Improvised Carpentry

Squishy has very little to do with this post, but his expression speaks to how I felt as this went down. 

(As we find out, my interview is available to stream here, so go listen to me speak very slowly.  I'm clearly out of practice when it comes to adult conversation.)

I've been scrambling this afternoon trying to figure out how to listen to my interview online.  It appears to have been superseded by a BYU soccer game (Too bad they can't predict when those are going to come up and make that information more widely available so poor fools like me don't get all misinformed?)

But this is the sort of punch I roll with pretty well by now.  If one of my pre-earth-life objectives was to learn to be flexible and deal admirably with stress-level-whiplash, then I'm well on my way to checking that one off the list.  There's not really even energy left for resentment as I emotionally shrug "well, this is consistent with my current karma," and soldier on.

Soldiering on looking like responding to a dozen texts and a few Facebook comments wondering why they can't find my interview, and me suddenly wishing I hadn't made such an announcement out of it. It's clearly not a big deal to anyone but me.



Is it ok if it's still a big deal to me though?  It was the most momentum I've mustered toward taking myself and my efforts and their necessary next-steps seriously in a long time.  Probably since my MA graduation over a year ago.  I need the energy of considering this to be a "big deal" so that I can prioritize finding time to write that book I've had almost 2 years to write, and for which I have only a few notes and articles in a neglected email inbox folder to show.

_________


In the wake of the interview, though, I did find the time to re-visit several of the texts that I brought up.

Ian Bogost's 'Carpentry' - from Alien Phenomenology: This talks about a lot of the frustrations and shortcomings of creating academic writing.  Especially how philosophy and criticism are in some ways diametrically opposed to creativity and creating.

Briefest of intros to Laurel Ulrich.

Rufi Thorpe's Mother Writer Monster Maid - which is a tremendous exploration of modern woman-ness and how motherhood informs absolutely everything and how that can be both good and bad and wonderful and terrible, but maybe shouldn't be assumed to always be a liability.  Also - language warning, but worth it.

__________

I happened across this sentiment on Meg Conley's Instagram a few days ago:
                              "Problem 1: I may never get over how selfish it feels to spend five hours a day
                                writing something no one else may ever read. Problem 2: I know I'd never get 
                                over spending those five hours doing anything else."

I have problem envy.  I haven't spent 5 hours in one day writing since I was in the thick of my thesis writing, and I miss it like crazy, but I'm also in the crazy-thick of the thinnish things that are 5 small children and a too-busy husband and another debilitating pregnancy.  I'm not even managing to brush my hair properly every day.  

But, at least the debilitating pregnancy part has an end (in sight!) which leads to that challenging 4th trimester, which also, mercifully, ends.  So by next Spring, I know I shall be an entirely different human.  And if I can aggressively restock my poor body's depleted iron supply, I can have hope that that entirely different person shall be infinitely more productive, and (dare I hope?) creative, than I am today.  That is placing a lot of stock in the future, but it is also something to be optimistic about.  Which is not nothing.

_____________

In the process of re-reading my thesis to prepare for this interview, I found that the appendix I had created as a blogger resource (quick read) was actually also the incredible first few steps toward outlining the book I need to write.  That I had somehow forgotten how I'd compiled it, and how useful it had the potential to be for me, is kind of a cruel irony, because that was a hurdle that kept me from moving forward for a good chunk of those 2 years since.  But now that I'm reacquainted with it, onward and upward and baby steps forward toward creating something useful, and then finding the best way to share it far and wide. 

On finite resources (and prolonged disappearances)

If my long-neglected blogging platform is accurate, I haven't made a peep around here in 8 months.  That unequivocally breaks my previous records, and wasn't even an intentional sabbatical.  There just wasn't enough of me to go around, and lots and lots of balls got dropped.

On the one hand, there is very real value in getting to know what one's limits really are.  There's value in finding out what you can live without, and what you really miss when you cannot make it fit in your life for a good long stretch of time.  I'm sure I'm wiser and a better person for all of it.  But it has not been pleasant.

2015 has been a lonely year of stretching.  In theory I was supposed to finish my thesis by June, but I just "finished" it 2-3 days ago (Dec. 18th).  The thesis thing has eaten up the front burners of my brain for an entire year at least.  (I technically started working on it in July of 2014, so it's pretty well been like gestating an elephant.) I am still in a psychological place of limbo, not sure what to do with my focus and worry and limited ability to create without the heavy thoughts of "thesis thesis thesis" breathing down my neck.  At some point I expect to feel like a burden has been lifted, but so far I just feel lost in a fog.

Also on the limited ability to create front, we are 33 weeks along in pregnancy #5.  I am definitely older than I was the first time I did this, and unfortunately more anemic too.  When I read this post last week suggesting that sometimes a woman's ability to create externally is limited when her body is creating so much internally, it really resonated with me.  This is the second pregnancy in a row where I haven't been able to write much at all, and certainly all of my limited capacity to write got thrown into the thesis basket, leaving other outlets to shrivel up and taste solid neglect.  I still feel that is my most profound symptom of some very real antepartum depression - I am a totally different, significantly less likable person when I am pregnant.  My mind goes lots of anxious, apathetic, cynical places it never visits when I'm not gestating. It's very hard to see it all as anything other than something to be endured and waited out.  It's never pleasant to think one is wishing their life, their todays, away.  But my pregnant todays are often oppressive little antagonists.  The only thing that makes them bearable is their impermanence.

Also contributing to my not-blogging has been the way all my hopes and dreams for home-ownership have slowed to an imperceptible crawl.  Buying one's first home in the middle of grad-school ( and then quickly getting mind-glowingly pregnant/incapacitated) is a surefire way to prevent any kind of purposeful settling in.  We've been here a year and almost 3 months, and everywhere I look I see things I was sure I'd have addressed or changed by now.  It's not doing much for morale, and considering that I'm already battling mental health demons (see antepartum depression above), I can get pretty caught up in cycles of hopelessness that are the polar opposite of socially-supportable shelter-blogging.

But tonight I'm out of excuses.  I need to start recording my life again, and not putting it out there for an audience (even if the only audience I have left are my stalwart grandparents) has unfortunately prevented me from doing any kind of record-keeping for this entire year.  I've taken only a smattering of photos, I've hardly edited any of the ones I've taken, and I haven't taken the time to process any of my experiences, insights, memories, let alone to keep a record of the crazy phenomenon that is my babies turning into full-blown people.

