Only ten days or so until tuition payment is due for the fall semester. I am going to pay it. It's the last class I need to satisfy all the course requirements. Though I am not any closer to deciding what to write about, I am much more at ease with not knowing than I was at the start of the summer. I have so many ideas; it's just that the thought of two years delving into any one of them just doesn't seem right. Sometimes it occurs to me that I just don't care enough about anything to spend two years submerged in it. That is such a shock. I can't believe it.
One thing that is odd about this whole process is that I used to make relatively major decisions with very little fuss. I didn't feel compelled to take all future ramifications of them into account (as though I really knew what those might be!). I was much more comfortable with the idea of the path leading off into the woods (no way to know where it's going and that's ok). Now I seem to expect that what I decide to write about has to be the first step along a path that I know now I'll want to stay on for twenty years. I think that's asking way too much. I need to just look at it as a single topic, a single experience, like the last two years of coursework has been. It's just something I'm going to do, and then move on.
I got some good suggestions from friends in comments to last blog entry and in conversations with others on the phone. School will start next week and I will be back on campus and will have lots of opportunities to explore these ideas with others. I definitely need to stay relaxed about it, comfortable with the ambiguity of not knowing what I'm going to be doing or what difference it will make or where it will take me. Zen Mind Beginner's Mind.
1 comment:
When I get all worried about this, my mother tells me - "Don't worry so much. It's just another paper. It's bigger and will take longer, but really at the base is just another piece of academic work." It helps me to hear that.
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