The UN-thwarted dream and snow on the beltway

So kind AE, who is so successfully flying through her grad school progress and I am so jealous of it, reminded me, correctly and as she has many times now, that with the dissertation it is better to be DONE than be GOOD.

Don't care too much, or you'll never finish.

Despite it sounding soooo grand:

"DISSERTATION"

it will go in a drawer and nobody cares unless you publish it anyway. Your advisers don't, I suppose I could add to that.
And she's right. And I hate it. And I'm totally depressed.

Okay so I have to do this like it's my job.

Cause I do my job.

Because it's my job.

So I do it even when it's boring and hard and annoying. I adapt, and restrategize, I ask people, and I do it more or less. And I keep my boss satisfied which if far more than I can say of my advisers.

In fact, everybody I WORKED for in grad school said I did a great job. But my advisers are still watching tumbleweeds, hearing crickets, and writing me off as a drifter.

The correlation here is not merely a product of timing. Partly by space/location, since I dissertate at home and work mainly off-site (but not always!). But mostly it is what, I realize, it is. My success is differential based on type of task. I put in the hours! Though I never felt it was enough, I spent hour upon hour pouring over the draft, the literature, the data. Truly. But there it lies in a heap as soft and pink as it was a million hours of work ago.

Sure the dissertation is more ungrounded. More independent. More unstructured. But mine was particularly so because I almost never talked to my advisers. Because I was always behind and it sucked and I felt like a big fat loser. Loser! Man the self-loathing my dissertation inspires.

But it is hard, really just so hard. The stress in my life, but what's the point of saying it all out where everyone has to hear again. Yes we know my life is difficult. But now I have internet, and sometimes the floors are actually clean once in a while, and I can't stop here. I can't ever stop, really. I don't think I'll get to.

So the thrust is this. 1) I finish my dissertation or 2) I don't. Now if it's my choice to make, I do. There are to be factors, to be honest, that could stop me beyond my control. For instance, funding. This could still be a hurdle.

But my choice, if I am able to make it, is certainly to finish. I do want very much to finish this.

SO, the only logical conclusion then is to treat it for the life of me like my job.

Shit, I'll even track my hours. And I'll plan my attack, and I'll talk to people like my good friend AE and coworkers. I'll set up a series of sub-tasks to build toward the bigger tasks, a predetermined schedule with a predetermined amount of flexibility build in, and opportunities to reassess and readjust my aim/focus. That's kind of, actually, how I got into grad school in the first place. And I'll do it like it's my job.

Maybe I'll even ADMIT my progress in detail, with all the pissing around and sucking. I do have a freakin dissertation blog after all, and if that's what it's not meant for then I'll be a monkey butler (you WISH I was a monkey butler).

But no I'm just a social monkey. A social monkey who's been under a lot of pressure, and who sees in her blog a reflection of the failure that she is afraid she contains. And the same self-sabotage that helped ensure my father would not see his genius blossom until- possibly- now. (Speaking of which I just saw my father got a play on a University of Scranton radio play list. Strangely, three lines beneath his song is an album titled "my father the pop singer". This is where I stop to make sure I'm not hallucinating and seeing things).

Anyhow, if my father can put his poems to music, and get played on Scranton radio, I can damn well write this silly little dissertation. Yes I can. Clearly that was what Obama was talking about right? My dissertation? Self-absorbed? Maybe. Neurotic? Definitely.

Dude I can fucking do this. I swear.

Like it's my fucking job. If it's just me stopping me, then I'll make it my goddamn job.

Yay Scranton Radio! Yay my awesome Dad. Yay Padre Yama! Yay for me- for doing it even though you're scared in 5 different ways at once. (God I'm scared. Really scared.)

Realism vs Dream and Idealism??? Let's seek balance I guess. Let's do it like it's my job, metered and effective, with lots of spreadsheets.

Let's do it. Let's not be scared. (You can keep telling me that okay). I'll feel much better when this is over. It CAN someday be over- I have to remember. And regardless, I surely won't die from this.

Which reminds me (sort of... awkward segue... whatever), we finally got our first proper snowfall, while I was driving home on the beltway. Flakes in the headlights, hypnotic streaks of light zinging this way and that as the wind shifted. Hypnotic. Beautiful. Slightly scary.

Shabbat Shalom Yall.