But tonight, less than a week before Christmas, I'm in the process of trying to bake as many sourdough boules as I can in 48 hours to give out to neighbors.  (I've made a pretty good go at neglecting my sourdough starter to death three times now, and it just keeps on recovering beautifully - and sourdough is my favorite of all the homemade superfoods I started making before I got pregnant and my life fell on its face - because it is easy and cheap and has basically 3 ingredients, but tastes like it is both difficult and expensive.)  While the bread bakes, I'm trying to make myself create words instead of just consuming them, mediocre and tangential as they may be.  The only way I'm going to get any better, or regain any kind of a groove, is to jump in and start somewhere.  I'm actually really excited to write in a space where my formatting doesn't have to be just-so, I can create footnotes all willy-nilly without consulting a style-guide, and I don't have to tie every paragraph back to a main thesis.  This is a much more accommodating platform for my very busy life, where most of the creating happens in little stolen bursts of alone time.

There are a million other, neglected, things I could say, but this post is already too long for most people who might read it.  I'm excited to come back, and give each of them their own few paragraphs of glory.  There is something heartily healthy about self-expression, and I have missed it like crazy.  Let's see if I can't get back into a groove of using this platform to not only express and record my self and my life, but to use it as a tool in the process of becoming who I'm going to be.  I've learned so may great things in the last year, and I'm anxious to put them to use.

You'll never run out of insecurities

2015 has been brutal so far.  Thesis-writing is an ethereal mistress, and she is requiring me to spend an alarming amount of my time swimming inside of my own head.  Usually I'm stuck there wondering whether anything I'm doing will make sense to anyone else once I find a way to spit it out in words. I am really good at thinking (overthinking) things through until I am less certain rather than more certain about any conclusions I might draw, and the only thing I sometimes feel safe being conclusive about is that the world and people in it are complicated. 

I want and need so badly to just muscle my way through this process and arrive safely at the other side, and that may be all I can manage to do, but on a number of levels people expect me to have, or to be establishing, a plan of what I'm going to do next.  How am I going to use this degree after I finally procure it? I think I am supposed to have an answer for that.  I do not. 

I have come up with approximately 50 possible plans for establishing a long-term career for myself.  I have a number of skills with which I could be constructive, but which ones would be the most flexible with my family life, and which ones I would find myself least-drained by are not very answerable questions.  I am very lucky, and privileged to be in a position where I do not absolutely have to work in order to provide for the needs of my family.  I just need to be making compensated contributions somewhere for my own emotional health, and so I need to be very picky and find a way to onramp into an incredibly flexible career at a snail's pace.  I have no template for this, and it terrifies me. 

I waffle between entrepreneurship (the bookkeeping might kill me) and trying to convince someone to hire me to do something I might be good at.  Like a lot of stay-at-home-moms, my resume has some gaping holes in it. I sort-of committed resume suicide when I took a soul-sucking desk job 11 years ago last month, then quit it after Sir O was born.  

But, although I make it sound like I want a full-time career, I really don't right now.  If I could spend only half of the hours I've been spending on Grad school on something that paid me back in cultural, social, or fiscal capital (preferably all three) I suspect that'd be tremendously helpful in patching up my sense of self-worth and identity.  But since I live with the cost of spending time (and brainpower) away from my kids, I know that I need to be very picky about it.  I need to minimize the quantity of time and maximize the effectiveness of that time.  I need to be doing something that fills my cup, because I must not be going back to my kids with an empty cup, and I need to feel like my time is valuable.  The more valuable I believe my time to be, the more productive I will be able to be with it.  

I think that's the danger and the hardest part of stay-at-home-parenting.  Being your own boss when there is no value being placed on your time makes it incredibly hard to stay productive.  Trying to function in your own home where there are a million things screaming at you with their un-done-ness leads to the sort of "housekeeping ADD" that births those horrible "what have you been doing all day" questions.  To my knowledge, very few people have institutionalized training for stay-at-home-ing.  Some people have enough internal rigidity to keep impeccable homes, but most of us flounder. 

I have accepted that I will never excel at homemaking, my rarely contented and frequently emotionally unstable sides will always make it hard.  I will always procrastinate mopping the floor.  And the overachiever in me is not entirely okay with devoting so little of itself to things I'm actually good at.  I'd like a small corner to turn to for validation, and for fun.  But it does need to be small, for the foreseeable future. 

All of which is to say, even for the very, very lucky, womanhood can be infinitely tricky to navigate. 

Identity Construction, scholarly voices, and other places to get lost.

from my february instagram feed, where I'm trying to vent my vanity and creativity.

The biggest concern voiced at the defense of my Comprehensive Exams was the fact that everything I write reads like an encyclopedia article. I can, apparently, list and explain concepts adequately, and can find and demonstrate salient points of intersection between them too, but I haven't managed to assert my own voice, my own authority, or my own conviction into anything academic.  I am totally on-board with this assessment of my work, because to presume that I have gathered enough information and perspectives to be conclusive feels dangerously presumptuous to me.  I am a chronic ponderer, and open-minded enough to know that if I assert my opinion, I will inevitably turn out to have failed to take something into account.  I kind of can't fathom writing as though I knew enough to speak with authority.

But then I start to wonder if I will ever arrive at a place where I will feel confident enough in my research and theory to assert myself, and it seems highly unlikely.  So I wonder how in the world anyone ever arrives at a place where they can write like that. On some level they are faking it, the lot of them.  The terrifying reality is that nobody, no matter how confident they seem, actually knows what they are doing, or whether what they are doing is any good.  But the vast majority of writers who aren't me manage to embrace some form of an authoritative or scholarly voice anyway.  Whether they do it out of ignorance or pride or desperation or something better, I cannot figure out.

All the advice out there on strengthening SEO and writing catchy headlines tells you to write with brazen authority.  Use words like "the best" "the secret to" "how to" and "100 ways to" as though it were possible for you to actually conceive of all the possibilities and arrive at a definitive conclusion about them. Scholarly writing apparently requires a similar assertion of knowledge, and it terrifies me.

Sure, my bibliography is more than 3x longer than it needs to be, and I'm at a point where I need to just stop and limit the scope of my research, but to write as though I knew enough to be an expert when I can hardly turn around without confronting a new perspective to consider seems impossible to me.  I am not an inherently confident person.  How much I have yet to learn is never far from my mind. I am insecure, and particularly sensitive to vulnerable failures, and I just don't get enough positive interpersonal feedback in my life to counter the sundry cataclysms of shame that come up and bite me.

So if I'm never going to arrive at a place where I feel I can speak like a qualified expert, how can I situate myself to still feel valuable, capable, or able to contribute something of value? I'm working that out, but I'm also really curious to figure out how other people conceive of themselves and their own authority and reason their way through asserting it.  If everyone is faking it all of the time, then why don't more people stop the bus and want to get off?  Where does confidence come from?  Is it inevitably tied to ignorance or fear? Should it be? Wouldn't that make it a negative trait?  Why do we want so badly to listen to confident voices? What do they instill in us?

Why am I such an introvert, and so terribly terribly slow to develop opinions?

Why does holing away to write this thesis bring out such paranoia in me?

I need a cookie, and an uninterrupted week to write. Neither seems likely.

