I'm supposed to hear back early this week, but so far there's been no news on my eligibility for that very real job I interviewed for last week. Since the worry was that they wouldn't be able to consider me at all (hence: "eligibility") I think no news is good news, for the moment.

Eggs: still in one basket. But I'm working on that, really.

The bigger issue is that my head isn't in the grad school game, what with all this wondering about the future. Will the next morning bring with it an email saying that I'm out of the running? Or will I wait several weeks, only to have my hopes dashed? Or, just maybe...

It's, what's the word? Nerve-wracking.

Well, maybe not. Everyone makes such a big deal about stress that I wonder if I'm really experiencing the same thing.

Stress is no longer the gigantic emotion it was in, say, middle school, when I'd go to bed with some neglected assignment on my mind, thinking what-will-I-do what-will-I-do. Stress should make you feel totally alert. Stress is supposed to crackle in your head.

I mean, I may feel pressure, but that's just the logical part of my brain worrying that I don't have enough time to do something. I may feel mildly frustrated with a situation, but was I "stressed" when work at the Lawrentian went on until dawn? Not really.

I may get nervous, do often get nervous, and maybe that's close to what I think of when I think of stress, but that nervousness is itself a bundle of complicated emotions, each bundle a finely handcrafted work of art, and it's still different from what I'm trying to get at. Nervousness is doubtful and self-conscious, stress is...

Perhaps I'm just misremembering the intensity of my teenage emotions. I could look in my journals, those many volumes from the glory days of the Dan Analog Archive Project, and see what Classic Dan was feeling.

(I had a whole system of past Dans worked out. I can't remember it now.)

But that's not really necessary. I know I've thought in the past that my emotional landscape has leveled, only to be startled by some re-experienced high or low. When one of them comes back, it's like... a sudden breeze on a warm day.

Or the first time I had tarragon.

So I wonder, without any real chance of knowing, if a lot of other people aren't just emotional hypochondriacs. The alternative is that (mad coping skillz notwithstanding) I'm missing out. Maybe my lifestyle, flush though it is with tv shows and video games, just doesn't lend itself to heightened emotional states.

The shows and games are of the highest quality, however.

Another long day tomorrow. Keep sending your extra superstition-based karma my way.