Avoidance Maneuvers

So, I'm back in my apt again and dealing with all the little crap that returning entails --- things are being unpacked, and cleaned, and cooked, and moved around, and avoided. Mostly the laundry is being avoided along with some mending, but I am also avoiding the job wiki. (Good going, kid! Keep it up and your sanity may yet return!)

I am also avoiding the dissertation, which is not so good. Like usual, I overplanned my trip to my parents' and brought along more stuff than I could do, both academic and not (witness the mending) and then spent the long weekend talking to family, vegging in front of the tv or computer (or both at once) and generally doing nothing. Not that this is a bad thing, esp. the whole reconnect-with-family thing, but oddly enough all that vegitating did not put me in a bright and cheerful up-and-at-em mood that would make me tackle my dissertation. Actually, it just made me want to vegitate longer. Now that's counterproductive. If anybody finds my mojo, please return it.

(Side note: Inside Higher Ed linked to me today, I see --- meaning that I got a huge number of hits without having any new material on the page, and in fact, while driving across California and away from the computer. I don't think my post on Scum Letters is one of my better ones, but what the hey. (Slow week on the web, or was the IHE compiler phoning it in this week? Who knows?) But anyway --- welcome, new people! This is actually part of my diabolical plan to lure you in and bore you to death with the trivia of my life. Hop in, the monotony's fine!)

I hope that I will magically put myself back in the mood tomorrow morning --- my plan to finish at least a solid draft of this chapter by MLA seems to be melting in the air. See that word counter moving over there to the side? Neither do I.

When I worked that one morning (Thurs? Fri? I'm too lazy to check my post) at my parents', I spent the majority of the time reviewing what I had and re-familiarizing myself with it, and I think that needs to happen yet again, now that I am back in my usual work place. This means I've "rebooted" my thoughts on this chapter at least 3 times now this month. Gah. And worse, each time I do that I run the risk of coming up with a new and different (or just wrong) throughline argument for the work, depending on what I've most recently said or read or seen. (For example, I saw Shooter with the fam and ranted about it and now I run the risk of making my chapter be entirely about why libertarians suck. This has nothing to do with my topic. But I just may blog about it, if I can do that without it derailing my actual chapter argument.) How to balance being disengaged enough from the world to really focus on what I need to write, while not being so disengaged that I feel like I'm living under a rock and I make myself so depressed I can't do any work? (In other words, I need to roll my rock not hide under it, heh.)

(Other side note ---- we need to be balanced or else the craft will tip over ---- it's been awfully silent on the request-for-more-materials front. Now, search committees, you had off for Thanksgiving and I didn't bug you, and Monday and Tuesday to come back and start going through your piles of initial materials. Now can I have some happy emails? Please? I have pie if you want. I also have cake, since we finally celebrated my birthday last night. It's chocolate...)

Now my brilliant plan was to use the writing challenge month to distract me from the job search waiting game. This has backfired. Unfortunately, boring stuff you don't want to do is not actually very distracting or engaging. And not working on the diss, especially when you're feeling at your back the cold blast of debt and the rattle of obligations, and are fully cognizant of being ABD as a detriment on the job search, only serves to intensify your anxiety and depression. On the other hand, cheer up: there's always tomorrow for a change of mood and a new start. After all, tomorrow is ... hmm. What's the quote I'm looking for? "To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, / Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, / To the last syllable of recorded time; / And all our yesterdays have lighted fools / The way to dusty death."

Hmm. Maybe that's not quite what I intended...