But I haven't quit yet.

Exoneration

I keep hoping that I will find an awesome groove that allows me to roll out this thesis without being in a constant state of paralyzing panic, but it hasn't happened yet.  I'm still dealing with the most distracting and counterproductive types of stress.  Ive been clinging like crazy to the promise of scheduling - clearing my mind by knowing that all the "things" have a time allotted to them.  But in my life trying to stay on schedule is like clinging to a rubber raft in a hurricane. The short people aren't very sympathetic to my cause.

I am still trying really hard to make up for damages done in December to my kids and my husband.  The timing of my comprehensive exams was just brutal all around, so I've been doing more reading and playing and making with my kids in an attempt to build up some affirming memories.  I managed to get the boys all re-invested in The Marvelous Land of Oz, and now we are speeding along in Ozma of Oz, having just restored Tick Tock to working order. (Hopefully we escape the Wheelies tonight).

But so far, all of my designated thesising time is at the end of the day, so it gets what's left of me at the end of that day. They call the ends of a loaf of sandwich bread the suegra, or mother-in-law, in Mexico, and that's about the concept of what my thesis is getting from me.  It is, frankly, not enough. Especially on days when I haven't managed to take great care of myself.  When I start my thesis work hungry, too tired, or dehydrated or with a headache, it shows. I'm trying to figure a way to give some of my best hours to it instead, but A) I'm not totally sure when those are and B) I have 3 kids who are at home every morning and even if I try to ignore them a little, they are very distracting; about as distracting as migraines and low blood sugar.  My poor writing.

So, my regrouping plan is to re-prioritize self care, and to crack down on the distractions that I do have some control over.

Things I have been doing well: regular exercise, going to bed before midnight, drinking at least 1/4 gallon of water daily.

Things I have been failing: morning pages, eating well (I've been accidentally skipping meals and then resorting to sugar - horrible combination), setting aside time to prepare (for the next day, or things happening later that day.... it's like I'm constantly failing to be prepared.)

In her keynote at Alt Summit Lisa Congdon recommended breaking productive sessions into 45 minute increments, and allowing for 15 minute breaks in-between.  Longer than that, and she said the ability to focus and be creative wanes, so she always alternates tasks in hour increments. I cannot remember the last time I had an uninterrupted 45 minute streak at home, but I think (and hope) I can still apply the concept, so I'll be wearing a stopwatch for the next little while, and figuring out what increment of time fits best with my life.  Keeping myself on task when I'm home with my kids has always been hard for me. I just keep noticing things that need to be done and floating between them with homemaking ADD, never actually finishing very much. (And also, obviously, not keeping track of time or preparing for upcoming appointments or commitments very well.)

The best thing I can do, I suppose, is to be kind to myself, and strive for incremental improvement.

And keep loving on my kids, because they are insane, but the most delightful things that will ever be in my life. 

The bright side

So, let's remember what I did manage to pull off this Christmas:

Temple Square (that's my "I should be studying!" face)


St. Lucia Day; Bunny and I delivered Lussetkater to every Scandinavian we knew of.   (St. Nicholas Day got put on hold this year; Mr Renn's Grandfather's funeral was that day and we left before the crack of dawn to drive there)



Several dinner guests.  I'm sure I had my "I should be studying!" face on for them too.  Mr Renn did all the cooking, I just had to set the table.





And.... this is Christmas eve.  I was so burnt out; all I wanted was to melt into my bed and sleep for a week. Can you imagine me even trying a stunt like that with these crazy people in the house?

No excuses.

That was a long hiatus, wasn't it?  It's just as well I didn't make a detailed record of the last 6 weeks, because they have been pretty universally un-fun.  Thesis deadlines then comprehensive exams, then a couple of days then a Christmas I was unable to adequately prepare for..... complicated by more than one (unrelated) complete death of my one-and-only computer.  I am largely wallowing in emotional backlash that tastes the same as antepartum depression.  Too few happy thoughts  to penetrate the stress.



But hey!  Comps are over (other than defending them in February...) and Christmas is over (even if I resent how it turned out when I just couldn't do all the things I'm supposed to do for Christmas), so it's time to move on to new stresses.

Stress #1: I have a thesis to write, and while I am paying for my thesis advisor's time, there's really nobody who's going to keep me on schedule besides myself.  I have about 30 distinct insecurities that each bring me to tears when I try to figure out how to make this happen.

Stress #2: During an emotional high in August, I bought a ticket to Alt Summit.  Then deadlines and comps dissolved me into a puddle of introverted insecurity as well as rendering me totally unable to actually prepare for an over-the-top networking event.  I am terrified, and unprepared in most ways.  Plus, did I mention my computer problems?  It's hard to design a last-second business card for your thesis survey without any software. Plus, I'm not even sure if I can find the business cards for this blog...... haven't seen them since the move. ENTROPY.

Stress #3: Christmas Break.  All my kids home all the time.  I love my kids and I'm trying to enjoy their company.  But oh, the messes.  The energy, the hurt feelings, the drama, and the messes some more.   They make me tired, and sometimes make me want to hide in a closet to be alone for a few minutes.  They have all been sick and stir crazy and sugar glazed.

Stress #4: Money.  New homeownership (spending money on fun things like tree removal and a water softener) + a Christmas I wasn't very organized about + unexpected computer repairs + dentists don't get paid leave for holidays.   None fun.

None of these stresses feels quite as heavy or immediate as comps did, but half of the stress of comps was the way it was infringing on my ability to pull Christmas off.  I'm still emotionally recovering from the whole ordeal.

But, lest I leave you with that bullet train of whine, here are some silver linings.

Silver Lining #1: While our house has proven to be way too dark for me (and skylight windows keep getting bumped up my renovation priority list), the snow we've had since Christmas has done a lot to help brighten up all of our north-facing windows.  Plus my parents gave me a happy-light for Christmas.  (My life is so glamorous).

Silver Lining #2: While Bunny continues to be absolutely insane (so stinking strong willed and flat-out strong for a 2-year-old... let me show you the fat lip she gave me on Friday when she started flailing with a toy in her hand after I picked her up) she also says please and thank you without provocation.  It always thrills me when I get an unexpected "Thank you, Mom" out of her.

Silver Lining #3:  Sir O is as sneaky as the day is long, but he's also got an innate sense of paternal fairness, so when he sneaks a treat, he sneaks one for all of the siblings.

Silver Lining #4: Despite all the stress, illness, and lost sleep this month, I only missed my 6am M,W,F workout class twice. I am proving to myself that I can make a difficult lifestyle change and I'm holding my holiday calories at bay. I still hate doing it half of the time (especially when I'm sick and tired), but habits don't start sticking until you convince yourself they are not optional.  If you are me, anyway.)

