Writer's Fatigue

I had great good intentions, I did. I was going to get back to blogging frequently and regularly, and be all erudite and profound and entertaining (maybe even all three at the same time) at least once a week or so. But, somehow, it didn't happen. Summer is trickling away on me, and blog posts are not accumulating.

You see, the fact of the matter is, I've got Writer's Fatigue. I'm tired. Tired of cranking out words, being articulate. Tired of sitting at my computer, putting letters on a screen, then rereading them, changing them, fixing them, rearranging them, and then doing it all again (and again and again). I just finished my big final project for my Master's degree, forty-six pages plus references (if you want to read about it, or even read the whole thing, go over to quillandqwerty, it's got the link on it). And it was the cumulation of two-and-a-half years of grad school - reading, studying, researching - and writing, writing, writing, at least one big paper, usually two or three, each semester. That's an awful lot of words. So now, it seems, my writing ability has trickled out of my ears. My wordsmithing quota has been used up for the time being.

So perhaps, what I'll do instead is give you some pictures. Each one worth a thousand words, no? (Gee whiz, I could have just submitted fifteen photos for my final project, and been done with it... But no, probably not.) So here, for your edification, are some pictures from our recent holiday on the West Coast. I love the Pacific, it's one of my favourite places in the whole world. You're welcome.

Life, the Universe, Writer's Fatigue - and the beauties of the Canadian West Coast.

Stacks of Stickies

I just mailed off my final grad school paper. That paper, that's why I've been AWOL from the blogging front in the last few months; I've been up to my eyebrows in fairy tales (meaning I've been writing about them, not that what I'm telling you is one). But now it's done, one big treatise on "Cinderella", "Sleeping Beauty", "Beauty and the Beast", and "The Frog Prince". I'll be anxiously awaiting my mark, and then editing the thing for submission to my uni's thesis collection.

So the paper is sent in, and I feel slightly stunned that I'm actually done. Two-and-a-half years of study finished with one click of a button. It can't really be true, can it? But then, there's always one more thing to do after that button has been clicked: I have to de-sticky my research materials. Yes, you know, de-sticky? Take the sticky tags out of the books, of course. I might have mentioned once or thrice, marking books is evil and will get you smote by the library gods. But a grad school student (or indeed any other student) has to keep track of interesting points in books somehow, so, enter the sticky note. I go through pad after pad of those things in the course of my research, plastering them all over the margins of the books, sometimes adorning them with expressive arrows  (← !!!) or erudite comments such as "Does NOT!!" or "pfffffft!", or even, I hesitate to admit, the occasional "IDIOT!" (it's true. I found one like that this time. What can I say - I was justly incensed at a scholar's assessment of my favourite movie.).

So then, by the time I'm finished my writing, I don't need all those place markers any more, and the university library, slack though they may be about the state of their books (I once had one out that sported the dusty print of a running shoe sole across its front page spread), would probably not appreciate all those pink and orange and green bits of paper sticking out of the book. So I pull 'em all out again and pile them on my desk. One stack of stickies indicating just how educated I have become. Or how muddled, either way. It's the sure sign that I really am done with whatever piece of research I've been doing.

And then I dump the stickies into the garbage, take the library books back to the library and put my own books on my book shelf (or pile them on the floor, because there is absolutely no book shelf space to be had any more), and then - then I go and find myself a book to read or a movie to watch that has absolutely nothing to do with whatever I just finished studying. Fairy tales? Hmm, I think I'll read a Regency romance now, thank you. But don't worry, I'll be back to fairy tales soon enough. Even studying them as intensely as this hasn't soured me on the topic, and that, my friends, means that it really is my thing.

Life, the Universe, and Stacks of Stickies. The sign of the end of grad school studies.

Stuck in the Stacks

Apologies for the rather lengthy silences on the blogging front these days. My life pretty much looks like this right now:

That's right, I'm stuck in the stacks. Research stacks on fairy tales, "Cinderella" and "Sleeping Beauty" for now, "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Frog Prince" hereafter. If you want to hear where I'm rambling my way along the research lane, you can follow me over at quill and qwerty. The last thing I discovered was a really great book by Orson Scott Card, Enchantment, which is a retelling of the "Sleeping Beauty" story, very loosely and very brilliantly. It won't really do much for my paper, but it was very interesting nonetheless. Then again - maybe it will (do something for my paper, that is)? Hmmm...  And there I go, off I go on a rumination rabbit trail again...

