My Tent on The Beach

Yowza…let me talk to you a little about how my schedule has changed in the last 3 weeks.  For the past 2 years (2 YEARS) I was gifted, granted, held hostage by these fellowships I had which explicitly stated I could not work anywhere else.  Realistically, that translated into 2 years of wasted time…completely unstructured, completely free, completely solitary time to mess around with.  Some would consider that heaven and, in theory, it sounds good.  But doesn’t all theory sound good?  This blog has chronicled the actual nightmare…and it was a nightmare.

Enter Situation Today: yesterday I worked in my office at school for 14 hours.  In a given week, I have about 5 hours to play around with…the rest of it is spent either in a structured activity or getting to a structured activity.  I’m running. And it’s actually heavenly.  That’s right…heavenly.  Will it stay heavenly for long, who knows.  All I know…right now…it’s very good.

But there is one thing that I’ve reacquired that I’m not so thrilled about: the feeling like time is slipping away.  I have to schedule bathroom breaks; I know to the minute how long each light is on Lake Shore Drive; I have figured out how to whittle my morning routine down to exactly 30 minutes.  On some days that means choosing between mascara and toast.  As much as I like the structure, I’ve lost a little purchase on the whimsy, creativity…on the felicity of the open road of time.  I’ve gone from all options open (which is overwhelming) to one option open (which is fascism)…and once again I find myself pausing (for no longer than 14 minutes) to reflect on where the balance might be.

I was thinking this yesterday as I was walking home in the veritable fall evening and I thought of two possibilities.  One, I find the felicity in the moment (why does the answer ALWAYS seem to be in the moment…it’s getting annoying….damn Buddhists, they know everything apparently).  I’ve noticed I already do that.  Even though I’m scheduled as I used to be, I’m utterly not stressed about it.  I think that’s the effects of yoga and Tom (don’t know Tom…yeah, get over it…you won’t know Tom).  Two, I’ve found a lot more surprises than I expected to people-wise.  My schedule forces me to get out of my own way when it comes to allowing people the chance and the time to initiate contact and express a desire to hang out.  I’ve been jumping the gun for years now…now that I’m forced to give people a chance to do what they will, they’re doing it…and it’s fantastic.  Who knew.

As it turns out, time is not on my side.  I’m working against the clock all day long, starting at 5:30am and ending about 9:15pm (and even at 9:15 I’m fighting…Just one more chapter in this book and I’d be ready…).  What is on my side is the hard work I’ve done to CHILL OUT, the effects both physical and mental, stemming from yoga and the fact that I’ve been reintroduced to the fact that I have to be plugged in to the greater world out there…I’ve got some work to do that has nothing to do with nuns, IRB, or the word “problematic.”

Lesson Learned: Keep the fellowships, folks.  I don’t want ‘em.  No, I can’t want ‘em anymore. (That’s a quote from a musical…of course I won’t tell you which one).

The start of school.  There’s nothing like it, although it never feels real until 1) after Labor Day and 2) after the weather starts to act like fall.  But regardless, I’m teaching 5 days a week this Fall (a tremendous increase from what I was doing last year) and I’m just really happy about it.  And relieved, actually.

The longer I’m in grad school (and it’s getting very long…this is the start of my 6th year) the more real the toll of working solitarily starts to take hold.  Writing is an isolating process–alone with my ideas all day–and I’ve noticed an interesting phenomenon when it comes to writing–it actually makes me a fragile person.  I’ m moody and emotional.  I’m restless and discontented.  It’s taken a long time for me to realize that this isn’t something I’ve become totally; it’s only who I am when the overwhelming weight of this “dissertation” takes hold.  And as it turns out, teaching is the natural counterpoint to writing.  Through it I personally find a great balance.  It is therapeutic…and not in a needy sort of way.  It’s the space I need to synthesize things.  I think it’s the best of both worlds when both student and teacher can benefit from the experience.  Things “get done.”

