Friday, 05.04.2018 - 10:34 pm.
I have been a social butterfly these days. That has helped me get out of the loop of the presentation I'm preparing for the Psych Department's PhD conference, coming up in two weeks. It's all I've worked on this week. One of my rehearsals took me 30 minutes when the presentation should take 15.
I'm working a lot on it because the resident asshole in the department may want to screw me over when it's time for questions. That right-wing, clinically narcissistic colleague keeps me on my toes. I saw him today, he joined a few of us for lunch at the kitchen in the office.
It was a sufficiently nice lunch for a while, until he started drilling another colleague over her decision of changing her surname to her mother's. He felt entitled to ask her questions about her relationship with her dad because they're on the same year of the program, thus they've "known each other for years" (they're not friends, they barely exchange pleasantries in the rare event of coming across each other). Then, as it's his fashion, he made questions that demanded she justified her personal decision while making clear he didn't think that decision made any sense at all.
This time I was good at not engaging with that human flaming bag of dog poo. He didn't even talk to me, which helped, of course. I think he's realized that I can't stand him. I feared he'd come after me on the whole "taking your husband's last name" discussion, as I was the only married in the group (and I've kept my family's last name), but nobody seemed to remember that.
For once, I was joyous to be invisible. Well, I'd spent my lunch just listening to my colleagues' -all women- conversation anyway, so I just kept the pace when he arrived. My friend Eric (who already endured a "so you study positive discrimination" comment some weeks ago) was there too, and he also kept quiet.
As soon as all of us in the group finished our lunch, we left. I later heard from my crush the Colombian guy (more on that later) that, as he entered the PhD floor, he saw a bunch of us fleeing from the kitchen. That tends to happen when the jerk arrives, and he has noticed, he somewhat commented on it today but nobody cared. It seems, from what my crush was telling me, that someone didn't make it out of the kitchen, and thus one of those hours-long demanding "debates" on whatever ensued. I think a colleague I really care about was involved.
I'm truly sorry to waste so many paragraphs on him, but he's so fucking disturbing and he causes me a lot of distress. I needed to vent. I'd never dealt with a clinically narcissistic person before, snowflake-level right-wing to boot, it is quite exhausting. I do think it's best not to engage. I wish the rest of my colleagues also engaged less with him, so it's really easy to fall for his provocations.
Ugh, so that's why there's a lot of information on my presentation. I have to be at peace with the fact that whatever I say won't make the tiniest difference in his air-filled head. And I have to be prepared for his questions, not only in terms of content but mostly on controlling myself.
OK, HAPPY THOUGHTS. I've had a lot of those, thankfully.
This week, I went to see Avengers on Tuesday night with Eric and Andrew. Then last night, Eric and I went to a LGBT+ mature postgrad get-together at a pub. It was my first time going to one of those. It was very much like the Bi-social café I attended last semester, only open to all the letters, and even a person from that café was there.
For unknown reasons (maybe all that distress over the presentation), I'd been feeling exhausted all week, and I'd had a headache since Tuesday morning. That get-together did wonders for me, though, it was healing. It's not that something terribly excited happened, it was just six queer postgrads over 25, who barely knew one another, talking about whatever topic came to mind, over drinks. Well, yeah, that does sound nice and healing.
Tonight, to continue my social streak, I attended the Department's First Friday Drinks. The Colombian guy managed to go over someone to sit by my side, a move that would have seemed very calculated, but, based on his casual indifference towards me, probably had nothing to do with me. Oh, well. I'm not complaining. I spent nearly two hours at the pub, with a huge glass (a pint) of Trooper beer, which I ordered because Iron Maiden was the only name I recognized from the bar. Hey, no, I saw some cider I'd drank at a previous FFD, but I was feeling adventurous.
So I felt hashtag-blessed by having my crush next to me for a good while today. And I've been bi-blessed, for just before heading down to the pub, I found the Colombian girl's (my other crush) university card lying around. I get to have her photo on my desk for a while, it'll be there until she shows up. It was my chance to talk to her, I sent her a message to let her know I had her card. She said thanks, she'd been looking for it everywhere. Nothing will come out of this, but what a glorious afternoon I've had today.
Tomorrow, Andrew, Eric and I are going for breakfast. And then it's a three-day weekend!
Lastly, the best news for last: my manuscript was finally delivered to the publishing house! I've let myself be THRILLED about that, and about the possibilities that come with that delivery. I'm guessing I'll have a response around August, if I'm lucky. I should start selecting my next target anyway, as rejection is highly likely. But one can dream? Maybe they'll like it?
Time to go cuddle with Andrew. I crush on people a lot, you know, but he's the real deal.
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