Ouch, My Head

I am lapsing into the old habit of writing by refusing to write anything. I will type out ridiculous instructions to myself in my paper like “here is where you will stick the section on Michael Ignatieff (hint: he’s an ass!)” 

The problem is, I am terrible at going back and making good on the promise of these little instructions. So I allow myself to think I am doing more writing than I actually am. And then I end up going back and covering old ground that I should have just written the first time. 

I suppose nobody sits down and writes a book they way it is read in final draft (except my supervisor.) So this style of writing would be acceptable if I didn’t use it as a procrastination tool. 

Here is the paragraph I am struggling to analyze right now. My first instincts about evidence are usually wrong, so I’m letting it gestate for a while. Another brilliant procrastination! A prison doctor’s report from 1883:

The state of things is by no means easily maintained – the small size of the cells, the defective sewerage, together with other matters more directly referable to the original location and design of this Penitentiary, render it more obnoxious to disease, than if of more modern construction. The massing together also of men, most of whom are of low moral type, with confirmed filthy habits, and broken down constitutions inherited and acquired, offer facilities for the advancement of disease, which demands the most humane and vigilant effort to avert… 

This passage is clearly about sewage, right? 

This is the time of the afternoon that I begin to touch bottom. I have digested all the news and editorial comment that is interesting to me. Other bloggers have stopped updating. Nothing on the internet is calling to me and I am finally faced with my work and what to do with it. 

Today I have written about 400 words on my conference paper, but they are really re-writes of earlier versions and I am no further ahead. Deep despair starts to set in and I grasp at the optimistic possibility that today is a goner and I can re-energize and recharge tomorrow. 

But this is the entire problem. If I let myself I’ll repeat this patter infinitely until I am so far behind that only a superhuman and emotionally crippling effort will save me. This becomes so horrifying that it consumes my entire life, my girlfriend’s life, and probably our pets too. 

This isn’t writers block because I have plenty of material to work with. I’m just feeling too crippled to do the work. Browsing h-net for jobs is always inspirational in a reserve way, so I’ll probably do that for a while. I always look optimistically to the top of the hour. I’ll only waste time until 3:00 and then the ideas will start flowing! Jesus. 

This is how my mind works and why I am destined to destroy myself. I was on campus this morning, actually making a little bit of progress (I had written 400 words.) Instead of pushing forward, it occurred to me that it would be a great idea if I got up, drove home, and continued working there. 

Of course, my apartment is a disaster. My home office is a hole with no windows and is full of boxes and books and general oppressiveness. Somehow while I was on campus the image of my house was warm, cozy and possibly highlighted by nice candles or inspiring music. None of this is real. 

Then I ate a disgusting lunch made up of whatever leftover lettuce I had combined with a can of horribly flavoured tuna: hot pepper and garlic. Last time I ate it it made me smell awful the next time I exercised as the disgusting flavours drained from my pores. I don’t know why I revisited this brutal meal. 

And now I have wasted an hour and wish I was back on campus where it was at least bright and not full of dirty laundry. 

This is how I know I am a blowhard grad student. Instead of titling chapters something simple like “medicine and disability in the nineenth century” I think it is a good idea to use obscure pop cultural references that nobody will understand.

I am trying to stop this tendency to overtake my better judgement in naming the dissertation. Like a total ass, I want to name it “Please Don’t Pass Me By: (subtitle obscured to maintain secret identiy). This is a song Leonard Cohen performed on a live album fifty years ago and nobody would ever get the reference. And what’s worse, it doesn’t even make sense considering what I am supposedly writing. 

I’m an ass who is destined to alienate my entire committee. 

If writing a blog about your troubles writing actually worked then all bloggers would probably be Booker winners by now. I know this isn’t the case. I have an ex-girlfriend who writes a pathetic blog about how badly she wants to be a writer and about writing exercizes (she spells it like that?) that she would like to do to stimulate her creativity. Finally she had a baby and now she can post pictures of it and write meaningfully about being a mother. Blogs are great for this. 

I’m a humanities grad student at a Canadian university. I’m entering year five and starting to panic that the work I have done in the past three years since my comprehensive exams is all shit and that I’ll be brutally humiliated when I finally go to my defense. Although, a defense is a distant dream at this point. I am currently bogged down in a draft of the first three chapters that my supervisor hated. Since reading them he has largely withdrawn all affectionate camaraderie that we built up over the years that I showed a lot of promise. Other students tell me this is in my head, but I tell them it doesn’t matter if it is. 

Right now I don’t have to write the dissertation, I just need to complete two conference papers I have stupidly agreed to deliver this summer. Both are based on the failed chapter drafts which makes revising and condensing them an absolutely brutal task. But I have been a student my entire twenties and pretty good at pulling things from the fire just in time to avoid disaster. Each crisis feels different though – they all feel like the final and most humiliating defeat is just around the corner. I’m about to be revealed for a total fraud. I knew this day was coming. 

But. To push it back by a few more months, I’ll try to get everything done in time. Meanwhile, my home life is starting to show cracks from the mental strain. Being a grad student, you feed on the little successes – like five dollar top-ups on the gas tank of your first car. At least this is how I feel. For now, just waiting for the next sighting of a gas station and keeping my eye on the “empty” line.