I also happen to be teaching at 8am on MWF, so that means a lot of early mornings are in my future.  There was a time I would be less than thrilled with that proposition…and I am epically tired today (the 2nd day of school) because I still can’t make myself fall asleep in enough time to get in the recommended 8, but eventually exhaustion will take over and I’ll get to where I need to be.  But the thing with mornings is that it’s really the best of myself.  Though I always thought I was a night person, I think I’m actually a very, very early person.  It’s the time when the weight and worries of the day haven’t formed yet…I’m very clear (surprisingly clear) at that hour.  It’s been a nice discovery.

So far, I’m into both my classes at two different schools and I can’t deny the fact that this turn of events…going back into the classroom…has been nothing short of a godsend.  This will be exactly how this dissertation gets done.  I’m committing it to writing so that every time I get coerced to think about another way I can return here and remember this.  For good.

I’m a teacher.  And with students is where I need to be.

A Reason Not to Feel Like I Just Wasted 2 Hours

Let me tell you a little story about academic posturing.  Every Friday in our fine department, we have a colloquium series.  In theory, it’s a place for the department to come together, share ideas, and engage in good ‘ol intellectual comraderie.  In reality, it’s a weekly forum for intra-departmental politics to continue to play out.

I would tell you today was particularly special but, alas, it was not.  I find it interesting and moderately funny that the more I witness sociologists at work, the more I realize that we are all bound by whatever particular lenses we use to approach the world.  Thus, today’s display of possibly the most masculine form of feminism possible in a woman was just another entry in the journal of “All Sociologists Really Are Freaks.”  I include myself, of course.  I just think it’s funny that every single person I’ve ever seen present something embodies the contradiction of their work.  So, while they’re talking about one thing, they’re embodying its opposite. It’s fascinating, but another post.

No, today what gave me a migraine was the bizarro questions of junior faculty who feel compelled to say something…anything.  No, I take that back.  Senior faculty did the same thing.  So really, when someone opens the floor for questions at the end, much like in a political setting, the questions are not questions but mini-speeches asking the speaker of the day to relate, oh, I don’t know…gender and medicalization, say, to…social movements, inequality, culture, politics, classical theory…to those posing questions, I just wanna say…stop putting your own work in the way of the agenda of the day.  We can all play, “6 degrees of Sociology.”  It’s uninteresting.  If you can’t move your mind around to consider the topic at hand on its own merit, then shut the hell up.  Thanks.

Even as I begin to really seriously think about my own work, I find it most disheartening that academia is only about academia and very little about the ideas.  I came to grad school, foolishly, to learn how to expand my thinking.  I’d say I accomplished that and for a time I could say it was part of my daily life–and that was wonderful.  I haven’t been at that place for 2 years…I’m now wandering in the desert of professionalization…and it’s not my kinda desert. When the quality of ideas is secondary to whether or not we can quantify that idea with a line on the C.V….that’s where I need to get outta Dodge.

In reality, I’m choosing to stay in Dodge.  But that stay is temporary…and I need to figure out how to have it not completely kill me.

Oh graduate school–it’s a mystery.  It’s a menace. It’s my life.  What am I doing? This past month has been absolutely nutty.  First, the backstory.  It was the sweet autumnal air of October that jolted me into a realization that, in order to continue to eat and sleep in this lovely apartment I now rent, I would have to apply for this dissertation fellowship due in January.  Now, in real life, that seems almost absurdly far-forward thinking.  In academia, I was already severely behind. Thus I commenced getting on my horse and writing these papers that have been torturing me for over a year.

My progress was good, by the holidays I was still on target–life was looking up.  And then came January.  Oh wicked winter month of January.  I cut my holidays short, I got my self back to Chicago and I hunkered down.  In two weeks I procured two final drafts and one “really good” first draft of a dissertation proposal which was scheduled for January 21st.  After a good but reality-inducing meeting with my dissertation director (who is new and who replaced my old one that announced he was leaving the university in July), we decided–upon the advice of other faculty–that moving the defense back wouldn’t have that much effect on the fellowship application…thus, the defense was pushed back, the application turned in.  And I could finally breathe again.

