A Nibble!

I have a 10-15 minute phone interview with a primarily undergrad institution on Tuesday. Its location is not ideal, but it makes me feel good that some place might want me. :)

Starter Name

Of the three guys with whom I've had multi-year relationships, 2 are currently dating girls with my name. And the other guy is married. And me? Still single. It doesn't really bother me since I'm often either away or busy, and next semester will hopefully have lots of travel. But do they really have to have my name?!

In other ex news, my most recent ex has decided academia isn't his bag and that he wants to go to Wall Street and make $$$. But, since the market is bad, and his first two years of postdoc'ing have resulted in 1 publication thus far, he's going to stick around for another year. His desire to go to Wall St doesn't surprise me - he actually wanted to do it after he graduated from college, but the market was bad (again), so he decided to go to grad school. Of course, this is also the same person who once told me that all he wanted to do was write papers. And that grad school was much easier than undergrad. My guess? He found out that doing research isn't as easy when you aren't working with 2 other PhDs who are helping with the grunt work and 2 advisors to help with the thinking.

EMDR

I've been going to the therapist roughly once a month since my conference in August. My therapist was really interested in the fact that I moved a lot as a child, and thought it may have had an effect on my ability to form bonds and friendships with people. She had me think of my worst moving/ being the new girl/ not fitting in moment, and did EMDR on it. EMDR uses bilateral stimulation - tapping alternately on your knees, beeps in alternate ears, following someone's fingers across the visual field, etc - to help you reprocess your memories. You start with the initial feeling from the event, have the bilateral stimulation for 15-30 seconds, refocus on the new feeling, and repeat. Even during the process, I was thinking "This is a total crock." Then the session was up, the therapist asked me to think back to the event and tell her how I felt. And when the session was over, I felt... nothing. For 18 years this experience made me feel embarrassed, angry, hurt, and all of a sudden that has gone away. The event happened, it sucked, but it's no longer a big deal. Now I just feel bad for the person who was so mean to me to begin with. It's liberating.