Silver Lining #5: The list of house projects is mind bogglingly long, and the budget is hard to predict, as our income varies each month.  But we finished our basement storage room before Christmas and moved half of the bins and boxes living in our garage down there, so parking is less precarious.  Plus now we can move on to parts of the house that we actually intend to live in.

Silver Lining #6: Despite some really disappointing and emotional numb days, I've been pretty easily moved by the spirit this month.  It's been a humbling experience, but usually when I was most overwhelmed, I'd get subtle reminders of how small my stresses are in the grand scheme of things.  This didn't always keep me from being grumpy or withdrawn, but it helped.  Plus I cried a lot.

Silver Lining #7: Despite working on a thesis about blogging, I have not been able to string 10 minutes together to write anything coherent for my own blog.  I'd have lots of thoughts I wanted to write down during the day when my hands were full, or late at night when I was finally laying in bed and getting sleep was a high stakes game.  So here, look at me!  MAKING IT A PRIORITY!   Sometimes giving myself permission to prioritize things that don't matter to anyone but myself is really difficult. But this matters to me, and I think I am a much better person when more of my experiences have gone through the organizing filter of being interpreted and recorded in a searchable way. So while I can't currently edit photos (grrr to the computer problems again), I can write!

My testimony of sleep

I have hit the bottom of the pool.

I was in class last Tuesday night when we were treated to a guest lecture by Ally Isom, who impressed me solidly after I misjudged her dismissively.  There were a lot of things she said that brought hope to my heart, though they were mostly regarding the women's initiative she was hired to coalesce throughout church headquarters, and that's not a topic I'm organized enough to address responsibly.  The one thing she did say that struck me hard was "when people get enough sleep they are brilliant."  I've been hitting major writer's block walls with my thesis lately.  Nothing I write flows well even through one paragraph, let alone into the next.  My brain is skittish and cannot stay on one track very smoothly.  And you know what?  I haven't managed to string two decent nights' sleep together in at least the last 6 months.  I have consistently tried to function on around 5 hours of sleep since I started school last year.  It's official.  It has caught up with me.

I'm functioning on about 10% in lots of ways.  I've failed to keep the people I've met in our new neighborhood and ward straight.  I often have a hard time distinguishing between important points and minutia.  Lunchtime and dinnertime sneak up on me every day.  I'm just not a very good version of myself.

At this point I wonder whether it'd be worth it to devote a large block of time to addressing my sleep problem at the expense of school time, in hopes that I'd make up for the lack of time with increased productivity.  I'm having half a moment of sympathy with Katharine Hepburn's brand of atheism when she'd say "Don't tell me there's an afterlife.  I just want to rest when I die.  Just sleep and do nothing forever." [1]

All things in moderation though... I'd get sick of just sleeping much faster than I've gotten sick of not sleeping enough.  

But when I heard Ally say that – it connected a lot of dots inside of my head.  “Oh yeah, that’s why my thesis writing is going slow as tar.”  I’ve known I was “burnt out” for a while now, but hadn’t gone so far as to say “I cannot think clearly enough to write well because my brain is starved for sleep….” Hadn’t occurred to me, because… well… sleep deprivation.

My opportunities for addressing this are not super promising, as I’m staring down writing deadlines and my comprehensive exams.  (Seriously, this Christmas season is going to be the biggest bummer of my life… my comps aren’t until December 20^th, which leaves me how much time to put my heart into festivities?)

But I’m realizing I have very little choice if I want my thesis to be anything more than drivel.

---

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCVKfmVvSlg - and I know I mangled the quote.  Also, don’t worry mom.  I’m sympathizing with the exhaustion sentiment, not the aetheism sentiment.

s'marvelous

I don't know how much longer I can keep up this facade of functionality.  Being constantly overwhelmed by a steady string of deadlines from school/thesis stuff, while managing a family that is consistently losing it's ability to be patient with their only-partially-present mother; it's using up all the me that there is.  It's like I'm splitting myself into two competing halves.

On the one side, there is the part of me that wants to get all of this over with as soon as possible.  Let's get back to a place where I can put more energy into my parenting and homemaking and not be a constant hairball of deadline stress. Sounds good, no?

On the other side, there is the part of me that is actually deeply interested in my thesis, and really genuinely enjoying the research process and having a hard time imagining going to live in a place where being an academic is back in the past tense again.

So I'm wondering, more with curiosity than with angst, because I've none to spare, where I'll find myself once I've got this thesis defended.  How will I find to exercise and retain this mental muscle I've built?

Mostly I think, I'm going to find myself writing more, and turning to the internet for an outlet.  I haven't unleashed much of my research and findings on the internet yet, mostly because it all incorporates feminist theory, and people who choose not to identify as feminists can be very quick to pre-judge anything feminist-flavored.

Luckily for me, I've found some terrific examples of women scholars who do identify as feminists, but who also very carefully take the time to value what women already do and already have done.  Laurel Thatcher Ulrich is lovely, and Neylan McBaine is always thinking in the most critical and kind way I've seen. Plus there are people like Valerie Hudson who only express opinions that they can back up with exhaustive research. (Truly, the scope of her research is mind-blowing and this podcast was worth every second of it's 81 minutes) So there's hope for me to be braver and to find a comfortable way to voice my research, insights, and consequent opinions. I will never be thick-skinned, but I do anticipate getting to a point where I'm confident enough about the quality of my research to not fear criticisms so much.

My personal approach, as I tackle the topic of "mommy blogging" - one that I find everyone already has strong opinions about - is to try to figure out what it is that is happening (phenomenologically) before I even consider placing any kind of a value judgement on it.  I'm not likely to arrive at radical conclusions that way, and I don't intend to find myself making a call for earth-shattering or subversive  behaviors.  I'm hoping to identify small paradigm shifts that women can make so that their blogging habits better meet their needs.  This will likely include small subversions to hegemonic norms, but not likely subversions to entire systems.  I really and truly land on the "moderate" portion of the spectrum no matter how you want to frame me.  Unfortunately, this sets me up to be masticated by liberals and conservatives alike.  It also makes it rather hard to find relevant conferences to present at.  Most conferences covering social media or technology and society aren't terribly interested in the activity of middle-class women, and most conferences dealing with women's studies are coming at it from the very liberal end of the spectrum.  So far nothing is a perfect fit.

So while I squirm under the stresses of deadlines and sabotaged study sessions, I'm also dealing with an uncomfortable identity shift.  I'm not likely to be able to go back to being a housewife and give up being an academic altogether.  But I also know I cannot feasible keep up my current pace of participation and production.  Something a little kinder and more flexible will have to evolve, which is ironically the precise problem with higher education for women and is addressed really well by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich herself.... come to think of it.

Filling in the Blanks (big news in here)

I came thiiiis close to having a genuine, physical, hyperventilating panic attack this past week.  I just keep telling myself I'm not allowed to internalize my stress too much, because nearly every iota of it is self-inflicted in one way or another.

