Why Can't I Yawn Anymore?

It's been an eventful few days, let me tell you. Anyone reading Leslie's silver fork saga knows the wedding we attended on the Jersey shore was lovely. Hilda the bride and Joe the groom looked great. The beach looked great. The whole thing seemed to go off without a single hitch or major glitch, though perhaps the bride might quibble with me about that. At any rate, everyone seemed to have a lovely time. I mean, look how happy and cute they are:

I would add that there was some initial worry on the bride's part that the groom wouldn't actually dance. But he danced. With quite a bit more enthusiasm than I think any of us could have anticipated. He grooved. He shimmied. He bopped. Granted, there appeared to be a lot of self-mockery in his dancing attempts, but still, he danced. And all was well. And I took a lot of other pictures that were really quite funny--like the series of Joe and friend and groomsman Chris, each with an arm around the other, and looking quite tipsy in that way that you can only get tipsy at weddings. Indeed, each picture seemed to perfectly capture a stage of the sort of drunken conversation that frequently happens between good friends at one of their weddings--happiness, nostalgia, "deep" seriousness, and a sort of equally "deep" pseudo-pragmatism, a gesture that sums up the conversation and the state of things, a "that's life"--in Joe's case, a tipping back of his beer into his mouth. It was positively magnificent as pictorial series go.

On the other hand, the wedding ended eventually, and I had to return (once again) to my dissertation. I also had to come back to the fact that my defense is imminent, and I have a very limited time to complete what seems more and more to be an insurmountable amount of work. The trick is to care enough to get it done, but not to care enough to make it perfect. It's an ordeal. And I tell myself that in the grand scheme of things, I don't really care. But once I start writing, my desire for perfect, fluid, eloquent prose seems to overwhelm the grand scheme and starts stabbing at all the sensitive points in my brain and ego. To such an extent that I get all cranky-pants and start mentally swearing at anyone or anything that crosses my path. Like for instance, at all the guys doing construction in the office I work in. Every time someone drilled something, or didn't get out of my way as I tried to make my way to the coffee machine, or when the annoyingly perky secretary said "Hi, and how are YOU doing today??!!" I silently sent them on their merry way to Hell. I then sent the same sentiments mentally to my loving parents, who I actually love back very much, but who just said all the wrong things on the phone last night. I mean, I'm all about reciprocity, but the truth is--and it's not my subjective truth--it's an objective truth that the folks have actually acknowledged--my problems are bigger than their problems are right now, and damn it, I'm looking for sympathy, not a matter-of-fact statement that all I need to do right now is finish the damn dissertation. Damn it, I KNOW I have to finish the dissertation, but that doesn't make it finish faster. And damn it, after all their discourse on how I can TOTALLY leave academia, and find a job I like, and that I'll have their complete support, why are they so freaked about my actually talking about leaving? And why are they telling me not to jump ship just yet? The goal is to resolve my ambivalence/indecision, not to prolong it, people. So work on that, why don't you?

And in trying to get back into "I'm going to finish the dissertation now, no really, I mean it this time" mode, I've been kind of frustrated and very tired. And I've discovered this seemingly constant desire to yawn and an inability to satisfy this same desire. Damn it, WHY CAN'T I YAWN ANYMORE? Oh sure, it happens after a couple dozen tries, and in that moment, yawning is kind of the meaning of life. It's infinitely satisfying. I feel like everything is ok. And then of course, the desire returns. I'm like Sisyphus, or that other guy in Hell that's submerged up to his chin in water but every time he tries to drink, the water recedes. You know. That guy. Whazhisname. Unless that IS Sisyphus and I'm mixing up the names of the various guys in Hell sentenced to eternal tortures. But I'm pretty sure it's Sisyphus--the guy who has to keep rolling a big boulder up a big hill and everytime he gets near the top it rolls back down to the bottom. Futility really does suck.

Other than that, I continue to wonder why I originally wanted to be an academic, and if I still want to. I hate my dissertation at the moment. Oh sure, I've liked it in the past, and perhaps I will like it again someday. But right now, the hate is there, and I think it's mutual; yes, that's right, my dissertation appears to hate me back.

On the plus side, there was leftover cake in the office refrigerator. So someone somewhere threw me a tiny, little bone today. Seriously: I think I might have to run away from home. Or hit someone. Really hard.

p.s. I want to add that I've tried working more this evening, and I'm just not getting anywhere. It's a bloody mess, this chapter. And I honestly do not know what else to do about it right now. And the temptation is to call someone and vent, but I know that won't actually help me write. In fact, you know something? J.K. Rowling said something about this--either on her personal website, or in an interview posted on mugglenet.com or some other Harry Potter fansite. Basically, she said she didn't like to talk about her writing WHILE she was writing--that talking ABOUT writing took energy away from ACTUALLY writing, and I've found that this is abolutely true for me as well. And you know what else? THAT is helpful. Knowing that a bazillionaire like J.K. Rowling, who has created a book series that millions and millions of people are deeply invested in, acknowledges that there's a process to writing and that you have to respect that process, even if it's making you lose your freaking mind. Because what else can you do? I am also consulting a horoscope I cut out a while ago from Rob Brezny's Free Will Astrology that is also appropriate, and follows a similar line of thought. The seminal lines: "Progress will proceed at its own pace, not yours. The peaches will ripen when they are ready, not necessarily when you are. "In other words,try to practice quiet acceptance of wherever you're at, even if you're ready to kick and scream and gouge your eyes out about it. Not to mention, stomp on those damn, slow-ass peaches.