That was for 3 blissful days.

This afternoon I returned to an e-mail from the evil trolls at the graduate school.  They flatly rejected my fellowship application–that’s right, the one I broke my back working to get in on time.  [THUD]. “What?!? Why?” you might wonder.  Well, because I didn’t have my dissertation proposal done–you remember, the one we postponed on the advice that it wouldn’t be that big a deal.

Awesome.

And so, here’s my reflection today.  It’s surprisingly not gripey–frankly, I knew this would happen and I am not at all surprised by the bad advice, the incredibly rude e-mail I got informing me of this decision (which also told me I could come and pick up my application at the graduate school to get it off their hands…well, thanks Graduate School…you guys are great), or the fact that I’m now on my own again to figure out how to keep living.  No, my reflection is on my complete lack of panic.

If this graduate experience has taught me one life skill worth talking about (and on days like today I feel this might be the only one), it’s the complete control of my knee jerk panic.  I have no doubt this will work out.  I have no idea how.  I don’t even know where to begin.  But this is the 6th year in a row I face this situation in February.  And miraculously, something works out.  And so, I just think it will.  That could mean it won’t…but I don’t think that.  I don’t know if the options I think I have will end up being the saving grace.  I suspect something else will pop up.  It just will.

And after this degree is firmly in my little paws, I’ll reflect on the degree to which the universe is telling me to get the hell out of sociology.  It’s becoming hard to deny.  Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me six times–something is just not right here.

But that reflection will have to wait for awhile.  For now, Mrs. Katie’s gotta go get a job.

I know I talk a real lot about my school work.  There’s just no getting around that; it’s what I do.  I spend almost all of my time–days, nights, weekends, holidays–thinking about this one project.  I spent 8 hours on New Years Day writing and wasn’t even that aware that other people weren’t doing the same.  I sent a business e-mail to my advisor on Jan. 1 and then had to send a second one saying, “Heh…oops…forgot the holidays are upon us.”  This is the long route to saying, I’m all consumed by this.

Because of this, I’ve noticed a kind of latent effect.  I wonder if this happens to everyone: when I’m in the midst of intense writing (generally accompanied by intense thinking), a host of mental abilities become a lot sharper.  I can do mental math (which I usually cannot), I solve more crossword puzzles faster (and I mean markedly faster), I can read like lightning.  But my senses also get sharper.  I usually have really good hearing (inexplicably) but last night I was awakened from a dead sleep by the water gurgling through the radiator in the kitchen. The beeping of the gate on the parking lot across from my apartment is about to drive me to drink (wait….).  And I pity whoever around me is singing even the slightest bit off key…I’m telling you now, I can hear it.

Beyond this, I get SUPER critical (as if I wasn’t a good degree of this already) but in a weird, detached neutral way.  I’ll watch some weird, schlocky reality offering on BRAVO like Real Housewives and make editorial comments like, “Now I would have panned away from Theresa at that moment to capture the angst on Danielle’s face.” What? Who cares #1 what you think and #2 about Danielle’s angst? And who uses the word angst in everyday life anyway?  I don’t think I’m judging…I’m just analyzing everything.  It’s a runaway train. Over my vacation, I took great joy in watching The West Wing mostly because they were talking at a speed that I could understand. The Gilmore Girls is also good for this.  It doesn’t really matter to me what they’re saying.  I’m just comforted by the fact that someone is talking at pace I know.

All of this I’d call “hyper-awareness” and I’d like very much for it to go away.  This crazy internal monologue that I have perpetually running in my head sounds like it’s playing on a mini-tape recorder on fast-forward.  It’s my voice “Alvin and the Chipmunk” style.  I wish it were energy.  That’s more helpful.  This is like mania or something.