Life, the Universe, and Being Stuck in Research Stacks. I'll talk to you when next I surface.

Precision Scribblings

I just got a second-hand copy of one of my textbooks, Max Lüthi's Es war einmal: Vom Wesen des Volksmärchen (Once Upon a Time: On the Nature of Fairy Tales). I bought it via AbeBooks, and it was mailed out from Germany (gotta love AbeBooks). Unfortunately, when you're buying a second-hand book online, you're buying a pig in a poke; there's no telling in advance what kind of shape it's in. The vendor's comment of "Condition: good" might mean almost anything. More than once I've been disappointed at all the scribblings and underlinings and highlightings in the book, and this one is no exception.

However, you've got to say this for Germans: they're tidy scribblers. This book is marked all over, but all the underlining has been done with a ruler. So at least, we've got precision scribblings here. It amuses me.

Incidentally, don't ever let me catch you scribbling in library books. The university library books I've got out right now are, in a lot of cases, a right mess. What is it with uni students? I don't care if you do it with a ruler or while holding the pen between your toes, marking up a library book is vandalism.

Life, the Universe, and Scribblings in Books. Enough with the rant, and on to reading Lüthi.

Ontological

Steve meditating on the ontology of a walnut

I reached a milestone today: I was able to use "ontological" in a sentence. If you're going "Huh? Onto-what?", believe me, I know where you're coming from. That word has been the bane of my grad school existence. I've been telling myself that if I ever learned to use it in a sentence, I'd have arrived - and that day came today.

Then again - maybe not. I still haven't used "ontological" in a word combination of my own choosing, I'm just able to quote something someone else said, and actually understand what they're talking about. But that's a big step in the right direction, isn't it? It represents an ontological shift, for me. There, I did it, I did it! Except I'm not entirely sure that what I just said actually makes sense.

Okay, "ontological". What does it actually mean? The word kept cropping up early in my grad school experience, in philosophy readings and such. I kept looking it up to try to get a handle on it, but it still didn't really make sense. The definitions all say something like "Ontology: the study of being", and some go on much longer about it. And usually, when I encountered that word, that definition didn't really help me make any sense of what I was reading. But then, a while back, I was reading some folktale theory, and the word popped up in a context where I actually understood what they were saying (Score!). And then the other day, I ran across a book review on this blog which was talking about Brian Boyd's book On the Origin of Stories, and what Jenny was saying about it made me rush out (metaphorically - into cyberspace, anyway) to get a hold of this book, which was well worth it (I waffle on about it here).

What she said was this: according to Boyd, "people find stories most memorable when the characters of the stories cross ontological boundaries." Huh, you say? Well, here, let me explain, out of my new-found state of enlightenment. The passage in question in Boyd's book analyses Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who. Dr. Seuss constantly messes with our ideas of what's real - specifically, by creating these really weird creatures, with what animals are. We have a quite clear idea of animals' being, and he crosses that boundary and gives fish antlers or puts wheels on some critter. That's ontology - he is saying something about a state of being.

As for finding stories most memorable when the characters "cross ontological boundaries", that's what our fascination with fantasy stories is all about. Think about it: of the blockbuster movies of the last twenty years, probably some 80% (if not more) were fantasies. A neglected boy finds out he's really a wizard. An injured soldier finds himself on a planet of tall blue creatures. A group of small woolly-footed people team up with a wizard and elves to destroy an evil magical ring. (And so on.) We know what things are really like, we have a clear grip on the nature of being - and we love stories that cross those boundaries, that tell of an alternate state of being. Ontological boundaries.

So there you have it: Life, the Universe, and "Ontological" Used in a Sentence. Oh frabjous day, I have arrived.

Book Walls

My computer is currently walled in by books. Lots and lots of books - fifty or so of them. And the desk is shored up by another dozen or more on the floor beside it. That's life in the grad school lane.

They're not all mine - some are (an ever-increasing proportion, I have to admit), but most of them are library books. I'm lucky enough that even though I live in a semi-rural area, I have access to the library of one of the biggest universities in Canada, which just happens to have a campus in town here. With the library card from my distance ed uni, the locals let me take out anything I like, and even send me books from the big city campus if I ask. And I ask - you better believe it. And then there's the public library, which netted me some couple dozen books for my research this time. It'll be heavy lugging taking all that stuff back when the time comes.

