We interrupt this dissertation writing session for a quick update:
This weekend, I went to my hometown, primarily to attend this friend's baby shower. I left hubs behind, because he preferred to stay home. If we were going primarily to visit my parents, we would have left sooner.
My mom knew I was coming, but my dad didn't. It was nice to surprise him. I went to church with my parents on Sunday and of course, the inevitable, "Where's your husband? Whuut? You're already leaving him behind?" Ugh, please go sit down somewhere. I jokingly told a few people we got into a fight, just to see their reaction. Heh, heh.
But here's what I really wanted to tell: When I got back on Sunday night, I came home to a beautiful bouquet of sunflowers in a vase with a card from my husband telling me how much he missed me and how much he loves and appreciates me. Super swoon. There is nothing like the love of a sweet freckled-faced man with a dimpled smile. I seriously believe my husband is the best husband in the entire world.
I just love spending time with him. Riding the bus together in the mornings, coffee in my little to-go cup with our church's logo on it. Getting little visits from him while I'm working in my little writing hole for hugs and kisses and "I'm proud of you"s. Taking lunch breaks with him on a bench outside the library, laughing at how a squirrel nearby darts around and nervously eats pieces of sandwich bread crust I throw his way. Work a little longer and soon we'll be heading home on the campus bus, but today we're going to make a quick stop at the campus Creamery first. Dessert before dinner.
Going to a baby shower has definitely brought about a resurgence of baby-on-the-brain-itis. The fact that a colleague recently announced her pregnancy hasn't helped matters. I even told hubs, "If all goes according to plan, next year around this time, that will be me!" He smiled and said that it would be. He is going to be the best dad, too. I know it. I have these visions of me with a cute little pregnant belly being cuddled and coddled by my husband. Sigh.
Back to work. This chapter is shaping up, but at this point, it needs to shape up a little faster.
Monday, August 31, 2015
Sunday, August 23, 2015
And at the end of the first week of sequestration...
Here's what I'm learning that finishing a herculean task consists of:
Framing the task within parameters of structure and consistency. The reason I'm waking up every morning at 5:45 am and leaving out at 6 am to then go work out for 30 minutes every morning and then arriving at my library carrel by 8 am Monday through Friday is so that I can burn "schedule" and "consistency" into my brain and consciousness. It's not that I love waking up early or that I'm trying to lose weight. It's just a thing I need to do. I'm consistently getting up. I'm consistently working out. I'm consistently going to the library. I'm hoping these things will translate into "I'm consistently working on my dissertation." It's hard. It's hard to stay focused. It's hard to make the kind of progress I would be happy with. But I'm making some progress every day. That's what needs to be consistent.
A colleague introduced me to a productivity app that I'm going to try stick to called Pomodoro. Each "pomodoro" is a 25-minute interval, which ends in a 5-minute break. After 4 pomodoro/5-minute break intervals, then you get a longer 15-minute break. It's a way to make yourself consistently work without feeling overwhelmed. It's good for a person like me who finds it hard to consistently work for long periods of time. But 25-minutes of consistent work at a time is doable. And it gives you the option to skip a break if you're on a roll and then at the end of the 4 intervals, you get a longer break. Operation Pomodoro starts tomorrow.
I have the chance to personally interview and communicate with the author of one of the books I'm analyzing. I wrote her and let her know that I'm excited about the chance to talk to her, but that I would like to have time to prepare first, and asked for her availability to perhaps conduct the interview via Skype. I'm pretty pumped about it. My adviser and I are discussing the possibility of bringing her to the university for a talk. That would be pretty awesome. We shall see.