Finals have done their usual round of damage, only with the bonus rounds of spending 3.5 days right before finals at a family reunion with no wifi, and also, of trying to make up for all the times I was circumstantially forced to slack in my "independent study" efforts.  (Directed Readings and my correlated annotated bibliography)  I'm realizing that working on my thesis "on my own timetable" is going to be a massive battle between me and everything and everyone else that thinks they should be a higher priority than my thesis.  I shall have to carve out adequate time, and guard and protect it with hyper vigilance.

But I've learned, and read, and thought, and made all kinds of interesting things this past term, and that is always good for my self esteem.  Unfortunately compelling blog posts have not really been one of those things I've made.

I completed my 6 weeks of boot-camp this past week, and while in some regards (tracking all my food) I failed miserably (after 3 weeks I thought my head would explode from the added stress of that and other things and the balls started dropping), but HEY!  I attended every single 6am workout session.  That's like, well on my way to establishing a healthy habit.  That's exciting for me.  The complicated part was the several many mornings when I had to wake up at 5:15 for bootcamp after having gone to bed past 2am.   (That's a recipe for really floppy burpees, by the way)

Which is the part where I point out that I am dangerously exhausted.  All the time.  (Also it is summer, so my kids are home.  All the time.) Lack of sleep, and very messy, often rather bored kids are the center of my universe right now, and profoundly affecting how I function every single moment.  Not good.

So, on top of all of those rather boring updates, here's this: we're buying a house!

Yeah, only one exclamation mark, though after a nap I think I could muster two.

Back in February we put in an offer on a short sale and I felt like God was in His heaven and all was right with the world.  The house was a perfect fit for our family and it was just sort of landing in our laps, with an amazing absence of stress and marital discord.  It felt like such a tender mercy.  Then it fell through, and essentially went into foreclosure, and nothing else in our price range looked remotely tempting compared to it (though I kept looking), but prices were on their way up (faster than we could squirrel away money for a down payment), and it was looking like the short sale house was going to be out of our price range by the time it was re-listed (which was going to take up to 18 months).  All of these things led us to the purchase of a house that is perfectly good, if in need of an overhaul, but also pretty lackluster compared to where my expectations were 6 months ago.  So it feels like settling, but it's very comfortably within our price range, so I should be able to actually give it some of the face-lifting it needs, and our kids won't even have to change schools.  But really friends, there is nothing intrinsically endearing about this house.  I shall have to build all of that into it, and it feels like a daunting place to start.

It all makes sense on paper, I just wish I could muster more enthusiasm for it.  I deeply suspect the lack of enthusiasm has to do with the lack of sleep, and the way this house will double my already intimidating to-do list.

There are still some tender mercies.

We will have a nice big window of time for moving.  We are only moving 2 blocks away, so frequent trips back and forth are perfectly feasible.

And after 10.5 years of marriage, Mr Renn is finally talking about tackling home projects as something we can do now instead of something we will do someday (maybe).  The proof will be in the pudding, but it's a welcome change. There are certainly plenty to choose from, and prioritizing the list will be maybe the hardest part.  Actually, I take that back.  From where I stand right now, trying to pack and move at the same time that I am starting a brand new semester of grad school will be the hardest part.

But we're going to do our darnedest to find the fun in it, and fully plan to overcome all symptoms of lacklusterness.

Home stretch

This summer has been brutal; almost, but not quite on par with a pregnant one.  My kids have become belligerent, continually bored little blue meanies.  Oppositional defiance and sneakiness are abounding, and I am yelling more than is healthy.  School starts again in 18 days, and it's pretty obvious that it's about time.  I've been in school full-time this term, plus house-shopping, plus the having a hundred places to be that comes with the month of July, plus 4 kids who are home aaaaalllll the time, plus I signed myself up for a 6-week bootcamp, and have been waking up at 5am and been too sore to move properly most of the time.

It's just - unsustainable.  That's what it is.  There are bound to be consequences seeping through the floor, like headaches and a messy house and poorly behaved children.

So hey, in a few weeks there will be adults besides myself willing to inflict structure on my kids, and while I anticipate a rough transition, I'm happy to share that load.  And truly, there's a possibility of 2 afternoons a week where Bunny is the only child home and it's during her nap time.  I anticipate filling those moments with a phase of power-naps, followed by a phase of deep-cleaning, followed by a phase where I'm stuffing homework into any spare moment I can find in my life.   

Unless we move, then all bets are off on how any of my time gets spent.

Which, has been a distinct possibility for the last two years, but seems to be getting more possible all the time.  We're getting less picky, and we're in danger of getting priced out of the market entirely as prices keep rising.  We seem destined to settle on something sooner than later.  The settling part is kind of melancholy, but if we make a choice we will own it and run with it.

Regardless, hopefully I'm about to survive my one and only entire summer of being in grad school.  I deserve cookies, except my bootcamp director has me counting calories and avoiding food as rewards....  so I deserve what?  Probably just a sense of accomplishment, but that's hard to feel when one's children are driving one utterly insane.  (Much as I love them... it's been rough).

Neck Deep

Totally irrelevant photos of summer-ness at our house.

I've just survived having Mr Renn out of town 2 of the last 4 weeks.  Granted, they were the two bookending weeks of those 4, and each trip was technically less than a week, but still, it was a lot of fudging by this mama who really absolutely requires a ton of extra support from Mr Renn in order to make this grad-school thing work.  In fact, my entire Summer term has been sort of stilted by it.  I'm  now trying frantically to get everything back on-track and caught up, all while fielding an endless stream of popsicles stolen from the freezer and left to melt on my couch.  (While the freezer door is left open, as often as not.)  The entropy at my house is mind-blowing, friends.

Also - sleep deprivation.  I don't think that the severity of my sleep deprivation is actually getting any worse, but the longevity of it continues to get more drawn out, and the effects keep getting more severe.  My judgment, depth-perception, forecasting, and problem-solving skills are all pretty much shot.

So, when I've had a day like last Thursday, when Mr Renn was out of town, and I was running on every iota of energy and will I had, and embarrassing things kept piling on me, all I've been able to do is laugh and shrug it off.  If I tried to apologize for it or justify myself, I'd implode.

Thursday - Lots of small crazinesses, involving scissors and renegade rolie-polies, but I knew that Mr Renn wouldn't be coming home to relieve the babysitter, and I felt morally obligated to have dinner made before she showed up.  So, after putting Bunny down for a nap, I sent the two younger boys out to play in the sprinklers and chopped and sautéed and braised like a mad-woman.  (Sir O was with Mr Renn on this trip).  At some point when my hands were covered in something slimy, I got a knock at my door, and answered it all aproned-up with a dish towel in hand.  It was a man from my neighborhood with whom I'd never had a conversation before, wondering if I was aware that the Gentleman was hanging out nearly a block away, stark naked.