You know, I like real books. I enjoy reading ebooks on my ebook reader, when it's novels or short stories (like fairy tales!) which I'm reading for amusement. But for research, for non-fiction, give me a real book. For keeps, give me a real book. For looking up information, give me a real book. For knowing that I have the book in my collection - you know, when I run across that obscure reference to Andrew Lang, and I can say "Hey, I've got that on my shelf downstairs!" - give me a real book.

Real books are not dependent on electricity; if the power goes out, I can still read by candlelight. Real books don't suffer from file corruption or obsolescence - I got my copy of the Brothers Grimm in 1987, and it's still perfectly good, barring a bit of yellowing of the pages. On real books, I can stick sticky notes all over the margins, so I can find the quotes again which struck me while I was reading them.

And of course, real books make great walls around your computer. If I wasn't sitting in my office (aka bedroom) by myself anyway, I still wouldn't need a cubicle for privacy - I have book stacks to do the job.

Life, the Universe, and Grad School Book Walls. Better get back to studying.

How to Write a Term Paper

Steve demonstrating the state of one's mind during Term Paper Writing

1.) Pick a topic. Find something you're interested enough in that you won't end up hating it after having completely immersed yourself in it for weeks on end.
2.) Vaguely think about it off and on while you do the other assignments for your course, hang around on Facebook, and read murder mysteries in your off time.
3.) Hit the library. No, wait - first hit the library's website, and surf around, following improbable rabbit trails through the jungle of Library of Congress Subject Headings.
4.) Repeat step 3.) on Google. It's amazing the stuff you can find - say you're researching Austen film adaptations, you might find out that Jennifer Ehle played some other costume drama with Jeremy Northam, and that she looked a whole lot better with her hair natural, rather than that dorky wig they put on her for the 1995 P&P. This step can occupy you for a long, long time.
5.) Go to the library and pick up the two dozen books you ordered in on your topic. Stack them around your computer.
6.) Panic.
7.) Send an email to your prof, whining about not getting ahead. Try to change your topic a time or two.
8.) Procrastinate.
9.) Panic.
10.) Get several pads of sticky notes, the real skinny strips, preferably fluorescent-coloured. You need them to mark sections you're going to quote in the books. Don't even THINK about actually highlighting library books, or even just underlining stuff and making notes in pencil. You will be smote by the library gods. (I'm sure there are some. Some Greek gods of libraries? And they're very smiting, believe me. Especially after having had their powers enhanced by my righteous indignation at all those scribbles and markings in the margins. Grrrrrr...)
11.) Repeat step 4.)
12.) Go on the library website, pull up the databases the library subscribes to, and repeat step 3.) Save about three dozen references in a special folder. The next day, go back and open every single one of those .pdf files which will all have titles like 678459q84.pdf, and rename them so you can actually recognize them when they're closed. Go back into the databases, repeat your search, then actually save the references to the files you've found. Export them to RefWorks.
13.) Panic.
14.) Eat copious quantities of snacks.
15.) Start reading. Or at least, open those .pdf files, and skim over the contents. Highlight interesting sentences, even if you have no clue what the author said on the page before or after the quote. (Yes, you may highlight. The library gods do not care about alterations of electronic files.)
16.) Crack open the covers of those library books, and follow the general principle of step 15.), replacing "highlight" with "sticky-note". You may write on the sticky note, if you manage to not draw outside the line and accidentally write on the page of the book. If you do the latter, you will be smote.
17.) Procrastinate.
18.) Panic.
19.) Feel put upon.
20.) Pace.
21.) Open several text files in your favourite writing program, such as Scrivener. One will be your main text body. Another will be random notes. Scribble down everything and anything that came into your head when you were doing all that pacing, procrastinating and panicking (see, they have a purpose!). Copy and paste quotes you want to use from the .pdf's; swear at the fact that Adobe Reader won't let you copy something you've highlighted. Go back and pull a clean .pdf off the net, so you can copy and paste from it. Manually copy quotes from the hardcopy books. Throw all those citations randomly into your notes file.
22.) Sleep and eat. Don't panic too much at this point, it interferes with sleeping and eating.
23.) Whine at your family and friends about the stress levels you're under. Tell them what you're writing about (it helps. See "pacing, procrastinating and panicking"). Stop telling them when their eyes glaze over.
23.) Open your notes file. Sort your ideas into a semblance of sense. Cut and paste the quotations, and stick them in the right categories.
24.) Panic.
25.) Open your text body file in one window, your notes file in another. Take a deep breath. Start typing.
26.) Keep telling yourself "Just write, just write, just write - you can edit it later - just write... yes, this sounds awful... just write..."
27.) Make sure to frequently hit "save".
28.) Repeats steps 22.), 23.), 24.) - 27.) as often as needed.
29.) Include in-text citations as  you write, or leave them to the end, as you choose.
30.) Read over what you've done. Fix the really glaring nonsense (if the wording makes you gag, chances are your prof won't like it either).
31.) Boot up RefWorks, pick the four references you actually used of the three dozen you saved, and build your Works Cited list. Manually enter the reference information for the hardcopy books.
32.) Copy and paste it to your text file.
33.) Pick a snappy title for your piece.
34.) Export everything to the file that will be your final paper file.
35.) Spellcheck and format your paper. Swear at the word processing software which does weird things with margins and fonts, and insists on spellchecking in US English instead of British or Canadian. No, I do NOT want to change "colour" to "color"!
36.) Hit save.
37.) Have a glass of wine or two to celebrate. Go sleep.
38.) Open the file, read it over. Shake your head at all the mistakes you've missed. Fix them. Make sure all your citation information is correct and shipshape.
39.) Save everything to a few other files, just to make sure you don't lose it. Give the files an academic-sounding name. (No, "Bob" won't do.)
40.) Read the paper over again, just to be sure.
41.) Address an email to your prof; attach the file. Quadruple-check that you've actually attached the file and aren't sending him a blank mail. Hover your mouse pointer over the "send" button. Take a deep breath, then another for good measure. Panic mildly. Click "send".
42.) Abandon yourself to The Euphoria of Completion.

