Done for the Week

As promised, this week's "Done" list--things I completed over the previous seven days.  As an antidote to the  sense of failure that can set in when "_ _it happens" and countermands my To Do list, this tool will help track my progress, even where it deviates from what I planned.

1. Finished Tillie Olsen's Silences, after a mere twenty years of aborted attempts
2. Finished Siri Hustvedt's The Sorrows of an American
3. Completed Week One of Couch Potato to 5K training
4. Didn't die in the process
5. Hauled Christmas tree to the curb*
6. Vacuumed pine needles & replaced living room furniture
7. Saw Up in the Air with husband
8. Provided hours of support to teenage offspring, with usual sterling results
9. Still not fired from two part-time jobs
10. Submitted 5 blog posts
11. Met with meditation group
12. Filled in every letter & every number (correctly!) of NY Times Saturday Crossword Puzzle & KenKens
13. Finally mailed Mom's Christmas/birthday present package
14. Planned week's meals, and dispatched spouse to grocery store

*Okay, the truth.  Made husband haul Christmas tree to the curb, in the subzero cold and the snow.  After I removed the minimalist decorations.  Which, in all truth, I haven't put away yet.


It should be noted that, once again, lots of other basic stuff got taken care of, but these are the highlights.  On the down side, two items have appeared on my To Do list every day of the last seven, and will recur until achieved.  I live in hope.

Dealing with the Undead

According to Wikipedia, "[u]ndead is a collective name for fictional, mythological, or legendary beings that are deceased yet behave as if alive." Sounds like my dissertation to me. And probably some of the other unfinished business clogging my thought processes, blocking my chi, and taking up storage space in my dwelling.   

The Wikipedia entry goes on to tell us that "[i]n some cases, the undead, especially skeletons and zombies, are under the control of a necromancer. In other cases, such as zombies as depicted in film, the undead existence is passed on like a curse or disease. . . .Ghosts are said to be kept in their undead state by willpower, either from a keen desire to remain with the living or from a wish to see something completed that they could not do during their lifetime. Revenants are a corporeal analog for ghosts in this manner, their independence setting them apart from the typically mindless skeleton or zombie. However note that, while ghosts are sometimes portrayed as benevolent or at least innocuous, the appearance of a revenant in folklore or fiction is almost universally horrific..." 

So now we are in the realm of necromancy.  Who knew?

More seriously, and more frightening, I find much of relevance in the above passage.  For example, "the undead existence is passed on like a curse or disease."  I have felt that my uncompleted dissertation has infected other projects, and even my whole work process.  And "[g]hosts [unfinished dissertations, etc.] are said to be kept in their undead state by willpower, either from a keen desire to remain with the living or from a wish to see something completed that they could not do during their lifetime."  And then there is the clearly pertinent verdict that such things are "almost universally horrific."

Okay.  So it's a bad thing that I continue to be haunted by this costly "failure to launch."  And to give space in my head, my study, my attic, several generations of hard drives, and my gut to what amounts to a stillbirth.

But what do I do about it?  How do we deal with such bothersome creatures?  Again, Wikipedia tells us of "[r]ituals propitiating the uneasy spirits of the dead [that] were a feature of ancient Greek religion (keres), ancient Roman religion (lemures), and Hinduism."  So a ritual, then.  And because I'm really more of a do-it-yourselfer when it comes to ritual, and because I don't have the kind of time required to mount an exhaustive search for an appropriate template through the annals of time, it would seem that it's on me to figure out how I might lay my  academic ghosts to rest.

A man I met long ago in poet circles shared his dissertation-zombie story with me.  After trying unsuccessfully to gift his mountains of data, notes and text to the state historical society--they wanted him to digitize his largesse before they would accept it!--he decided to build a bonfire and throw into it every scrap, every flake, every dissertational wisp, and to watch it burn.  His dreams and efforts literally going up in smoke.

I have kept this image all these years, for a reason perhaps.  But I am not ready.  The research I conducted, the stories I collected, and the impact they had on my life have their roots deeply planted in me.  I fear their removal, kind of like the surgical excision of a conjoined twin.  There is something of sacrilege about the idea of consigning this spector to the flames.

This may be the hardest thing for me to "put to bed" ultimately, harder even than totally obsessed mothering, which is another force to be reckoned with.  For today, I will try to keep moving and working, and accepting that I am not there yet.  A picture of Professor Quirrell in the first Harry Potter book, a purple garlic-scented turban covering his head, onto which the not-yet-completely-dead Voldemort had grafted his being, flashes before me--my dissertation as "[s]he who shall not be named."

Day 8 and Counting...

I got up too late today.  On purpose.  The second consecutive night of sketchy sleep, interrupted by internal thermostat issues compounded by obsessive global worrying, has rendered me achy, foggy, and edgy.  In college, I could pull all-nighters with less penalty.  As a "groan-up," I have come to expect this sucked-out feeling to follow sleep struggles, and learned not to expect too much of myself on these days.

