Looking at the date of my most recent post, I am vaguely embarrassed. It’s not as though any of you out there eagerly await my contributions to the blogosphere with the anticipation of my four-year-old on Christmas Eve (and we know something about Christmas anticipation around here – and how!). Nevertheless, I have felt the gravitational pull of the blog drawing me back in. It’s a bit like Al Pacino in Godfather III – only without the threats, guns, arias, bad perms, and even worse actresses. (Sopia Coppola? Seriously?) But I digress. As usual.
Just for the record, I fully intend to return to my blissful reverie about our Disneyland trip, if only for my own enjoyment and to ensure I don’t forget the little details that made it so fabulous. But for now, I think a word of explanation regarding my apparent Boo Radley relapse is in order. And I have only one word by way of said explanation: thesis. I’ve been writing. And writing. And writing. I set a deadline for myself to get my second chapter in to my advisor by the last day of classes for the semester. By necessity everything – and I mean everything – was pushed to the side to make way for my chapter. Laundry, emails, three-dimensional people – I lived in a world a part from all of it for a solid two weeks. I was in a writing coma, with only the vaguest of awareness that anything else existed. Only now am I managing to dig out. (I should mention that my girls’ basic needs were more than cared for during this time. They just watched MANY movies while I wrote – a treat they usually don’t get. Snow White on a Tuesday afternoon? For my two princesses, life doesn't get much better than that!)
I wish I could pace myself better. I wish I could write sooner and more regularly. I wish I could find balance between leading an active life and making demonstrable progress on my thesis. But I can’t. And I never have. For as long as I’ve been in school (read: FOREVER!) it’s always been this way. I have to give my mind a chance to get around a problem, theory, or project before I can do ANYTHING. Unfortunately, this doesn’t happen overnight. The entire process takes an inordinate amount of time. I cannot force it. And I cannot write until I’m ready. Once it happens, however, writing becomes a compulsion. I HAVE to do it. And I cannot let up until I’m done.
I used to fear that there was something wrong with my brain – that I was somehow addle-minded. Either that or I was just plain lazy. But one day not long ago, I stumbled upon my Grandmother’s journal, and everything made sense. You see, when she was a newlywed she worked for my Great-Grandfather who was a PhD from Cornell, a former Dean at my alma mater, and a generally brilliant dude. One day she complained to my Grandpa that his father was the laziest man she’d ever seen. He would just sit at his desk, seemingly doing nothing for days on end. My Grandpa’s reply? Just wait. Not long after this conversation, my Great-Grandfather kicked into gear and dictated to my Grandma with something akin to reckless abandon. You see, he’d been trying to get his mind around a problem of his own. Once he did, he worked like fury. And like me, he couldn’t start a moment earlier.
Now, I’m not about to lay claim to the caliber of mind possessed by my Great-Grandfather, my Great-Grandmother (also a college Dean), or my Grandfather (a freaking brilliant chemist and yet another college Dean). But I am more than willing to claim a genetic link in the manner in which we work. I find tremendous comfort in the idea that my brain is wired according to a pattern established by those whose academic achievements I hope to emulate in my own humble way. It makes me feel close to them somehow – almost as though I can lean on them for support along the way. So despite the mountains of laundry, enumerable emails, and countless movies that pile up along the way once I am finally able to write a chapter, I’m trying to embrace my writing comas. In a strange way, it’s kind of like my shout-out to George, George, and Lizzie.
For those keeping score at home: 108 pages down, a mere 150 or so to go.....