There you have it - Forty-Two Steps to Writing a Term Paper. Well, they work for me, anyway. You're welcome.

Book Fixes

I pulled out my copy of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, for my next course. Well, one of my copies. This particular one is part of a boxed set that my man gave me many years ago, I think it might have been for our first Christmas after we were married. And then, also many years ago (but not quite as many), one of the kids was practising her scissors skills on the cover. (In her defense it must be said she was quite small. And she never did it again, at least not on book covers - the cat's fur and her own bangs were a different matter. I'm not sure which came first, the hair cut or the book trimming. But in either case, even though I don't remember my reaction exactly, I'm sure it was sufficient to put a healthy respect for the sanctity of the printed page into her. It doesn't seem to have scarred her for life, fortunately.)

So, anyway, this poor book has lived with half a jagged-edged cover for the last however-many years (title: The The Witch A The Wardrob). I even bought another boxed set of the Narnia novels from Scholastic to replace this one, but I could never really warm to that version with its movie-tie-in covers. It seems cheap, somehow. Well, it was cheap - it's Scholastic, after all (I love Scholastic; but quality of physical properties of books is not one of their strong points).

So I pulled out this book from between The Magician's Nephew and Prince Caspian to do preliminary work for my course. It really was pathetic, that half cover. Fortunately, the actual text escaped the ravages of toddler scissors unscathed; only the front matter got hit. The copyright page looks pretty sad, and there's a couple of snips on the edge of the page which has Lewis' dedication letter to his goddaughter Lucy on it, but from the table of contents onwards the paper is intact. But it really didn't feel nice, handling that jagged-edged cover. So I thinks to myself: why not fix this? Can't make it worse, can I?

Now, I love books. Not just reading them, but handling them. I could probably be quite content in a job in the library's processing department, where they stick the Dewey Decimal stickers on the spine and put nice clear covers around the books to keep them looking pristine. Perhaps in another life I was a bookbinder? Anyway, fixing a poor, mutilated book is something that's quite a pleasing endeavor.

I started with a piece of plain white card stock, trimmed it to size, then glue-sticked it to the inside of the cover. So now instead of a half cover with a jagged edge I had a half-coloured cover with a jagged-edged section of white staring at me. Much better on the tactile end, but still not so glorious visually. Along comes the offspring (she of the scissors skills) and says "You should find that cover online, print it out and glue it on!" Brilliant, eh? And that's just what I did - well, the finding and glueing; she actually did the printing (it had to be sized just right to fit, and she's good with stuff like that; besides, she sits next to the printer. And she's just one of those obliging kinds of people).