Framing the task within parameters of structure and consistency. The reason I'm waking up every morning at 5:45 am and leaving out at 6 am to then go work out for 30 minutes every morning and then arriving at my library carrel by 8 am Monday through Friday is so that I can burn "schedule" and "consistency" into my brain and consciousness. It's not that I love waking up early or that I'm trying to lose weight. It's just a thing I need to do. I'm consistently getting up. I'm consistently working out. I'm consistently going to the library. I'm hoping these things will translate into "I'm consistently working on my dissertation." It's hard. It's hard to stay focused. It's hard to make the kind of progress I would be happy with. But I'm making some progress every day. That's what needs to be consistent.
A colleague introduced me to a productivity app that I'm going to try stick to called Pomodoro. Each "pomodoro" is a 25-minute interval, which ends in a 5-minute break. After 4 pomodoro/5-minute break intervals, then you get a longer 15-minute break. It's a way to make yourself consistently work without feeling overwhelmed. It's good for a person like me who finds it hard to consistently work for long periods of time. But 25-minutes of consistent work at a time is doable. And it gives you the option to skip a break if you're on a roll and then at the end of the 4 intervals, you get a longer break. Operation Pomodoro starts tomorrow.
I have the chance to personally interview and communicate with the author of one of the books I'm analyzing. I wrote her and let her know that I'm excited about the chance to talk to her, but that I would like to have time to prepare first, and asked for her availability to perhaps conduct the interview via Skype. I'm pretty pumped about it. My adviser and I are discussing the possibility of bringing her to the university for a talk. That would be pretty awesome. We shall see.
Monday, August 17, 2015
Sequestration: Day 1
My new semester routine:
1. Get up and out the door by 6 am to make your way over to the Ramsey Center.
2. Jump on the elliptical for 30 minutes while you listen to audio of the Bible.
3. Get back and take a short, energizing shower.
4. Down a cup of coffee with a fruit/a bagel/oatmeal and take a multivitamin (if we're planning on getting preggo in about a year from now, gotta start getting vitamins and good stuff in me now.)
5. Get yourself together, grab your lunch (that you made the night before) and make it to the library by 8 am.
6. Sit your little self down in your library carrel and read/write/take notes/highlight/write down ideas/organize, do whatever you need to do to work towards one goal: Writing. Your. Dissertation.
7. Take a lunch break with hubby.
8. Sit your little self back down in your library carrel and repeat the actions in step 6 until 5 pm.
9. Give your mind a break, and make sure you get to bed by 10:30pm.
That's how it's gotta be, folks. Ain't nothin to it but to do it.
1. Get up and out the door by 6 am to make your way over to the Ramsey Center.
2. Jump on the elliptical for 30 minutes while you listen to audio of the Bible.
3. Get back and take a short, energizing shower.
4. Down a cup of coffee with a fruit/a bagel/oatmeal and take a multivitamin (if we're planning on getting preggo in about a year from now, gotta start getting vitamins and good stuff in me now.)
5. Get yourself together, grab your lunch (that you made the night before) and make it to the library by 8 am.
6. Sit your little self down in your library carrel and read/write/take notes/highlight/write down ideas/organize, do whatever you need to do to work towards one goal: Writing. Your. Dissertation.
7. Take a lunch break with hubby.
8. Sit your little self back down in your library carrel and repeat the actions in step 6 until 5 pm.
9. Give your mind a break, and make sure you get to bed by 10:30pm.
That's how it's gotta be, folks. Ain't nothin to it but to do it.
Tuesday, August 04, 2015
Everything You Wanted
Another husbandless night.
Even after having every single qualification that she wrote down met, they still didn't click.
I don't know, there's just something equally hilarious and sad about that. Like, he had literally everything she professed to want, but when it was presented to her, there were still reasons why she didn't feel they were compatible.
I found a list that I wrote when I was 16 and realized that my husband does line up with pretty much all of them:
1. "He has to be tall." He is, I guess, around 5'10, which isn't basketball-player tall, but a good 4 inches taller than me. And I can wear heels and still not be taller than him, which is all good.
2. "For some reason, I don't know why, but he absolutely must have long eyelashes. It would also be nice if he wore glasses." He has very long lashes and he does wear glasses.
