zulu

1. I have a charley horse in my right...hip? thigh? Anyway, the inside crease bit where the leg meets the torso. BASICALLY MY CROTCH, in the legular region. It huuuuuurts. Well, not always--just when I move injudiciously, which seems to be most movement. I can't sit for too long, or roll over when I'm lying down. Walking is fine. I'm sure I should be stretching it out instead of sitting around complaining about it, but I just wanna find a position of non-hurtyness and stay there. This is after two extra-strength Robaxacet, so. Maybe it's just not my muscles, but a ligament or something? Can my body please stop getting injured? Any time would be fine. Thank you, patron saint of random injuries with long annoying recovery times. P.S. I still have some kind of RSI thing going on in my wrist.

2. Stress: I has it. I was thinking about what stress does to me, physically/emotionally/intellectually, as a way to maybe move past it a bit. And what I found is that it shuts me down a bit, puts me in this distant sort of closed-off lassitude, where there's more and more stuff piling up to do, but I do less and less of it. As a coping mechanism, this is not very efficacious, I have to say. However, taking a break from all my worries sure does help a lot. So: reading, a TV show, something, can usually get me centered and focused again. Also, food. The difference between my pre-lunch and post-lunch stress levels is gigantic. I think a to-do list will help also, as you will see at the bottom of this entry. And luckily for me, bell is totally my person when it comes to those stupid moments when you have to Deal. &bell;

3. I still have a ton to do this week. Poor planning, I expect. Scholarship deadlines Feb 1, medieval drama presentation Feb 2, must apply for funding for conference thingy, also book flights, hotel for the other conference thingy. Write the conference paper. Keep up with readings. So on etc. Blah blah blah let's make a list.

( to-do list )

I feel like this list should be way longer, but that should do for now.

How do you guys deal with stress?

more to-do.

( Medieval Drama readings for Monday... )

Plus I should start my research for my presentation considering I have a prof-meeting about it Monday morning.

I'm not allowed to work on website design until my readings are done. *pout*.

( Friday is homework day, natch. )

:D Once again my posting-fu is weak, so I am going to talk about things that happened LONG AGO, i.e. Christmas, and how awesome they were. It was bell's first Christmas with my family, so we got to tell her about all our (weird?) traditions. Like helping to decorate the gingerbread house (it was also oldest nephew's first year with the gingerbread decorating, and mostly he found it extremely unjust that he was not allowed to eat any and every candy that happened to be within arm's reach). Like getting a stocking! And then all that family and opening-presents stuff, which is fun but quite potentially overwhelming. I think it went well, though. I got her ski lessons (taught by me, with equipment rental included), and she got me only the MOST AMAZING THING EVER, which I will share with you RIGHT NOW.



YOU GUYS. It is House/Foreman fanart! I will not lie, I teared up when I saw it, because it is perfect and it is exactly what I always wanted, and she did a wonderful job of keeping it a secret from me. I know the setting is a bit vague, but I think of it as being from Reunion (even though there is no scene like that in Reunion). It is so pretty and evocative and. AWESOME CHRISTMAS PRESENT.

Also on the awesome list is my ski pass. It is not a surprise because I ask for it every year; poor students need substantial subsidies when it comes to skiing. But Thursday was a great day to go. It'd snowed seven centimeters the night before, and was still snowing when we got there. It was a nice day, with enough sun that the light wasn't too flat (mostly), and not too cold either. Me, grelse, and my parents went, so there were various ways to split up on difficulty levels. It was my first day of the year so I had jelly legs after about the first run. It was okay, though, because after about three runs I remembered how to ski again! Yay! It was a long day, with mostly cruisers for me because I'm easing my foot back into this whole "exercise" thing, but a few nice deep powder runs just to prove that my thighs could indeed take just that much abuse. Then we had hot chocolate and came home and I was very very stiff and it was all worth it because WOOSH.

And now I'm sitting back on the couch watching some Psych and being laaaaaazy on my last day of break before school. ERK. SCHOOL. MILD PANIC. I'm sort of ready to go back but sort of nervous. I don't know why! The first semester went fine! And yet. Oh well, I'm sure it will go fine. La la la at least twelve more lazy hours in my immediate future, tis good.

Man, I keep promising I'll get better at updating again, and then I never do, and then I feel guilty, and then after a while it just seems natural not to update, and... Okay, this sounds like the same spiel every time I update after not having updated for a long time, and it is, and I get that, but. I think this has truly been one of the things I've adjusted to least about grad school, the kind of grad school where you actually have to work, as opposed to, uh, my master's degree. *cough*. During my master's I always had plenty of time for fandom; maybe even some of my most productive time. I had time to hang out on chat for hours and hours, I had time to talk and beta and just, I dunno, be there for people, and I miss that, and I keep...wanting it back, but feeling guilty about all this time I've spent away, and knowing that I'm just about to spend another four months up to my neck in work. I guess, to go back to childhood, I was always taught that a real true apology involves changing the behaviour and if I can't promise to be back, if I can't be around like I was, how can I apologize for not being around? I'm just going to disappear again. Which--see the thing is, I absolutely love what I do, this semester's going to be even awesomer than last semester, in terms of classes and teaching, but. I miss so much about how I used to do fandom--mostly, I miss people!--that I feel like I'm not doing it at all, and I don't have room to do it anyway, and.

In England I wrote probably a couple hundred thousand words of fic. This year I was thinking about doing a "year in fic" meme but realized how pointless it'd be--do you know how much fic I wrote this year? One. Uno. A single singular fic. That is the grand total. And, I mean, while I like certain aspects about it, and it never hurts that it was a remix for bell because I love remixing and especially if it can be a special present for someone I know, if I'm being frank it is not that awesome a fic: it never quite gelled and the remix-structure idea I had never came through, so that I ended up only posting half of it and it's...adequate.