How do you answer that sort of a question?  Also - why is it always people whose children never gave them this kind of grief that find and return our kids in these circumstances?  The lack of empathy was searing.  Also, my babysitter showed up right at that very moment and was driving slowly, escorting our Gentleman home, and laughing her head off.

She informed me that she wanted to take my kids swimming, and I said "go for it," but you'll need my van.  And TOTALLY FORGETTING that Mr Renn was out of town and I had a perfectly functional car sitting in my garage, I swapped vehicles with her and drove her unfamiliar, generic white chevy to school that night.  Then, after class, I walked up to the first generic, white chevy (with a graduation tassel and lei hanging from the rear view mirror, in my defense) and tried to open it.  No go.  Did it occur to me that it was the wrong car?  Oh no, I made 3 phone calls and spent almost 20 minutes trying to get into that car.  Only after I had asked my babysitter to pack up my kids and come get me, did I glance up and notice an awfully similar look car parked one row over.  Which I promptly unlocked and drove home feeling as sheepish as I ever have.

The power of sleep friends, cannot be over-rated.  As such, grad school appears to be making me dumber.



But, despite how awesome I am at failing all the time, (hopefully not in school, but I can't ever eliminate the possibility) we are having a pretty pleasant summer.  My kids get along with each other really amazingly well  (which is to say, more often than not).  Everybody seems willing to forgive everyone else for doing dumb things at regular intervals.  We hold hands and have fun most days.   And I haven't quit yet.

The oddest collapse - in which I obsess over Jane Eyre.

Last week Mr Renn was out of town for a Dental Convention and a convenient visit to his sister and her family.  It was not a huge ordeal, unless you were Bunny, then it was cataclysmic.  (Though I think she has recovered by now.) I got behind on my homework a bit, but I can't really blame it on Mr Renn being gone (directly).  It happened because I let my guard down for a moment of guilty pleasure, which turned out to be dangerously addictive for me.  Suddenly I found myself devoting all sorts of ill-afforded spare moments to the pursuit of it, in a manner that felt totally beyond my control.



So what is it that drug-like guilty pleasure of mine?  I entered the gothic spiral of watching Jane Eyre adaptations.  Over and over again.  As many of them as I can get my hands on, which is at least 8.  Anyone who's ever gotten lost in 19th century chick-lit knows how euphoric this stuff is.  There's a reason there are dozens of Jane Austen festivals the world round, where grown women dress in regency attire and play at belonging to a more autocratic class system (but only in the top tiers!), and women the work over brood endlessly over the moody declarations of love made by upper class, usually wealthy men toward the financially strapped girls they flip over (who are always well bred enough to avoid pursuing even men they love for any reason, certainly never for money, despite the necessity that it is.) 



Frankly I find myself in all sorts of delicious internal conflict as I greedily scroll through various versions, skipping to the most reactive parts. On the one hand, I'm smart enough to know that pretty much all of 19th century British literature is necessarily steeped in empiricist apologetics.  There are more examples of "good masters" and "happy, humble servants" than you can shake a stick at.  The female protagonists manage to do very little, besides wait around for men to do most of the "doing".  Until you get into the social criticism of Hardy, Thackeray and Dickens (and a little bit of it from my dear friend Mrs. Gaskell), most of the popular literature seems pretty overwhelmingly, quietly supportive of the status-quo of its time.  There are usually examples of good and bad nobility thrown in the mix, like some sort of admittance that there are bad ones, but look at how beautifully the system works when our nobility is actually noble!

The social critic in me ruffles at all of that.  The aristotelian pattern of telling the stories of the virtuous nobility over and over again, engraining a system of privilege and oppression soul-deep, it feels inescapably problematic.  There's no way to sit with it as a comfortable friend.And yet, I grew up inhaling these novels like they were gasps of air for my drowning self.  British literary folklore strikes a crazy-deep chord for me, and tends to feel more like home to me than any physical place I've ever been.  The way it struggles between civility and desperation, speaks to my own inner conflicts.  The way that social conventions are usually the source of all narrative woes, especially for women, and yet the solution is never found by defying social conventions.  (Though both Hardy and Thackeray will show you people who try it  and ultimately wind up the worse for the attempt).   There is something about the calm and civilized balance of high spirit and sapience in the heroines that feels so honest to me, living in a more laissez-faire time.  I fear that in my culture, that values freedom as its favorite pet, the very real benefits of gentility, civility, and tradition get chucked like a baby in so much bathwater.  




There are the things that appeal to the Anglophile in me: 4pm teatime, using (real) silverware properly, moving things from place to place on trays in a dignified manner, sitting by fires and having conversation, learning penmanship and social dances, and sending and receiving beautifully hand-written correspondences.  Strolling through gardens, wearing clothing restrictive enough to improve posture, wearing hats, owning very few, but impeccably hand-crafted dresses, and even having the time to pursue talents like fine embroidery, music, and art. I hope I'm allowed to find those things attractive while still acknowledging the silent underbelly of the class system that seems to have supported them.

Then, don't get me started on the dysfunctionality of the relationships presented.  I've been watching Edward Fairfax Rochester mistreat Jane Eyre in 8 different flavors, and all of them taste a little abusive.  The way he's allowed to rant and swoon like a crazy person, but Jane's most redeeming quality is her stoicism, it's a pretty odd paradox that's an easy set up for an abusive relationship, were someone to use it as a pattern.  Of course the way it is written everything works out fine (with phenomenal convenience) but the pattern it sets for real-life people is more than a little bit dangerous.

And yet, there I sit, watching the same three passionate fits of Mr. Rochester performed by 8 different actors.  And finding it ridiculously pleasurable.  It was, I think, the first bout of inedible self-indulgence I've made room for in my life since I went back to school.  I suppose I hadn't noticed how starved that part of myself was becoming, until it caught it's chance and took off running.  And suddenly wearing jeans and a t-shirt feels ridiculously sloppy.  Suddenly I feel like using my best dishes.  Suddenly I'm much more reserved in public because I can't think over top of the melodrama that's pacing circles in my head.  Suddenly I've a nearly irresistible urge to see if I can pick up millinery as a hobby.  Suddenly I've started wearing aprons again.  For all it's sociological folly, a cinematic foray into chick-lit is also fun.

And I'd be remiss to ignore all the protofeminism in Jane Eyre itself.  Despite it's utter embodiment of all things gothic, it did revolutionize the inner life of protagonists.  There's just so much of feelings in it.  Lots and lots of feelings. (Which, really, prove really un-cinematic in some film versions)  Always poetic and inflated and dramatic feelings.  It feels like such an indulgence to me.  And yet there's this centered voice in the midst of the piece.  Always searching for a way to balance happiness and love with duty and morality, it can feel at times so much like my own inner voice (which is also, by the way, prone to dramatics).  Besides of which, Jane's assertion that “laws and principles are not for times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this,” is prescient through the ages. 


