Tormented ode of a graduate student

A glimpse of my nightstand. 

I was looking through an acquaintance's facebook pictures yesterday and had to marvel at her ability to view her life and activities so crisply, like she was appreciative of every moment, breathing each of life's little pleasures through her soul.  Of course, the cynic in me also skeptically counters that some people really know how to market themselves through facebook and bite-sized instagram posts, so her life is probably not as happy as it seems.

It got me thinking about happiness, appreciating the journey, and stopping to smell the roses.  Since my masters, I've been consumed with quantity over quality.  More publications, more activities, more projects, more research, reading more literature in my field, more credentials.  Do more with less time.  After one task, it was onto the next.  I'd pick up the next project as quickly as I'd forget the last.  After my 3rd year, I decided I wasn't cut out for the rat race of pure academia, so I began to slow down and try to reclaim my life. Though this blog primarily features my return to my love of running, I have a lot of passion and hobbies.

My life is still in pieces in certain ways...  and it feels like an unfinished work as long as I'm still in  grad school.  I look at some of my peers and they are so consumed by their work - they are in single-handed pursuit of their research.  No other activities or hobbies.  It's great that they are so focused, but in contrast, it's as if my awareness of being unplugged outside of the "Matrix" of academia makes me more vulnerable to distraction and will inevitably delay my progression beyond this world.  Yet, as I said before, my life stands still for it.  I am plagued by worries about my research and where I'll land afterwards.  If I waste too much time in the day, my dissertation - manifested in my mind like a mental rain cloud - bursts over any happiness that might have given me relief from it.  The bf tells me I look disheveled and I should take more pride in my personal appearance.  I tell him, I have no time to dry my hair.  I'll start caring once I'm out of grad school.  I've put off some very real world concerns until I'm in a better position mentally and financially to deal with them.  

And so if you look at my life... the way it's structured, the way things are organized in my room... You can see how unfinished I am.  My nightstand is piled with books I sought to read but have not.  I have ceased to see that the roses are waiting for me, I've ceased to dream about what waits for me outside of this heavy cocoon.  It feels like I don't have the luxury of smelling the roses.  I am paralyzed and I've lost my senses.  Sigh, I need to get out of here.  Badly.