At the same time, I’m fascinated by it.  It’s not always around; in my non-writing periods I am virtually a slug in Gap jeans.  I can be blissfully oblivious to lots of stuff.  In an interesting correlation, I’m also a lot happier during those times. I like slugs.  They’re slow. And quiet.

I think the predicament is interesting.  I always wondered what it would feel like to think and write at this level.  I know now.  I’d like to give it back.

Exactly one month ago I was celebrating a huge push in getting two viable drafts of papers in and moving this whole dissertation process forward.  Today I sit before you with the stress having returned.  Why? I have about 3 weeks to go and the amount of work in that time seems staggering to me.  And that’s just to get to the start of the dissertation.  Some days (like 4 out of 7), I wonder what I’m doing.  But here are the mantras I’m using to get through:

1. Time is your friend.  You will not be suspended in this state forever.

2. Eat. Sleep. Do Yoga. Plan breaks.

3. Do it Now.

4. Don’t panic.  You’ve not really epically failed in your life up to this point.  This will be no different.

5. Don’t overthink. (Underthinking is never a problem but don’t do that either.)

6. Write while it’s light outside and at least a paragraph a day.

7. You will financially survive the next year.  Today is not the day to figure out how.

8. People are not out to get you. Work with them and accept their help if it makes sense.

9. Continue to make reasonable social plans and keep them.  Cancelling on them for PhD makes you a hermit.

10. Today is not the day to find your “inner genius.”  Just get it done.

This is go time.  And it’s funny that my pep talks have evolved over time.  But I will say I’m glad I have ‘em in their sum right now.  Because this is the hardest thing I’ve done.  After this, I think I might be able to conquer the world.

Hi world.  This is a weird Wednesday…odd things have been happening and, thus, they take center-stage in a Weird Wednesday list of note:

Weird Wednesday List of Note

1. My office smells like cancer.  Not in that I know how cancer smells, exactly, but that whatever chemical I’m ingesting through my nose right now will surely cause a fatal disease.  My office is a converted chemistry lab…converted in that they’ve put a computer and a chair on an old lab table.  The “hood” is still here; I could fire up the bunsen burners if I wanted to; and the amount of corrosion going on atop any metallic surface is enough to make anyone worry.  So when I say it smells toxic, I’m actually not over-stating this in the least.  I’m leaving in a minute before the chemical headache sets in.

2. I ordered new winter boots and they came on the most blizzard-laden day of December.  This is sheer luck but I’m glad they’re here.  No more messing around with shoe-boots.  I went for it.  Hunter Goddess boots–this means, 100% water-proof, up to my knees, insulated genius.  They were expensive but I will never have to order another pair of winter boots ever again.  I could muck out stables in these things.  Thankfully, my hatred of horses (get off me) will prevent that grossness…but I’m actually just going to wear them home.  Very exciting.

3. I’m feeling some kind of dissertation love today.  I put out my first “snowball” pitch for research “subjects” and have been bombarded by people who are willing (and actually VERY ABLE) to help.  I’m overwhelmed…both with the generosity of the responses and the relief that I may actually be able to actually drive this elephant (random Apollo 13 reference).

4. I just ate the most amazing donut.  Yep.  At 3:49.  And it was delicious.  It was also lunch which means I now have “mad” sugar rush going on.  It’s actually incredible.

5. Choir tonight.  CHRISTMAS MUSIC.  If ever there’s time to be in a church choir, it’s at Christmas.  What a delicious season.

Summary of list: today’s been a good Wednesday.  Amidst everything else, I’m feeling generally good about the plates I’ve got up on stilts, spinning away right now.  The feeling might be fleeting, but I’m just riding it out while I still can.

You know, I don’t even care.  So here’s what happened today.  I finished writing my second special field.  For anyone who has no connection to Loyola or sociology…congratulations and I’m jealous.  But that does leave you out in the cold, so I’ll break it down: I’m estimating I’m about 80% of the way to finishing “comps.”  I just finished the hardest 80% of the whole process.  Holy Crap it feels good and here’s why: this is a moment I’ve been waiting 2 years to get to.  Of course, there will be revisions…I haven’t seen the last of these yet.  But I’m so much closer than I ever thought I’d get that, in and of itself, today is an accomplishment.