That said, yesterday's manifesto-of-a-post hangs over me this morning, and demands perseverance.

The part of me that has internalized failure in my efforts to achieve personal reform waits for me to abandon this new enterprise.  As a talisman, I hold in my mind Mary Engelbreit's iconic image of a magical Santa approaching a chimney under the banner "BELIEVE."  And I try to.

My cynical self asks what difference it makes, to me or to anyone, if I continue to blog about trying to do what I intend to do, including blogging about....  You get the picture.  My rah-rah Nike self answers that "Just Do[ing] It" is of value, in itself.  And urges me to get on with it.  And I note that having posted, and attempted to puncture, my favorite excuses has not yet robbed them of their power, not yet filled in the rut in the bed I've made and furrowed by habitual positions.  (And now my cursed internal editor is complaining about a confusion of metaphors in this last sentence, given the bed reference in the blog name and the giant tree-bed image looming over this page.  To which my poet persona replies that this could be seen as language play, and all good.)  Apparently, sleep deprivation puts one at risk for multiple personality disorder (Dissociate Identity Disorder to the DSM-IV-TR* crowd--interestingly, referred to in acronym form as DID; "split personality" to the soap opera audience).

For today, I am listening most fervently to the better angels in this cacophonous debate.  And so, whatever the merits, I will "Just [Post] It."  And live to post again.

*Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders:  DSM-IV-TR, published by the American Psychiatric Association.  July 2000.

What Did I Come in Here For?

I have been struck over the last week by the number of references I have made to "my work"--as if I knew what that was.  In reality, I am in the process of trying to remember what it was I wanted to do before life intervened and presented me with so many reasons, legitimate and otherwise, not to do it.  Whatever it was.  And beyond remembering is the task of winnowing and recommitment, rather like going through favorite clothes not worn in a while, testing fit and affinity against my current shape and taste.

What used to be "my work?"  Looking back over decades, I am confronted with the archeology of my personal history.  There have always been, I see, competing notions of what I wanted to be, and do, when and if I grew up.  I was going to be a pianist, a social worker, a political advisor, a therapist, a famous author, Albert Schweitzer.  In my less lofty real world, I have worked for pay as a community organizer, a college instructor, a researcher, a waitress, a special education paraprofessional, an administrative assistant, a telephone directory deliverer, a child minder, and a website manager.  I have a half-started jewelry-making business occupying a portion of my studio in the basement.  I have spent a great deal of time and energy, and even some money, in volunteer efforts to lead my congregation's social justice team, to achieve the passage of legislation that would save my children's school, and to steer an interfaith organization working for social and economic justice in my urban community.  I have lobbied and demonstrated for jobs, with some success, and against wars, with little.

Long ago, I "wanted to write," or thought I did.  This idea was fostered in me by my physician father, who also "wanted to write."  Over the years, both of us engaged in lots of writing, but not much was really written by either of us.  I did complete some academic writing, some of which was published.  I wrote several drafts of part of a doctoral dissertation.  Like my father, I wrote poetry, some published, some performed in slams and other public settings.  And I have filled drawers and shelves with journals I kept sporadically.  I have a partially written novel, several songs, and two children's books "in the works."

In the course of raising two families, I have spent the last thirty-two years as the mother of minor children.  My youngest is sixteen, so I still have a ways to go.  My particular style of mothering--intense, attachment-based, and, I am finally ready to admit, a bit too anxiously perfectionistic--has combined with the characteristics of my youngest two--in combination, dyslexic, ADD (whatever that means), depression-prone, highly intelligent, school-hating, risk-taking, multi-talented, and immensely lovable--and my current family structure--one long-distance commuting, work-obsessed husband, three angry step-children, two exes between us, and a partridge in a...--to regularly derail my intermittent efforts to resume "my work."  I have instead tried to mold my talents and passions and energies into work activities that fit the cramped interstitial spaces left to me in this environment.

The death of my father two-and-a-half years ago, and three life-threatening crises affecting intimate family members close on its heels, has provided, at this point, the impetus to get on with it, to ask more for and of myself than the leftover time and space and attention I have been surviving on.  As the smoke clears from these two years of conflagrations, I am driven to find a less compromised meaning for what remains of my life.  And central to that, for me, is to make the contribution that only I can make.

So what do I mean by "my work?"  The first response that leaps to mind is along the lines of "I'll know it when I see it."  I do have a sense, since beginning this blog, that these posts are part of what I mean to be doing, at least for now.   For small amounts of pay, I will continue to babysit my grandson part-time so my daughter can teach,  to manage the website of an organization I care about, and to work on the issue of joblessness in my community.  My two teenagers continue to require support and encouragement, and nurturance of independent-living skills beyond the level of pizza-warming and ATM use.  But I intend to fulfill these commitments around the obligation to attend to writing, and to find/steal/create and use as much time and energy as I can to write.  I am ready to be done "wanting to write," and to begin writing.

I think that's what I came in here for.