And just like that, it’s eight years later.
Every September I pay WordPress to keep this blog alive. Just in case I remember who I am. I imagine all the time that this will be the day that I start writing again, and I think about this very post.
I’d said I’d devote time to the blog when I finished my thesis, but it turns out I have quite a bit more to say. The good news, and the bad news, is that I have no pressure. Many moons ago I had a front row seat to my dear friend Valarie’s struggle to craft her dissertation. Months passed as she painted her loft 50 shades of putty, stone, and sand in a writing process best described as “understood only by her.” I remember her late-night phone call in a panic because her advisor had asked for a “compendium” before the days of Google. I listened, I encouraged, but there was no way at the time I could understand the crippling anxiety that accompanies creating a culminating academic document. She did, of course, finish and is now a remarkably successful leader in biotech. I, too, will see this through to completion. I learned straight from the mouth of the phenomenal Tina McElroy Ansa that, “Thinking time is writing time.” The energy expended mentally wrestling with your work is indeed an integral part of the process. Unfortunately, however, it produces little in the way of tangible results. I would have three PhDs by now if thinking time yielded one page per hour.
It is a bit like breathing for me, this putting pen to paper, or more accurately, sitting in front of a computer screen, fingers poised and anxious above the keys, waiting to weave the story that only I can tell. But really, eight years?
I’ve been healing. I don’t know about you, but the COVID years almost took me out. Not literally, but the isolation of it all was very difficult for me. Coupled with the time it took to process the burnout I experienced from my former life, and the loss that accompanied walking away from it, the last 8 years have been some of the toughest in my life. But the more time passes, the clearer the road becomes in both directions; both what I’ve survived and where I’m headed. My job is to stay the course and write it all down.
I have also been busy. There was coursework in everything from Shakespeare to Literary Theory to graduate-level Spanish. And oh, the papers. I needed that time to explore and regain some control over my life, and I wanted to prove to myself that I hadn’t merely used to be smart. Graduate school is profoundly destabilizing. Every day you question your motivation and your sanity. Has it been worth it? I’m not sure, mostly because I’m not done yet. But I do know that graduate school and writing this thesis in particular have shaped the way I think about the stories that we inherit, that we tell ourselves, and the ones I will pass down. The journey has made me a more careful writer and thinker. For that I am grateful.
So here I am. Still. Not exactly where I left off, but somewhere close enough to begin again.
Thom's Hairline. A blog. 