3. "He would have this absolutely charming smile that would make you melt every time he flashed his pearly whites. Dimples would be nice, too." He does have a nice smile, and he does have dimples.
4. "He has to like to read." Check.
5. "He has to have a passion for music, and an appreciation for all types. It would be cool if he could play the guitar (I love guitar!)--then he could make up guitar ballads about his undying love for me (just kidding)." I really wasn't kidding, though. He definitely has a passion for music, he definitely plays the guitar and he has definitely written ballads about his love for me. He proposed to me with one. When I wrote this 17 years ago, little did I know that I would one day also play the guitar and that playing the guitar would be what initially brought my husband and me together.
6. "He has to be understanding--he has to be sensitive to my feelings and realize that sometimes I say or do things that I really don't mean, and sometimes I myself may not understand why I feel a certain way, but he'll understand that, too." This is so true. I am emotional and sensitive and cry all the time and he is the sweetest, most understanding man ever about this side of me.
But here's what's crazy: If there were some other person out there who had all the same qualities that I claimed to want and maybe even need, there's absolutely no guarantee that he would have "clicked" with me. I mean, my little teenage list aside, even if my "mature," 30+, single self had written a list like the girl in the video did and that man materialized right in front of my face, there would be no guarantee. Everything you wanted is really not everything you wanted until you actually have a chance to want it in a flesh-and-blood person who also has a chance to want everything they wanted in you. I know that's a little convoluted, but it's true.
There are things you think you want/need, but then there are things you never knew you wanted/needed that only come alive within a living, breathing bond between two living, breathing people.
The guy the girl in the video described up on the whiteboard was not a real person. He was a conglomeration of ideas and characteristics. Even if all of those ideas and characteristics could somehow become concrete (imperfectly, because the abstract can never be made perfectly concrete), there is, as the video showed, no guarantee that this concrete abstraction would or even could meet our needs, or as we like to call it, "click" with us.
This is another idea that makes me see a marriage as a sacred metaphor. Great is the mystery of godliness. Great is the mystery of what it is that makes what we think we want and need somehow secondary to something as ungraspable as another human being's bond with us.
I'm eating and watching trash when I should be dissertation reading. There's something about my husband being gone that turns me into a sad bum.
But I watched this video of this girl who makes a list of all of the qualities she wants in a man, the producers or whoever finds a man who meets all of these qualifications, and she goes out on a date with him:
Even after having every single qualification that she wrote down met, they still didn't click.
I don't know, there's just something equally hilarious and sad about that. Like, he had literally everything she professed to want, but when it was presented to her, there were still reasons why she didn't feel they were compatible.
I found a list that I wrote when I was 16 and realized that my husband does line up with pretty much all of them:
1. "He has to be tall." He is, I guess, around 5'10, which isn't basketball-player tall, but a good 4 inches taller than me. And I can wear heels and still not be taller than him, which is all good.
2. "For some reason, I don't know why, but he absolutely must have long eyelashes. It would also be nice if he wore glasses." He has very long lashes and he does wear glasses.
3. "He would have this absolutely charming smile that would make you melt every time he flashed his pearly whites. Dimples would be nice, too." He does have a nice smile, and he does have dimples.
4. "He has to like to read." Check.
5. "He has to have a passion for music, and an appreciation for all types. It would be cool if he could play the guitar (I love guitar!)--then he could make up guitar ballads about his undying love for me (just kidding)." I really wasn't kidding, though. He definitely has a passion for music, he definitely plays the guitar and he has definitely written ballads about his love for me. He proposed to me with one. When I wrote this 17 years ago, little did I know that I would one day also play the guitar and that playing the guitar would be what initially brought my husband and me together.
6. "He has to be understanding--he has to be sensitive to my feelings and realize that sometimes I say or do things that I really don't mean, and sometimes I myself may not understand why I feel a certain way, but he'll understand that, too." This is so true. I am emotional and sensitive and cry all the time and he is the sweetest, most understanding man ever about this side of me.
