Be quiet and drive (far away)

 

I just found out on a Facebook page that «Deftones' iconic music video, directed by Frank W. Ockenfels III premiered on this day in 1998...», and I felt a little dizzy and I tried to ignore the fact that I have to start from zero again, yesterday I rejected a bad job opportunity, yesterday I officially knew about the third colleague who obtained her permanent academic position –none of them have the distinction of National Researcher Level II I have from January– and then I watched the video on YouTube for the first time, and now I wonder what was my life like back then, I must have been a sophomore in Psychology, maybe I didn't hate my life at all, I must have been in love of Lilly and dating Carmela, I must have thought I was an amazing beatnik-type writer, I must have written a thousand poems a week, I must have ignored school, I must have been reading Patrick Suskind and similar writers. Life must have been something hot and strange.

Was my life better than now...? I don't think so.

Antes de tres lunas volveré a por ti

Last night I was feeling a little dizzy and nauseous, before going to bed I'd eaten a bag of very greasy potato chips. I was watching a movie. I'd seen it before, but just finished reading the book in which it's based on this week. While Tom Waits as Renfield was eating a couple of bugs and I sort of pictured myself acting in the same character as him if someone had asked me to, suddenly I thought of you. 

Perhaps I'd checked my Instagram open account earlier and your profile appeared as “suggested for you”.

At a first glance, I did not recognize you. Dunno remember when was the last time I saw you, I just know it must have been on September, at the end of an Interdisciplinary Project class. There you told me that you were going to Poland, or something like that, on an academic mobility stay. You told me that you couldn't take the last part of the course and you asked me if it was OK for me. So much time has passed since then. I've been out of college for almost half a year, I started writing a MS, the MS was published a week ago in Pharmaceuticals, I've been surviving, I got sick...

In my dream I was walking thru the alleys of a weird high school, it looked like the typical high school I've seen in movies. It was a sunny day, I had a stomach ache, I wanted to threw up. Somehow I saw you in a bathroom, it was really dirty and it made me sick. You said “Hi” and smiled. Although I was feeling so bad, your presence sort of woke me up. Then I walked out of the bathroom and into a classroom and I felt so powerful as if I were a Roman emperor. 

I just woke up a few minutes ago, and I cannot stop thinking of this song by Mikel Erentxun.

Swallow My Pride

As soon as I wake up and I get ready to get out of bed, and I fight with the incessant morning sickness, the chorus of this song repeats in my head –«This ain't the summer of love», «This ain't the summer of love»–, and it doesn't really mean nothing but that I was thinking the entire night why should I start over again and again, why should I become some sort of ghost writer. 

Everything was OK on Monday, they said it was a Blue Monday, but I went out to get a haircut, I took an on line Seminar, I spoke with some colleagues, I ran 7 km, and I wrote about Blue Monday on my new literary project. And I did all the things that I usually do besides being a scientist with a record of ~20 published papers –the most recent one dated on April 2024, and, as I write these lines, I am waiting for the verdict of another one–, an academic with a record of ~40 undergraduate and graduate courses, and so on. That's not subjective. Starting in January 2025, the National System of Researchers gave me the distinction of National Researcher Level II. That's too much even for some academics with permanent contracts and with a longer academic careers than mine that I have worked with.

I even received a couple of good news. I worked on a new academic project, too. I finished a research project I started to write on Friday, too. Everything was cool. But I contacted her via What'sApp, I asked her how she was, she did the same, I asked her what's going on at the university I worked for the last 6 years. And then she said that things were some sort of tense, and that she just won a permanent full-time academic position. I felt my heart break, again. Not just because I competed for that position, too, and not just because the committee considered that my profile was not what they were looking for, but because she's the third colleague I know that was a temporary professor, as I have been my entire life, that got a permanent academic position. Also because we recently spoke about these things and we were worried about the same. She's a friend of mine, and it's nice that she's about to leave this academic uncertainty. A couple of years ago she received the distinction of Candidate for National Researcher and about 6 months ago, we used to talk every Thursday while eating at this university where I worked for the last 6 years.

Via a What'sApp voice note she also told me that, if I wanted to, she could incorporate me to her research projects, as a fellow researcher, at this university she got the full-time academic position. She also asked me why I don't look for another postdoc in the US –7 years ago, I finished my third year of postdoc–, things that we spoke before. 

I cannot stop thinking what's wrong with me. Should I start over again and again...? Should I become some sort of ghost writer...? Should I swallow my pride, again...?