God, the biggest irony of going to grad school for a creative writing degree is the complete lack of time I have to write. I'm sure several people told me it'd happen--that my writing would suffer if I ever tried to get a degree in writing--and I didn't mind that so much, because I was never afraid of prioritizing the non-writing parts of academia (you know, the parts that were mostly writing papers). So I didn't worry that I wouldn't be writing fiction because I was interested in all that other stuff. But more and more I feel like a sham, like it's fake to even call myself a writer, because I don't and haven't written fiction or fan fiction in ever ever ever. Last fiction I wrote was over a year ago, last fanfic was remix.

This semester, very last class of the semester in fact, my prof for one class said (I feel like I've told this anecdote before, and I'm always wary of repeating anecdotes, so if I'm repeating you can see how hard this stuck with me)--he said, if you miss one day's writing, your skills atrophy two days' worth. And I thought, oh god, two years. Two years minimum to get my skills back to where they were. And it was so god damned disheartening. I mean, this prof is my "how to teach creative writing" prof AND my advisor so presumably someday he's going to be judging my thesis (hypothetically, a novel), and sometimes it's nice that he's cynical and wants to damn the man, save the grad student, but this time cynicism just wasn't what I was looking for at all.

At this point I forget entirely what I was even going to say when I opened this update window. But, hey, check it, my class schedule is going to be cool this semester: I'm taking Comics & Graphic Novels! Plus two other core requirements that might not be too bad. Plus, leading my own creative writing workshop! (Remind me not to be too cynical for the first-years.)

Anyway, I feel more and more like I'm drifting away from people--from online friends in fandom, but also from writing friends IRL, because they were my social circle for so long and now when I'm with them I'm mostly thinking about how much I'm not writing. But I like where I am! But I miss what I was! But I'm doing cool stuff! But I'm losing my hobbies!

Life is really awesome, when it comes down to it. I've had a good break and I feel ready to go back, and I'm really pleased that I'm powering through my coursework so that--ostensibly--I can get back to the writing thing, but there's tradeoffs, and I don't want to say that they're worth it but I don't know how to back that up with actions.

Me: profoundly ambivalent, sigh.

Thank you to everyone who commented earlier. I feel tons better.

A large part of that must go to the Muppets, who were everything I dreamed of and more. ( spoilers )

You know, when I am a professor, I hope I remember this moment. My prof's a bit of an anarchist--often goes on tangents about the repressive qualities of The Man in academe--and says that grading is the worst thing we, as creative writing teachers, can possibly do. Thus, he hates grading. Thus, there are pretty much zero guidelines for this paper I'm supposed to hand in today! ARGH. On the one hand, I can't be worried, because I'm pretty sure he'll give me an A for whatever garbage I happen to spew (grades are the devil, so everyone should just get As automatically). On the other hand, what the hell kind of garbage should I spew? It's supposed to be two parts, one practical and one theoretical. Maybe one part is an undergraduate lecture. (But maybe not.) And maybe the other part is related to readings we did. (But not necessarily.) That's...pretty much what I got. And it's all verbal--based on notes I took halfway through the semester. Nothing written.

*bangs head on various surfaces* This much angst, and I am earning that stupid meaningless A.

Repeat the mantra: Grad school is hoop-jumping. This is a hoop. I will jump through it. Even if it is a FUCKING STUPID HOOP.

This is getting cut from the essay, but I rather like it, so:

As with Trunchfield's martyrdom, Foxe's marginalia foreground both his anxieties and the moral lessons he wishes to impart to his readers. Freeman, writing of John Careless's letters to his wife Margaret, argues that Foxe's marginalia are didactic in nature, instructing women how to be good wives (28). Monta characterizes Foxe's marginalia as "insistent" and "bullying," pushing "the godly reader to read the martyrs' words as their editor does" (9). These marginalia act as Foxe's interpretation and policing of the facts of the martyrs' lives. Foxe actively confronts the facts of his subjects' lives, using the margins as a space for his pedantry. The tension between Foxe's moral directives to the reader and his fact-based (but inevitably embellished) narrative provides another space to evaluate Foxe's veracity. The straightforward marginalia in Dangerfield's case strip the account to its bare chronology. Didactic and morally insistent marginalia pointing to the sanctity of marriage speak to Foxe's intended interpretation. Marginalia such as that in Bradberge's case which offer a pun at the Catholic clergy's expense provide examples of Foxe's demagoguery. However, instances when Foxe withholds comment entirely provide insight into another rhetorical technique that poises Foxe's narrative between biography and doctrinal explanation.

( 'nother paragraph )

I'm constantly amazed at the sheer density of my term paper. I'm putting about as much effort into it--and perhaps more--than I did for my entire master's thesis (not counting the surveying itself). That was 15 000 words, and this will be 5000, but it's just--dense. And I'm going through the same cycles of depths of despair to the giddy heights of "I guess maybe it doesn't suck." It's taking way too much time and I'm sure I over-researched and right now I'm probably over-preparing the outline, but somehow I can't not; I think it's because ultimately I don't have confidence in my argument. I'm going back to primary sources, and every time I think I've found something new to say, I find it when I review the secondary research I've already done. *facepalm*. But I think it's interesting, and I think there just might be a place for it in Biography or The Sixteenth-Century Journal, if I'm persistent. I don't know how that works yet, so I suppose it's time I found out. I'd like to have a couple of publications under my belt by the end of the year. Failing that (as I'm likely to), a couple of nice rejections. I'll submit three things, I think. We'll see how it goes.

This post, like everything in my life currently, is procrastination. But it does clear the brain. Slightly.