, and if you hit them, they were "out." Some people call this game "dodge ball" or "battle ball." In fourth grade we played this against a brick wall of our school, on a strip of grass about 10 feet deep and 30 feet long. The players lined up right against the wall, and the pitcher would hurl a baseball at the players' shins. Those who were hit were "out." To say the least.)

The first several times through "Australia," I didn't really catch the lyrics, except for the very end: "starved of oxygen/ so give me your hand/ and let's jump out the window." And I thought, well, that's rather an odd sentiment at the conclusion of such a catchy tune.

Turns out, the dark expression of the theme - it's actually more about breaking free of restrictions or repressions - is common to the whole album. For instance, in describing a quintessential angsty moment - making the fateful decision to fall into tangled sex - in "Sealegs": "when that dead moon rises again/ be no time to stall or protocol to hem us in darling." (Morrissey, I'm thinking. The Smiths are still hanging around.)

Perhaps a question for another time is why I seem to need angsty pop-rock. Cuz I do.

On the other hand, the Shins have become mainstream in their popularity after crossover media exposure, and thus have lost at least 90% of their credibility among the angst-ridden demographic their stuff would seem to be perfectly suited to. No doubt that demographic have moved on to something else. With any luck, the Shins won't drink the Kool-Aid, become flaccid, and go on to years of impotent but lucrative popularity.