in which our narrator makes some connections
My dissertation director e-mailed me today to say that he needs to see progress on the diss soon. However, because he is the strange little man that he is, he sent the request in the form of a rhyming poem fitted out with footnotes and several desperately bad puns.
Of course, I have no progress. I have a stunted little mess of a non-chapter, incoherent notes towards an introduction, and the dead bodies of several proto-chapters (which I euthanized as a kindness to them, myself, my committee, and the rest of the world) buried somewhere in my hard drive.
Accountability sucks, man.
It's entirely possible that I would have gone into fit of full-blown hysterics about this e-mail had I not been too damn tired. Tired in a good way, though. truepenny and cavlec and I have been going swimming early in the morning, and it's been . . . well, the swimming itself has not necessarily been good (today I did the most spectacularly bad 25 yards of butterfly that I've done since I was, like, eleven; though in my defense it's also the first butterfly I've done in at least ten years). But it's been good for me.
I've always had a pretty ambivalent relationship with swimming - a matter that deserves a post of its own at some point. And between the old ambivalence and my native laziness, I was worried that I'd get myself back to the point where I wasn't on the verge of drowning, and then would just coast, would fail to work.
But I find, through the soreness in my hips and shoulders, that I've been pushing myself after all. And this morning I felt it again for the first time, the old burn, the old breakthrough, where my brain gets quiet and settles on one phrase (today's: "motion going out and memory coming in") and lets go of everything else except breathing, and my body understands the water and moves through it like they're both meant for nothing else. Pull, breathe, kick, reach, pull. motion going out . . .
Writing could be like that, I think. Sore but steady. Finding that place of steadiness and motion.
This afternoon I sat down to plan tonight's lesson and pick next week's readings, and for a long bad moment I thought I couldn't do it. I felt stupid and overwhelmed, incapable: the imposter, caught out.
And then I did it. One small thing and then another: an old idea here, a resource there, a question, a phrase, an issue raised last week that we didn't really cover. And there it was: a plan. Maybe not a great plan, maybe not even a good plan, but enough. A place to start from.
As it turned out, class was amazing. I think they learned something. I know I did.
And just like that, it's back: my focus, my pace. This is what I want. This is what I'm made for. And if, in order to do it, I have to write a book? Then just get the hell out of my way.
I hadn't realized - it's been so long - how much teaching is like a sustained version of that breakthrough swimming moment. Even when it's not perfect, when I'm not fast enough, when I can't win. I walk into that classroom and everything else falls away. They're talking. I'm listening.
Breathe and pull.
Of course, I have no progress. I have a stunted little mess of a non-chapter, incoherent notes towards an introduction, and the dead bodies of several proto-chapters (which I euthanized as a kindness to them, myself, my committee, and the rest of the world) buried somewhere in my hard drive.
Accountability sucks, man.
It's entirely possible that I would have gone into fit of full-blown hysterics about this e-mail had I not been too damn tired. Tired in a good way, though. truepenny and cavlec and I have been going swimming early in the morning, and it's been . . . well, the swimming itself has not necessarily been good (today I did the most spectacularly bad 25 yards of butterfly that I've done since I was, like, eleven; though in my defense it's also the first butterfly I've done in at least ten years). But it's been good for me.
I've always had a pretty ambivalent relationship with swimming - a matter that deserves a post of its own at some point. And between the old ambivalence and my native laziness, I was worried that I'd get myself back to the point where I wasn't on the verge of drowning, and then would just coast, would fail to work.
But I find, through the soreness in my hips and shoulders, that I've been pushing myself after all. And this morning I felt it again for the first time, the old burn, the old breakthrough, where my brain gets quiet and settles on one phrase (today's: "motion going out and memory coming in") and lets go of everything else except breathing, and my body understands the water and moves through it like they're both meant for nothing else. Pull, breathe, kick, reach, pull. motion going out . . .
Writing could be like that, I think. Sore but steady. Finding that place of steadiness and motion.
This afternoon I sat down to plan tonight's lesson and pick next week's readings, and for a long bad moment I thought I couldn't do it. I felt stupid and overwhelmed, incapable: the imposter, caught out.
And then I did it. One small thing and then another: an old idea here, a resource there, a question, a phrase, an issue raised last week that we didn't really cover. And there it was: a plan. Maybe not a great plan, maybe not even a good plan, but enough. A place to start from.
As it turned out, class was amazing. I think they learned something. I know I did.
And just like that, it's back: my focus, my pace. This is what I want. This is what I'm made for. And if, in order to do it, I have to write a book? Then just get the hell out of my way.
I hadn't realized - it's been so long - how much teaching is like a sustained version of that breakthrough swimming moment. Even when it's not perfect, when I'm not fast enough, when I can't win. I walk into that classroom and everything else falls away. They're talking. I'm listening.
Breathe and pull.