I commented to Mr Renn that a novel like this could hardly be written anymore, there are so few universal indomitable social laws left that you'd be hard pressed to hold one of them up as an antagonist.  And yet, if there is a place anywhere that has a strict enough socio-moral code to cause the kind of tension that the Brontes weaved into their moors, it'd be right where I'm living, in happy valley, Utah.  Seeing how restriction actually fosters creativity and story, it makes me suddenly more tolerant of some of my least-favorite Utah-isms, if only for the stories their oppression is bound to catalyze. 


So you see, I'm in a peculiar pickle.  Even my guilty pleasures are laden with meaning, making them both more and less guilty at the same time.  But hey, if anyone wants to start a passionate discussion about who makes for the best Mr Rochester, I'm on it. (And my initial reaction is being torn between Timothy Dalton and Toby Stephens, though Michael Fassbender was really great, his version just kept cutting him off, it moves too fast and ends too abruptly. Should I feel guilty for not choosing Welles?) 

Double Posting from my school blog - Documentary Observation Exercise.

(Because this almost served as a look at a day in my life - minus most of the housework and homework I do)



8am - this is my weekday ritual of wrestling my 7-year-old out of bed and into his clothes.  This child needs something like 13 hours of sleep to function well, so morning always comes too soon. His reticence and petulance are most evident at this time of day. Check out that body language. It's also the time of day when I rediscover, over and over again, how long and lithe this body has become that I once built inside of my body.



9:30am - my younger two boys have been told that they cannot play video games unless they can agree on what to play in advance.  That proved too difficult, so they resorted to pretending the laundry baskets are rocket ships again.  (Which may have been my plan all along.) My 3-year-old is potty training, so he only wears pants when he leaves the house. His little legs have lost most of their baby fat, but he's still got it in his cheeks.  And he still fits in a laundry basket.



We call her Bunny, and despite being only 18-months-old, she has developed a radar for portable electronic devices.  And she gets laser-beam-intent on figuring out how to navigate them.  While sitting on the kitchen floor.  Such a digital native. Also - this captures the conundrum of her hair really well.  She won't hold still enough to do a real braid, so we go through a dozen disposable hair elastics every day, and it takes up to 20 minutes to wrestle them all into her hair.



Dishes - one of the tasks I tackle multiple, multiple times every day.  Because I didn't want to try to find beauty in cleaning my boys' bathroom.  Poetry in the Prosaic. Emily in the reflection.



I did a lot of gardening in the late morning, mostly preparing beds and soil for planting that should have happened last week.  But the light outside was too harsh for a good photo.  So right as I was finishing I dropped my gloves and trowel on the rug in my garage and grabbed the camera.  I finally managed a photo with enough depth of field to have something in focus. I am a visual texture junkie, and so these lambskin gloves make me happy to look at.



My 7-year-old came home from school with his April writing journal.  This is an entry about how he was kind when he let his younger brothers play with his plush snakes while he was at school, (he would never think to share when it was inconvenient for him - the turkey) but I love it because it captures a lot of things about our mornings.  My son has drawn himself with his red and blue star backpack and his scooter, and his friend that comes and waits in our front room every morning while my son drags his feet brushing his teeth and getting his jacket on is standing outside the front door.  He even drew his 5-year-old brother wearing his favorite color, green.



Bob left this behind after class.  Everybody stayed a few moments after the film ended to process and decompress, and I think this poor stem is a pretty apt metaphor for how emotionally barren we all felt.




The carpet and rug at the top of the East Stairs of the D-Wing of the HFAC.  Mostly because I love all the texture going on there.  The patterns in both carpets, and the difference in frieze between the two fibers, and that nubby little strip of rubber between them.



As soon as I got home from class, this girl was ready for bed.  She is a thumb-sucker of the first order.  She also has a blankie that she has attached herself to. (See the fabric between her fist and her neck? It's also under her pointer finger as she manages to simultaneously suck that thumb and rub her sweet spot on the blanket)  I also kind of love that shine in her hair, because thank-heaven my babysitter bathed everyone and got them into pajamas for me.  And the way her hair falls in her eyes is maddening in real life, but adds a lot of interest to this photo. Also - taking this photo while holding her was a trick.



My 5-year-old, and his joy-face, upside down, hair still wet from his bath. Chewing on his shirt, and his scar on his cheek from the stitches he had to get after splitting his face open in preschool a while back.  All reminders of his apraxia. I don't see the scar when I look at him anymore, but I see it when I'm looking at photos. And yes - those are Boba Fett pajamas, and they are compounding his joy.



While my boys were doing gymnastics in the living room, I looked out the front window and noticed that the setting sun was backlighting these pansies so they sort of glowed.  I had to set the camera on the ground, back it up for focus and zoom in to get a shot, but I think it captures some of the luminescence that was happening.




And while I was in the front yard, I also got a shot of my tree peonies, because they are gorgeous, but they last about 3 days. Fleeting, fleeting ruffley things, in the most electric shade of pink.

Failing and Being Wrong

I'm having a bit of a low-point this week.  You know how a couple of genuinely disappointing experiences can suddenly flavor your world so that even small disappointments, that you'd normally rebound from almost instantly, start to feel like an endless flow of lemon juice on your paper-cut? You get trapped in a spiral of negativity that quickly feels like it's eating you alive?  And suddenly all of your happy thoughts have holes in them, rendering them useless for floatation. It's usually the sort of situation that is resolved by a crying jag, a good-night's-sleep, and possibly a cyclical hormone shift.  Or, if it goes on long enough, by therapy and anti-depressants.

Hopefully that's not where we're headed.  But I've spent two weeks under the influence of seasonal allergies, a head cold and a sinus infection, dealing with the abbreviated mental/emotional whiplash of ending one semester and starting the next a week later, all while having certain hopes dashed and certain facets of my self-defined identity rendered insecure when, suddenly, decisions and actions I felt sure I was prompted to make fell apart and left me with no answers. I'm in a place where nothing about my life feels safely positive.  None of my relationships are reliable sources of positive emotional energy, at least not the kind where you can push the button for more anytime you need it, like the pain-med button in a hospital room. I'm not definitively good at anything I'm attempting to pull of right now.  I'm regularly confronted with my failings as a student, parent, friend, and spouse. And by regularly, I mean almost constantly.

It's a humbling, humbling place. I got more upset than I should have by negative feedback on one of my final papers, and couldn't seem to allow for the fact that I was interrupted probably 4 or 500 times while writing and editing it. It is hard, hard, hard for me to be in a place where my best is treated as obviously inadequate. Hard - primarily because I have so many nagging doubts (self-doubting doubts) that I have a hard time silencing even when I'm not dealing with negative feedback.  Sometimes I am just too delicate for real-life. And regularly putting myself through growth-inducing experiences has done nothing to toughen me up. I can't figure myself out.