So now I've got a nice, complete image on the cover of The LION, The Witch AND The WardrobE again. It's a little paler on one side, and the fit isn't 100% exact (due to the cropping of the online image). But that's just one of those pleasing signs of age, sort of like the wrinkles at the corners of my eyes (Velveteen Rabbit, with the plush loved off, that sort of thing). Just a sign that this book has been well-used (not just ill-used). I'm happy.

Life, the Universe, and the Fixing of Books. Now I can have my book fixes again.

Stacks of Austen and Some Jam

I went to the university library yesterday because I had some holds in. Even though I'm taking my degree through a distance ed university, I get to use the library of the local uni. That deal is called COPPUL, the Consortium Of Pacific and Prairie Libraries; they have an agreement to let each others' students use their libraries. So I get to take out whatever I want - and boy, do I ever!

I've always said that the library is the one place you can impulse-shop with impunity. Whatever catches your eye and strikes your fancy, grab it and take it home. The worst thing that could happen is that you forget to renew it and get hit with overdue fines, or perhaps that you spill your tea over the book and have to pay for it. But in the latter case, you usually get to keep the book, so if you liked it enough to take home, you might not mind owning a copy, albeit a somewhat tea-stained one.

So I had five holds in yesterday - and I walked out of that library with twenty-seven books altogether. Ahem. Well, they made me take them out! C'mon, wouldn't you grab a copy of Jane Austen's letters, or James Edward Austen-Leigh's memoir of his aunt Jane, or Jane Austen on Screen (with a lovely picture on the cover of Kate Winslet smiling winsomely at Allan Rickman)? You wouldn't? How strange. Well, I did.

The thing is that there's a real head rush about browsing the stacks in the library, something that only real bookworms understand. Collecting books with shameless abandon, and only stopping because you can't carry any more - I haven't done that in quite a long time. In fact, it was having a job at the library that made me stop doing that. When you work in the place, you don't browse the stacks any more. You take out what comes across the desk, and what you've ordered in because you found it in the catalogue. And then when I quit my library job, I never did go back to browsing, at least not in the public library. But now I'm doing it in the uni library, and it's lovely.

So am I actually going to read all twenty-seven of those books I took out? Nope, not on your life. I will flip through them, and pick out the bits that interest me and are useful for my paper. But there are some that'll be keepers. My favourite of this lot is The Sense and Sensibility Screenplay and Diaries by Emma Thompson; I already have a copy on order through ABE books. I've always liked Emma Thompson, ever since I first saw her in that movie (she plays Elinor, as well as having written the screenplay), but reading her diaries of the filming, oh my. She's utterly hilarious. And after reading that, I'll be watching the movie with rather different eyes. For example, when she gets up from Marianne's bedside after her night's vigil and rubs her   stiff neck - that's for real. She really did have a sore neck that day, and put it to good use in her acting.

In other news, we got four pounds of raspberries off our bushes in the garden yesterday, which made me quite happy. I only planted those vines two years ago; they were hand-me-downs from when my sister-in-law was pulling out her raspberries. So this morning I made jam, eight jars worth of lovely ruby sweetness. And being afflicted these days with early-waking insomnia, I was up in time to get it done by 9:00 - that's a record, for me.

Life, the Universe, Browsing the Stacks and Raspberry Jam. The small pleasures of life.

Jane Austenite

summer balcony view

"I am a Jane Austenite, and therefore slightly imbecile about Jane Austen. My fatuous expression and airs of personal immunity - how ill they set on the face, say, of a Stevensonian! But Jane Austen is so different. She is my favorite author! I read and reread, the mouth open and the mind closed. Shut up in measureless content, I greet her by the name of most kind hostess, while criticism slumbers."

That's E. M. Forster said that, not me (see citation below). I feel vindicated. Because he's a famous writer, so he ought to know. Nowadays, we mostly call ourselves Janeites, not Jane Austenites so much, although I believe Forster's the one who invented the term, back when he wrote this in 1936. [Addendum: no, he wasn't. Wikipedia says that the term "Janeite" was coined by George Saintsbury in 1894, and that Kipling wrote a short story called "The Janeites" about a group of WWI soldiers who're fans. Might have to track that one down, sounds intriguing.]

I've thoroughly enjoyed rereading the novels for my course, although it's taken me about four times longer than I had bargained for. Partially that's due to the fact that as soon as I have to do something for school, it becomes work, and therefore something to be avoided; that cuts down on processing speed considerably. And the other part was that really reading, carefully, every word, plus the forewords and afterwords and bonus materials, just takes longer than skipping through to get to your favourite bits (even if you read those three times over because you like them so much). But I'm done the reading, so now I can go into the writing.

