Jan 29 2010
“a whole world of stalled”
JANUARY IS ALMOST DONE. Where has the time gone? I cannot believe that we’re already a month into the new year. My awareness of the the passage of time seems heightened these days. It’s because of the dissertation. Or more accurately because of the fact that I have not done enough work on the dissertation. Every day that goes by, every week that goes by, and every month that goes by is a reminder of how much time I have wasted, how much time I have let slip through my hands, and how much time I have been stuck in my process. It has been over a quarter since my meeting with my dissertation advisor. I have done some reading hear and there. I have done some free writing here and there. But when it comes to any kind of substantive, structured, even-near-well-articulated writing, I have little to show for the last three or four months. It’s disheartening, even as I understand that this is all part of the process.
I know that everything that I have been doing, even the down time, is all part of the preparation for the next chapter, the next steps, and finishing. It’s all up in my head. And it’s swishing around. And there are moments, mere glimpses, usually when I’m doing nothing in particular — like washing the dishes or riding the bus home — where I see an idea coming together. But it’s nascent. And I really have nothing to put down on paper, although I might try. So, I sense that work is being done one some subconscious, unconscious level. I hope from simplicity comes complexity. The writing will emerge like Athena from my brow. That is not to say, of course, that I am just going to wait around for it to happen. I keep fiddling, I keep scribbling, I keep reading, and I keep agonizing. (Alas, it’s much more of the latter than the former these days.)
It doesn’t help that the past few weeks have been unusually full and volatile. A lot has been happening — fortunately not to me directly — but to people around me, people close to me. Jane, my roomie and fellow dissertating grad, suffered two tragedies in a row (her best friend’s mother passed away and her beloved dog Thor died, both quite suddenly). It’s been an tough few weeks for Jane and for me. Then my friend Rebecca’s favorite riding horse, the one she learned to ride on as a child, died. Then my friend Jason’s father passed away. It’s been an incredible confluence of extremely high emotions for all involved.
Life has just been busy, full of the odds and ends that seem small and manageable on their own but when grossed together make troubling logjams in the flow if things. For example, I usually have Monday, Wednesday, and Friday off this quarter. I only have to be on campus on Tuesday and Thursday during the week. But I have had to go in on my off days to help cover Jane or Jason’s classes. Or I have a meeting for one group or another. Or I have to take care of some detail like returning a recalled library book or dropping off a letter of recommendation to a student. In of themselves, they don’t take up a lot of time. But combined with my daily duties of teaching and life, the hours just get whittled and whiled away.
To be honest, I have whittled and whiled time away doing nothing but procrastinating, too. Procrastination is the number one coping mechanism for PhDepression. Some of that procrastination takes the form of other kinds of work — like working on teaching stuff or cleaning up the apartment or trying to have a life — but some of that procrastination is simply time to turn the brain off (or try to anyway) and just be. I have watched a lot of television. It doesn’t help that Jane is also going through the same kinds of PhDepression pains. We simply park ourselves in front of the TV and just let the day go. Lately, the LOGO channel has been showing random episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It’s a decidely happy distraction. I am tempted to buy the whole series on DVD so we can watch it from beginning to end.
Some of the “fun” time has been really helpful and even therapeutic. I have managed to put together a Tellings gaming group. I have six players gathered from school and friends, a mixture of new and old, and it seems to be going well. My friend Josh, who played with me when I lived in San Francisco, and his friend Andrea are playing. My friend Curtis and new friend Michael from grad school are playing. My former student Rebecca, who has taken four classes with me including my tabletop RPG and LARP classes, is playing. And, lastly, Greg, my partner, is playing. We have been playing for a couple of months now, and I am happy. In fact, Curtis has mentioned to me that I seem happier and more outgoing. I knew that gaming was an important outlet for me for my creativity, imagination, and extroversion. It’s sad that it’s taken me nearly five years to get a group going here. But better late than never.
Overall, the same formula has been holding true: life = pretty good / dissertation = death. Hopefully, the next month will be better in both regards. More soon.
