June 4, 2013

  • Thesis

     

     

     

     

    Everything is green and sunny. I wake up early, so very early, and do most of my day's writing well before noon. Writing past noon increases the probability of crying by about 50%. I am trying very hard to be brave, but this project is a challenge. I've just finished one of three months of solid writing. Before this, the longest it has taken me to complete a project from start to finish was a week. The drawn-out incompleteness of it all is unnerving, and the stakes are quite high, and I spend a lot of nights kept awake by the swell of a nervous, racing heart.

    But I will learn. I knew, signing up for this, that it would be difficult, and I wanted the challenge. Is it weird that I like to do hard things? I do. This project is not easy and there is no escaping it until it's over: it hangs over my head every moment of the day, and sometimes that is scary, and sometimes it is unpleasant, but in the midst of it and underneath the anxiety, there is a certain satisfaction in knowing that I am growing, that this is pushing me, that out of this will come not just a thesis but a better work ethic and, perhaps, increased bravery borne of simply having to face the same fears every day. In many ways, I feel like this is teaching me more about myself than it is about my chosen area of study (though it is teaching me plenty about that, too). 

    And I get that this is a pretty privileged perspective. I am beyond lucky to even be able to do this - and to have the luxury of doing it as essentially a full time job, without having to wait tables to pay bills or anything like that. I can enjoy the challenges I choose because I don't have any challenges I didn't ask for. At least not right now. 

    And even with the panic, all is very, very well: I like this work, I am living in a beautiful apartment, I have friends nearby, a church within walking distance, and plans to bake cookies this evening. In my grown-up kitchen. I will eat them while I write and write and write at my enormous desk, living a life that has somehow become exactly what I want it to be and telling myself, when the tears well up around 2 p.m., that it is good to be crying over as big a gift as this. 

     

    h.