On another note, the weather gods suddenly decided to crank up the thermostat, just in time for the beginning of the summer holidays. Today we're supposed to get to 34°C; this morning at 8:00, it was already 32°C in my east-facing kitchen, what with the sun burning through the window and patio doors. Thank God for the new window unit air conditioner in my bedroom/study; my papers would be doomed without it.

Life, the Universe, and Imbecile Jane Austenites. Keep cool!

(Forster, E. M. "Jane Austen: the Six Novels". A Truth Universally Acknowledged: 33 Great Writers on Why We Read Jane Austen. New York: Random House, 2009. 22-25.)

Something Old, Something New...

Something Borrowed, Something Blue. Don't worry, I'm not getting married. Nor is anyone else in my immediate family, immediately. No, the Something New I'm talking about is this: http://quillandqwerty.wordpress.com/. It's my new blog, for school. The Something Old is the dip pen I'm using for the cover illustration (which also has Something New, namely my netbook keyboard). And of course the subject of the course I'm in (more on that later). Something Borrowed, or, more accurately, swiped (with permission) is the title. A friend posted a picture on Facebook of her keyboard and a pen, with the caption "The quill and the qwerty", and I thought it was so catchy I promptly went and reserved a blog address under that name. I just parked it for a while - had no idea what to put on it, until my new prof suggested keeping a blog for my research. Bingo!

You see, it's so perfect because the course I'm taking is on Jane Austen (gasps of surprise from the audience - none of you knew I'm an Austen fan, of course. Yes, I hid it well.). She wrote all her books with a quill, as steel nibs weren't invented until 1822 (she died in 1817). And of course, now I, along with countless real scholars, ramble on about her works via QWERTY. Grad school - the excuse to re-read Austen, go rabbit trailing off in all kinds of directions on the topic, and then write big long papers and (hopefully) shorter blog posts on it. What's not to like?

Oh, what's the Something Blue? Me, sometimes. Unfortunately. But we'll deal with that when it arises. And the Caps Lock button on the left of the picture, that's blue too.

I'll still be here on amo vitam, rambling my ramblings, but if you feel like it, come on over to quill and qwerty and take a look. You don't have to stay if you don't want to.

Life, the Universe, the Quill and Qwerty. See you over there!

The Euphoria of Completion

SQUEEEEEAK! That was the sound of me squeaking in just under the wire with my term paper. Okay, technically I could have had until the end of June to finish this course, but I wanted to get it done before the summer semester starts tomorrow. So I buckled down, and got 'er done, just. And oh, does it ever feel good!

Have you ever felt that, the euphoria of completion? Post-term-paper euphoria. Post-exam euphoria. Graduation. Reaching the mountain summit. Crossing the finish line on a marathon. Okay, okay, I've never experienced the last one, being an inveterate couch potato. And the one before that only under duress - when I was a kid, they made me go hiking in the Swiss Alps in our holidays, when I would have much preferred to stay home with a book. I was so put-upon, I was. Once I got a bit older, I did go hiking voluntarily, especially when there were friends involved. But really, I usually preferred the easier hikes, not the ones that were really strenuous. The mountain tops were still quite nice there, but I'm pretty sure that the thrill of the summit is directly proportionate to the strain of the climb.

That's why it feels so great to have these term papers out of the way. You see, I do get in quite a flap about writing those things. My stress level rises to the roof, my blood pressure tries to follow suit, and my acid reflux... well, you get the picture. So why do I do these things in the first place? Why did I get myself into this degree program? It would have been so much easier to rest on my laurels (or my BA certificate, as it were. Except it wouldn't be very comfortable, and probably get crumpled, which would be a pity.). Well, why do you climb the mountain, or run that marathon? Because you know you have to, that's why.

And so you lace up your hiking boots, boot up your computer, lay out your paintbrushes and strap that four-foot canvas to the easel. You go to the library and check out foot-high stacks of books on Goethe and Kate Chopin, get the 1:50,000 topographic map that shows all the little hiking trails, do your training runs along the back roads of your town. And then you just get down to it. You run the race, climb the climb, paint the picture, write the paper. On and on, and on some more.