Here’s what I’m learning from it…freedom is on the horizon and it feels good.  Looks good too.  So good, in fact, that I don’t have any more beer in my house and I’m still happy.  Truth is, I can lay down on my couch, fall asleep watching a movie, and know I don’t have to wake up and write anything tomorrow.  Friday’s another story, but not tomorrow.  And I can wash the dishes and bathroom.  I can even go to the gym and know that afterwards, I don’t have to write a paper.  At least not tomorrow.

Honestly, I’ve known intimately for the past two years the full meaning of “the weight of the world is on my shoulders.”  Last week I broke out in enormous, itchy hives and I haven’t been able to fall asleep for the past three weeks without medication.  I’m liable to cry at the drop of a hat, even if it’s not mine.  I’ve been emotionally frayed for months.

And I think that’s over.  At least for tomorrow.

Thank God.  and WOO-HOO!

Oh my god…my latest look at the calendar immediately caused a minor panic.  August is very nearly over and I’m sitting here scratching my head and wondering what happened to it.  Of course, there are details that lead to it slipping so quietly into the night like, oh, the complete lack of summer here (no complaints from me) or the fact that the Cleveland Indians suck so bad this year that it’s as though baseball never even happened.  Usually I’m keenly aware of August’s presence because I’m sitting in a pool of my own sweat and talking about magic numbers.

But also, I just finished my 1-year fellowship yesterday and now I’m standing squarely in front of one year of my own making.  Yes, I have deadlines and things that I have to shoot for…but I also have nothing forcing me to do it, which is the space that little impish voice in my head needs to say things like, “I wonder what New Zealand looks like,” or “The Lost marathon is on today.”  I’ve worked hard learning how to cage that voice and I think it’ll be okay this time around…but seriously.  I hope it’ll be okay this time.

I just relish those times when I get the commentary that sounds something like, “Oh, Katie, what I wouldn’t give to have your schedule.”  Hmmm.  Yep.  For one week it’s incredible.  After that…I imagine it’s what a black hole looks like from the inside.

One of my favorite little mysteries of life involves getting smacked in the proverbial face by the answer that you’ve been waiting on for awhile.  I’ve been laboring over coming up with something to say in these special fields that I’m working on and it’s been annoying and exhausting.  All of these little snippets of things roaming around peripatetically in my head with no connections.  The picture on paper is even worse.  Excruciatingly slow writing progress.

And then, yesterday, it hit me.  Like a friggin’ ton of bricks.  There it was, unfolding in front of me, much like the path of the most perfect putt does to Junuh in The Legend of Bagger Vance. I saw my way home.  I saw the end and I saw the path.  Finally those pieces clicked into place.  And instinctually I cried at the sheer simple beauty of it.  And out of a profound sense of relief.  (Which was short-lived when I realized that I was crying in a semi-private forum…ah well…it was in the moment.)

I’m tempted to just sit and think about the process.  How did it happen?  Why yesterday? But, I just can’t now.  I’ll never know the answers to that question.  It was, in fact, a simple gift.  Simple in presentation in that it was there one minute when it hadn’t been the previous minute. Simple in that it found me in the quiet and stillness.  Simple in that I was at ease.

Inspiration is funny.  Everything we know about working hard, challenging ourselves, making strides…it all seems pointless when true inspiration strikes.  It’s elusive both in its presence and absence.  But not ever without notice.  These kinds of deep breaths feel very good.

And I’m proud to announce that I think I have a muse.  That’s surprising too.  My muse looks nothing like the ones in Greek mythology.  I want to be able to use the word “diaphanous” in muse-talk.  I just can’t even imagine that…but it does make me laugh, so I guess that’s something.

Hooray for revelation.  Today is a whole new day.