Anyway - that's the gist of my current bluesy spot.  I have no shortage of them so far in this grad-school adventure.  Every time someone says to me, "How do you do it all?" My answer is "Not very well."  But I still haven't quit.  Quitting would be perhaps the only thing more emotionally devastating than sticking to it.  The whole reason I'm here is because I hate that I quit before, and if I quit now then I may never manage to disassociate myself as a quitter. That is sometimes the only thing that sounds more depressing than pushing through yet another semester or term of being a chronically sleep-deprived, distracted, inadequate mother who can't seem to write very well.  So then, onward and upward.

The good news: these Ted Talks Exist at moments like this.

Spring Break - Grad School edition

This week, I'm honing my mettle.



I'm also patting myself on the back the tiniest wee bit.  Because if I'd been ask to live this week a year ago I would have found it utterly unbearable.  But now, I'm mostly managing to roll with it.

The kids are out of school all week, which means there is no break whatsoever from the entropy of Sir O.  My home will constantly be falling apart all around me.  On top of which it is my last full week of class for the semester and I have a major paper due Friday, and finals and another giant paper due next week.

Plus the regular rigamarole of reading lots of things that require every iota of available brainpower to make sense of.

And a baby with a broken leg.  And a penchant for re-injuring it.

And a 3 year old who's potty-training in earnest (which means he's naked most of the time).

It's just really a lot.  A full plate.  A fairly large amount of stress.  Not earth-shattering stress, but mess-up-your-biological-rhythms stress.

And while it's certainly not pretty and never what I'd call "ideal," I'm essentially keeping myself held together.

This morning, to get out of the house, and to keep Sir O contained in a seat-belt-sized space, I packed all the kids out to go see the progress on the new Provo Temple.  The angel was placed on top a few days ago, and I thought it might be a nice outing.  Free and close and short. Only the Gentleman seemed to agree with me though, nobody else wanted to get out of the car.  This is why God gave me this child.



So, two days in and my head is still above water.  I am growing up, aren't I?

cost benefit analyses

from etsy shop print revolution

I fell asleep on the way to school tonight.  I was waiting at a stop light, and suddenly startled awake to the realization that the light was green.

I have not made it to bed before 2am in 3 weeks, and have probably only managed it 4 or 5 times total since we got home from our Anniversary trip.

There is always so much to do and it is always urgent.  I need to be honest about how difficult this is.

But still, I really want to find out whether this ambitious goal of mine, to juggle so many demanding balls without utterly shattering any of them, is possible.  I want to find it out for myself, and for every other woman in my life.  I feel like culturally, there is a lot of perfectionism that infiltrates the female psyche and drastically limits our productivity.  We are only willing to try to do as much as we think we can succeed at, so we rarely find out what our limits actually are.  We don't spend a lot of time wrestling with that risky territory where failure is a real option.  Somehow, for those who have a choice, that place has been reserved for mostly men, and only brave ones at that.

I'd like to be able to push women that I know to set more goals and take more risks, and to be purposeful but daring with them. (Though not necessarily to risk driving drowsy, don't you worry)  I don't think anyone should spread themselves too thin to be useful just for the sake of being busy, but I do think that too few women have a healthy sense of their own power for determining their own destinies.  If we can be willing to be more vulnerable, and to spend more time in the failure zones, then we will ultimately feel far more in-control of our own lives.

And those thoughts are hugely motivating to me as I stumble through stupefying sleep deprivation and wrestle through readings as dense as lead.  As I constantly struggle to manage all the things that absolutely need to get done, I inevitably fail.  I fail every day.  Dinner doesn't get made or the laundry gets behind, or (most of the time) I have to give up sleep and don't make it to bed until 2 or 3 or 4am.  I fail as a mother quite regularly (but with the kind of sleep-deprivation I'm dealing with, I actually think I'm managing better than might be expected).  I am failing every single day.  If I allow failure to be grounds for quitting, then I will never finish this.

But so far failure is just part of the process.  I'm managing to be forgiving of my own failures.  I'm sort of managing to be my own cheerleader, kind and supportive toward myself.  And I remind myself often that I was still failing regularly when I was making decisions based on fear of failure.  That fear didn't really save me from anything.  I still failed as a mother often enough, maybe more often really.  Now I have the benefit of a clearer sense of purpose to balance out the yelling that occasionally surfaces when I'm clinging to consciousness by my fingernails and I encounter sticky messes that everyone knew better than to make.

I'd like to think that if I see this through to the other side and finish what I start, then I can, in clearer conscience, challenge other women to do the same.  Maximizing your potential looks different for every single person, but I still feel that far to few people give themselves permission to try to do it.  Because they might fail.  And failure is terrifying.  If you let it be.  There are often real consequences to failing, but there are always real consequences to not trying.  We too often forget to weigh them against each other.

So, while you wait for me to finish school so I can finish owning my cheerleader mantle, you can go read some Brené Brown and start pondering what brave plans you want to tackle with your fleeting and precious life.  Sure, you might fail.  But is that really an excuse to never try? Is failure really worse than living in fear of failure?

Hobble Creek Canyon last Autumn, just because

Christmas "Break"

When you are a young undergrad student, Christmas Break is a very real thing.  You survive finals, then you crash at your parent's house, sleep for 2 or 3 days straight, grace extended family gatherings with your presence, get a horrendous illness and nurse yourself back to health before school starts again.  Simple, straightforward, and insanely self-centric.


When you are the mom and the grad student, Christmas Break is a very un-funny joke.  Not quite as unfunny a joke as finals at Christmastime, but still lunacy of the first order.  You barely survive finals while doing your utmost to not fail at the family's expectation for what Christmastime is supposed to be.  You do your best to avoid the irritated vibes from your kids and spouse for all the balls you are dropping.  You really want, and rather need, to collapse in a heap once your last final is officially behind you, but there is no time.  There are new emergencies on your plate.  You have just over a week to throw everything you've got at salvaging the holiday from your previous neglect.  Plus, extended family gatherings mean managing your children in public - herding cats and all that.  And if, perchance, you were ever to come across an empty 20 minute pocket of time, you know you really ought to be getting ahead on reading for the next semester.  You never once manage to be in bed before 1am.  You manage to box away the flurry of decorations and realize you are nearly floored by sleep deprivation and illness.  You realize you have the flu, and a sinus infection for New Years, and that you are out of time.  Your break is over and you never actually managed to take anything that resembles a break.  You maybe cry a little bit.

But self-pity aside, a lot of things were really lovely about this holiday.  And I think I managed to leave everyone with good memories in their mouth.  This child is even still suspending his disbelief, rather willingly, but in spite of my many failings.  It may be the last year of that magic. You rarely in life get a chance to realize you may be experiencing a last.  They're tender and rare and appreciated.