Category Archives: News

PINT | Values Lost

  By J. Nikol Beckham • February 10, 2014

 

I am extremely excited to be nearing the end of my dissertation journey and of course terrified on many levels.  Hoping to see lots of familiar faces at the art show/reception I am holding directly following my defense.  Here’s hoping that both go well.

Tagged   beer, dissertation

Theme Developing

  By J. Nikol Beckham • March 29, 2009

So I suppose one might see a theme developing here with my recent blogging – that its been much more frequent, much more personal, and much more negative.  Though I have made some effort to keep my blog from becoming a diary in the past, at the moment I need a place to vent and I have never felt comfortable subjecting people I care about to this sort of thing.  So… if you are someone I care about, I suggest you stop reading now.

Luckily for me, talking here is probably the equivalent to talking to myself.  Which is good because I honestly am having problems envisioning having positive interactions with others right now.  I think I am just having a lot of issues dealing with disappointment, frustration, and uncertainty these days.
The disappointment is particularly rough because it is myself that I am most disappointed in.  I am truly disappointed in myself for regaining all of the weight that I worked so hard to lose last year.  I don’t know that I have explicitly ever said that out loud, even to myself.  Having gone through my several year long battle with my weight and the constellation of deeply troubling emotional issues that are related (arguably including the loss of a 7-year long relationship), it makes me feel completely worthless that I would end up back at my highest weight ever after having lost 40 pounds and having experienced a windfall of related positivity.  Though I know I am now doing the things I need to do to get back in shape, the reality of the situation still presses on me.  I feel like I have showed a similar lack of discipline when it comes to spending and saving.  Whether it is being stupid about how much a spend, failing to think enough to be frugal, or just not monitoring my finances regularly enough, I have been a total moron about money lately.  For someone with $100,000 of college loans, I seem to justify some of the silliest wastes of money, even when I know I am going to regret them.  I guess eating and buying shit tend to be some of my favorite dysfunctional ways of coping.
The frustration comes of feeling and in some cases knowing that what I am disappointed about, I don’t have the ability to change or at least change quickly.  Secondarily, I get frustrated about not having the skill or motivation to talk about it with people.  It always seems to feel better to withdraw – to close my facebook account and turn off my phone.  But then it feels like shit to feel like no one understands what I am going through and that I can blame that on no one but myself.  On the flip side, it always seems that when I actually DO talk about these things, I am told that I am an overachiever or being to hard on myself, which I guess is nice, but frankly has the effect of making me feel like 1) my feelings are valid or 2) I am a crazy person who lacks perspective.
Uncertainly is probably the most pervasive of my current trio of negativity.  Literally, it just seems like everything is in the air, unsettled, contingent upon some other piece of something else to far into place.  Rejection, failure, disappointment, and sadness all suck a whole lot but at least I know what to do with them.  The unsettled just hangs in the air waiting to drop the confetti or the axe and all I can do is stare upward and try to be ready or distract myself and be blindsided.  It is in these situations that I almost envy my mother’s delusional faith.  She can “put things in god’s hands” and no matter how troubling the failure, disappointing the outcome, or harsh the rejection she can externalize the result.  Nothing is her fault, just “god’s will.”
While I try to remain positive, I admit that it seems like a ridiculous effort. Still, I am not sure what else to do with myself – blog about the bad, hug my dogs, refuse to let myself cry about life, and when all else fails… take naps.
With that I’m heading to bed.

Thirty Wonderful

  By J. Nikol Beckham • December 16, 2008

Yesterday was my 31st birthday. Pleasantly chill and seemingly appropriate for a woman of advancing age. Today, I’m feeling pretty pensive, a little anxious, and motivated without any particular direction. All in all however, it’s a positive feeling. This time of year often comes with self-reflection and a sincere desire bring my goals into sharper focus. So, I’ll be spending the day doing just that, making lists and daydreaming about the not-so-distant future.

Pendulum Swing

  By J. Nikol Beckham • April 29, 2008

And just like that it seems the pendulum is swinging in the other direction. For all the efforts I’ve made to enter and actively roam the world of social beings, I am frankly not feeling it much anymore. It’s fairly interesting that I periodically go tortoisesque and if I were the smart, self-reflecting type I might try to identify a pattern causing this behavior – stress, PMS, planets realigning, low hanging power lines, listening to too much Tori Amos. No matter the cause, the impulse is real and fairly unmanageable as I have fairly seriously committed myself to being a “being-in-the-world” – thank you M. Heidegger.

Still, I like the fantasy of holing up in a concrete bunker somewhere in a cold European country with a computer for Amazon.com, HDTV for ESPN, some paper clips and rubber bands for my own amusement, and a sweet low-profile sofa for drinking beer on. I wouldn’t want to be the type of hermit that goes completely natural or worse yet live some angry and paranoid Luddite existence in order to stick it to the system. Frankly, the system will win out in my lifetime and if I am going to fight it, I might as well be comfortable doing so. I suppose that makes me a bad radical – so be it. No, I want to be a with-it hermit, in the know, have a blog and share my unsolicited thoughts all over the interweb; I just want to be adequately isolated from the minutia of everyday life and the complex web of nuttiness that is other people and their lives.

I’m told that meditation and or yoga can effectively ameliorate some of these feelings, but I have to believe that picking up my things and relocating to an undisclosed cabin in Norland or Switzerway is the easier way to go. Meditation is really hard and yoga hurts my body like nothing else ever has. Of course spiritual growth would also be an option here, but I often have problems reconciling my cynicism with something as innately positive as a spiritual commitment. Perhaps that’s one for the to-do list. For now, I write to no one about the things that are actually bothering me and see how long I can go without picking up the phone.