But here's what's crazy: If there were some other person out there who had all the same qualities that I claimed to want and maybe even need, there's absolutely no guarantee that he would have "clicked" with me. I mean, my little teenage list aside, even if my "mature," 30+, single self had written a list like the girl in the video did and that man materialized right in front of my face, there would be no guarantee. Everything you wanted is really not everything you wanted until you actually have a chance to want it in a flesh-and-blood person who also has a chance to want everything they wanted in you. I know that's a little convoluted, but it's true.
There are things you think you want/need, but then there are things you never knew you wanted/needed that only come alive within a living, breathing bond between two living, breathing people.
The guy the girl in the video described up on the whiteboard was not a real person. He was a conglomeration of ideas and characteristics. Even if all of those ideas and characteristics could somehow become concrete (imperfectly, because the abstract can never be made perfectly concrete), there is, as the video showed, no guarantee that this concrete abstraction would or even could meet our needs, or as we like to call it, "click" with us.
This is another idea that makes me see a marriage as a sacred metaphor. Great is the mystery of godliness. Great is the mystery of what it is that makes what we think we want and need somehow secondary to something as ungraspable as another human being's bond with us.
Monday, August 03, 2015
Done! (For now.)
The first thing I've finally cleared off my plate are thank you cards for the wedding! Woo hoo! Excuse me while I get my praise on right quick. Y'all don't even know. Like, I feel like I just took my burdens to the Lord and left them at the altar and got delivered for the first time in my world-weary, downtrodden, Jesus-needing life. I feel like I just got brought out of the miry clay and got my feet set on a rock to stay and got a song put in my soul today, tho.
My sweet, sweet husband helped so much. He refused to let me do it all by myself, even though I kind of tried to, but he was insistent. I really appreciate that about him. I have this big-sister, I'll-handle-it mentality a lot of times that I'm learning doesn't really fly in a marriage. Not for the long haul.
We sent off the ones that could be sent off. It felt so good dumping those 90 some-odd cards into the mailbox. You will be thanked. You hear me? You sent us waffle makers and can openers and picnic baskets and planned bridal showers and lingerie showers and sent CHC (cold hard cash) in wedding cards to us and you think you gonna get away without being thanked? Nawl. Like I said, you will be thanked. And you are going to read every handwritten word in those handwritten cards and you will smile and get a warm fuzzy feeling inside and you will go to bed and sleep in peace, knowing that finally, at long last, you have been officially thanked.
Now for local church folks, it'll probably take me a month to actually hand out the cards, but, hey, the hard part is done.
The second thing I've cleared off my plate is this blasted online class. It is ovah. It is finished and it has given up the ghost. Got those finals graded and and those grades posted and those reports printed out and put in the big boss's box. The last class I'll ever teach pre-PhD. Yup. But of course no college-level course worth its salt is without a last minute email from a desperate student. Is there aaannnnyyyythinng I can do? It's like, girl, you got a freaking A minus. Go saddown with all that. No, you cannot do any last-minute extra assignments. Especially not after I've busted it trying to get your finals graded and get final grades posted on time. The grades are in and they're staying in. Like, I feel like it's kind of disrespectful and presumptuous to even ask that. It's like, my friend, you have earned the grade that you've earned and that's that. Why should I give you special consideration?
So now that those two biggies have been checked off, the road has been cleared for plunging head first right back into dissertation writing. I'm planning to finish re-reading the novel of my next chapter this week, I'll take a little beach break with my husband and his family next week, and then, get ready. I'm about to wear my library carrel out. It's all nice and reserved, I got my books all nice and set up in the bookshelves and I even bought a little chair cushion from Bed Bath and Beyond to put on the library's ugly little hard wooden chair so as not to wear down my natural padding. It is bout to go DOWN.
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