And then it's done. You crest the summit. And put your signature in the bottom right corner. And cross the finish line, type the last sentence, format the references, finally click "submit".

And you abandon yourself to the head rush of completion. Yesss!! You take a few deep breaths of the mountain air, and just take in the view. Look, there's the path we came up on! Oh, see, that's the spot where the cat wiped her tail through the ultramarine blue. Hey, that reference came from the article on Goethe and Chopin, that was fascinating. And aren't you glad somebody had a bottle of water for you at the half-way point? Now that you're done, you can look back, and turn the experience into story. You can start telling others how you got here. But first, you have to get here, you have to finish.  And when you do, it's all been worth it.

Life, the Universe, and The Euphoria of Completion. There is no other feeling like it.

Grad School Woes

Used with permission from Debbie Ridpath Ohi at Inkygirl.com.

Self-Explanatory

Steve modelling my current predicament

Holding Pattern

I haven't got anything to say. Not even supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. So I won't say it. There isn't any particular reason for any of that, just that most of my wit and inspiration sort of drained out my ears and evaporated in the heat; and what little was left of it got spent on stuff I was obligated to do (like course work for school).

So this blog is currently flying a holding pattern, waiting to come in for a landing. Don't worry, it'll happen eventually. Meanwhile, here's a pretty picture of a petunia to keep you occupied:


Life, the Universe, and Holding Patterns. Thank goodness for petunias.

Quitting

Well, the cold snap snapped out of it very quickly. After just a few days of blistering cold and snow, we're back to temperatures just above freezing, and the ice on the lake is turning to slush. They've even got the weed whacker out already! Yes, there's a lake weed trimmer. It looks like a cross between a barge and a tractor, and sails around on the lake, trimming the water weed down to manageable proportions. Usually, I've seen it out in the spring, but I guess winter is really a better time to go after the milfoil, which is an introduced water weed that, if left to its own devices, will happily take over the lake. The weed harvester had to do double-duty today as icebreaker, though, so I'm not sure they'll actually go through with it.

Which brings me to what I wanted to talk about today: quitting. Oh no, no, stop panicking! I'm not going to quit blogging (again). At least not right now. (That was what you were panicking about, wasn't it?) I'm also not talking about smoking, this time. No, this is a different matter. You see, I've gone back to school. Or, really, I'm staying right here in my comfortable computer chair, and am un-going back to school, as it were: I enrolled in an online Master's degree program. I started a couple of weeks ago, blithely getting myself into two full courses at once. And by the end of the first week, I was starting to panic.

Now, I've done online studies before; in fact, my whole undergrad degree was done without once setting foot in a classroom. I really like that method of studying. But, wouldn't you know it, grad school is harder than undergrad! Nobody told me that. (It's rather like when we moved from our mobile home to our nice big house - nobody told me that a house that's three times as big as your old one also takes three times as long to clean.) The nerve of them, leaving me ignorant like that! Well, actually, truth be told, they did tell me; I just wasn't ready to hear it.

So there I was, overwhelmed, stressed, and feeling like I was already falling behind, in my first week of studies. (Here is Steve, modelling what the overwhelmedness looked like.) And you know what I did? I quit. No, not the whole shot - I've waited so long to be able to take this Master's program, to finally get to play with the big kids, I'm not going to drop out! Not just yet, anyway. No, I just let go of one of the two courses I had enrolled in. The one that wasn't mandatory. It'll be offered again next year. And meanwhile, I'm going to enjoy myself in the one course I have left.

My pride had to take a bit of a hit on that one. I thought I could handle this - as I said, I'm well used to doing online studies. How different could this be? Besides, I don't have a paying job right now, I can really concentrate on studying. Most of my classmates do this stuff on top of full-time work. But, the fact of the matter is, I was getting stressed, and overwhelmed, and not liking it - and so, what's the point to keep on slugging away at something that's no fun, just in order to satisfy my craving for showing how much better I am than everyone else because I can handle this (with one hand tied behind my back, the other holding a mug of tea, and my nose doing the typing)? Forget it. I'd rather be happy than impressive. If I have to pay with burnout for satisfying my pride, it's not worth it. In fact, paying with anything for satisfying my pride is not worth it.

So I pulled up the form that said "Course Withdrawal" on the top, filled in my information (what's my student number again?), and hit "send". Phew. On with the course that's left. I'm determined to have fun with this.

Life, the Universe, and Quitting. I highly recommend it.