overwhelmed

procrastination sets in when feeling overwhelmed.  too many arenas of life overlapping simultaneously: finances, dissertation, teaching, family, relationship.  everything seems to be happening today.

so i have about a week before i said i would turn in my dissertation proposal to my committee.  doug, my therapist ( a pseudonym), suggests i rethink my study so that i can hold a steady job.  i told him my plan was to travel this semester and next to interview teachers using critical pedagogy.  i also told him how much money i owe in student loans and how i will have trouble making ends meet this coming year.  especially with my having to pay child support and daughter’s health insurance.  yikes.

this is what’s in the back of my mind when i try to approach my study proposal this morning at 8:30.  this and the class that i have to teach in 8 days, a class that has no syllabus.  thank god susan wants to meet and discuss it tomorrow so we can make some plans for our shared cohort.

blogging is indeed narcicissism.  webme.0.

regarding sampling procedures: is it feasible from a research perspective to limit my study to, say, three major geographic areas for face-to-face interviews and then conduct the rest via telephone?  i haven’t done the initial sampling yet based on who is currently teaching critical pedagogy and where they are located geographically, but let’s say that there are clusters of teachers in say, milwaukee, northampton, mass., and athens.  who’s to say I couldn’t hold down a steady part-time teaching job and make three extended trips to collect data?  that seems reasonable, i think.

i am avoiding writing today.  too much to do.  still have to grade the tech ai project and start looking at creating my syllabus.  blah.  no motivation.  maybe i should move all my stuff to aderhold so i am not sitting around at home.  will that motivate me?

What the hell is going on?

I’m not used to feeling this way.  Ever meet someone with whom you feel an instant connection and you just want to talk for hours and hours and everything feels just right?  That’s how I feel right now.  Cloud nine.  It’s quite nice.

This blog

Taking a break after three hours of researching journal articles for my lit review, I suppose I should lay out a few topics this blog might explore.  One, apparently, is a chronicle of my evolving work as a phd student/scholar/researcher/educator.  At least that is what is on my mind right now, while I’m deep in the trenches (lovely military metaphor) of this work.  I may also chronicle the challenges of drug and alcohol recovery; parrhesia (hence the blog title) and what it means to be honest and to have the courage to speak truth to power in a time of incredible repression in the U.S.; social justice in general but also as it relates to education in particular; teaching, education, and teacher education; popular culture–things like television, the media, facecrackbook and social networking, music, etc.; and a host of other topics I am not thinking of right now.

As John and Paige have discussed (hey, so far you guys might be my only readers!!!), blogging and social networking represent our society’s latest form of narcissism.  With the trepidation that this statement brings to me–which is why I probably haven’t blogged in the first place–I acknowledge up front that any and all of this drivel may just be my own journaling and hence prove more suitable for the therapist’s couch than the publicly-available printed page.  Or perhaps it’s my own feeling of inadequacy speaking.  I guess what I am trying to say is that this is mostly a space for the cathartic process of writing to wash over me, to free the path from my thoughts to my typing fingers and see what happens.  I make a promise to myself not to hold down delete too often.

New Day

So after a year of letting this thing sit, I have decided to take Paige’s advice and attempt to put my facebook energy into my blog.  Which will be a challenge, since my perfectionism can get the best of me when it comes to putting printed word to page, but here goes…

My first challenge is to spend much more time composing and drafting rather than editing.  Peter Elbow and other writers writing about writing talk about the need to draft, unedited, and just let the thoughts flow.  This is my first obstacle, for my tendency is to delete more than I actually type.  I am going to have to pay attention to this or I simply won’t have a blog.

So yesterday, much to my surprise, I spent a solid five hours at a coffeeshop studying.  This came as a surprise because I figured I would have to build up my stamina for my graduate school work more gradually, and I surprised myself that I could actually sit and concentrate for so many hours, especially after giving up Friday after only about an hour and a half of real work.  Yay, Scott.

*Oh, yeah, and while these days I do not hesitate to write “yay” nearly as much as I used to–I once preferred what I thought was a more correct “yea” to show excitement, as in “respond with ‘yea’ or ‘nay’ to record your vote,” realizing that language is evolving and that la gente’s misspelling of “yea” to mean “yeah” has confused things–another subject and digression (perhaps?) entirely…

One strange side-effect of my studying for five hours instead of, say, three yesterday was that I came home and CRASHED on the couch, ultimately falling asleep and not waking until 4:26am this morning, fortunately in my bed rather than still on the couch.  I found myself last night wishing I still had cable or satellite television so that my time on the couch could lead to my relishing in some Bravo marathon delight.  If only I could have steeped myself in Top Chef or Shear Genius or some other “reality” unreality to ease my mind into slumber slowly rather than relying on Netflix dvd’s to supply used television.  My Netflix dvd’s often sit unwatched as I update my queue and hope for something better.  But again I digress, as if there’s an actual important thread or agenda here from which to digress.  Can one digress from a digression?  Can one write solely in digression?  If so, that shall be the substance of this blog.

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