A good way to procrastinate.

A weird thing has happened to me since I started grad school...

My family relationships have changed...

My relationships with childhood friends have change.

Often times I feel as though we are in different worlds, speaking a different language. I was bred in a totally non-academic environment. That doesn't mean that my family and friends are not educated, or intelligent. I think the two are often confused...lack of formal education all too often becomes synonymous with lack of "intelligence" and it shouldn't. My mom has her master's from NYU. My grandmother never made it through elementary school, yet I have never met people as smart, savvy, and wise as they are. I'd pay good money to see someone descend from the Ivory Tower and operate, navigate, and survive as well as my childhood friends can.

But I digress, my point is that I am being bred in new kind of culture. A culture where all their is is grad school. I get so consumed with the day to day of it all, that I often don't even feel like talking. I wonder what it feels like to them, do they think that I have become a different person? It breaks my heart everytime I talk to my grandma and she tells me ,"Don't forget about me, give me a call from time to time", oftentimes I find myself rolling my eyes and saying, "yes grandma" and thinking, "if she only knew". But it breaks my heart... It breaks my heart, because there is a kind of chasm that is forming between me and my family, and YES, I blame grad school for it. My grandma came to visit and all I kept thinking about was all the work I was falling behind on. My aunt came to visit, and ALL I KEPT THINKING ABOUT WAS ALL THE READING I WAS FALLING BEHIND ON. I couldn't enjoy them because I was consumed with worry and guilt about what I wasn't getting accomplished. Grad school is the center of my universe, and that is foreign to me. So much so, that I often, VERY OFTEN, break into a mental fever over it; just as your body does to protect itself when a foreign organism has invaded it.

Last week I called home, I was going out to eat with my friend and was having a conversation with my mom at the same time. Feeling as though I was being rude, I kept apologizing to my friend. "I am sorry..." I kept saying, "...now my mom wants me to talk to my aunt...","I am sorry..." I said, "...now they want me to talk to my other aunt who is visiting from the Dominican Republic"..."I am sorry..." I said, "...now they want me to talk to my cousin". And that's when it hit me, what hit me was the sack of pennies named "this is how much I HAVE changed"--I had nothing to talk to my cousin about. This is a cousin that I have grown-up with, super close, until the grad school chasm started to form.

It's not just me...I have another cousin... she's getting her master's in nursing, looking into getting her Ph.D. and when I go home and ask about her her other cousin says, "You know, she's in her own world. She thinks she's white now".

AND THAT ALWAYS GET TO ME! Now because someone wants to further their education that seems to become analogous to being White. I wonder what they think about me when I go home and stay home, in bed, catching up on sleep instead of going to visit them. Do they say "Well you know, she thinks she's white, too good for us". Have I lost my "cred"?

There's this kind of culture limbo that I often find myself in, not quite a part of the one grew up in, but not a part of the one I am now being "raised" in.

It's sad, really, how the gap seems to be widening--on both sides.

Socratic Buddha on deconstructing family relations during grad school.

Really, it's not you...it's me.

Google search term "breaking up with facebook"...results:


A break up letter to facebook, from a 21 year old named Kyle:

‘Facebook, we need to have a DTR (defining the relationship) talk…It’s not all your fault, it’s mostly mine…This is the end of you and me, Facebook. I’m leaving you because I have spent more time browsing your pages than I have been spending in the pages of The Good Book. And I can’t live like that anymore. I’ve let you become a monster…you’ve taken too much of my time and my thoughts. Maybe it’s just my lack of self-control or discipline, but you’re addictive to me. I’m ashamed of the number of times I check you daily. If I were able to grasp how much time I have spent swimming though your endless ocean of profiles, I would be able to bear the guilt.

Here’s why: because of your profiles, I’ve become lazy. Because of you I found myself talking with person after person, asking them questions that I already knew the answers to. On many levels I’ve substituted and even avoided personal interactions with people because of your artificial and superficial means of communication. You have diluted my perception of true social interaction.

You’ve made me a coward. There’s a difference between a Facebook friend and an actual friend. Everyone knows the difference, but when one tries to reach across the barrier from Facebook friends to actual friends it just isn’t the same.

Facebook, you’re not all bad. You have your benefits. I must admit, you allow me to network and keep in touch with people with whom I normally wouldn’t have been able to…but at what cost? Wasting time Facebooking people I’ll never meet has distracted me from meeting the person sitting next to me in class, or has kept me from calling up and hanging out with an old friend because Facebooking is just as good? I beg to differ.

In some form or another, you’ve hindered my investment in the relationships with those genuine people hiding behind the idealistic profiles they’ve made of themselves. Let’s face it, I don’t perceive myself in the same way someone else perceives me. From now on, I only want to know people for whom they truly are; not for what you (Facebook) says they are. I just can’t trust you.

‘This might seem radical, but I have to make up for lost time. This hurts me just as much as it hurts you, but I have to take a stand.

Logging out for good,

Kyle.’

I have taken the bold step of breaking up with facebook as well, for good. No more of this back and forth. I have started to minimize the sources of stress in my life, minimize the things that I want to expend mental and emotional energy on, and facebook just had to go. Like Kyle above, I don't think facebook should bear all the burden of blame. I am culpable as well. I let it become the monster that it did.

Self disclosure alert:

I went through a breakup, and yes, I got burned bad...and thanks to facebook, and my lack of self-control, I continued to experience that burn...over and over...and over. I just could not stop. I was like a junkie, and I think that I finally hit rock bottom. I had to take a step back, a deep breath, reevaluate and say "no more". I don't think I am the only one that has gone through this... Cue "YOU ARE NOT ALONE"...here is an NPR article that talks about this phenomenon:

www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123501060

But it's not just about the redefinition of relationships and break ups in the social networking era. It's a little bit more than that. It's about the constant need for external validation..."here's my status update", "here's what I'm listening to", "see I am still a part of (enter person's name here) world". It's also about how we have come to view who does and does not like us, based on who "friends" us, who "unfriends" us, who comments and/or likes our updates, and the self-evaluations that come along with that; who we like and do not like, and the passive-aggressive ways we express this in facebook-world. I don't speak about all facebookers, just the facebooker that I became.

I guess I have moved from one existential exhibitionist venue to another...maybe so, but at least I feel as though I have taken a step to reclaim my sanity, my dignity, creativity, and TIME.

Socratic Buddha on deconstructing facebook.