between the rock and the cold, cold sea

Today in Ireland it is a day of public drunkenness and parades, of which first the saint whose feast it is would possibly have disapproved, and of which second doubtless he would have preferred more holy themes.

I hate St. Patrick's Day because it is boring. And also because as far as I can tell the historical St. Patrick was a bit of a prick.

So let me link you instead to two lectures on ancient medicine which my supervisor forwarded me: on this page, Vivian Nutton and Geoffrey Lloyd.

Strange Horizons has started their annual fund drive.

I admire SH a lot - and I've learned a great deal from their reviews editor, Abigail Nussbaum, in the time I've been contributing reviews - so I'm spreading the word. Also, if they raise USD $10,000, they'll pay more for reviews, so there's an element of self-interest involved...

I read and reviewed a book. I asked three interview questions. I sent one interview query. I got my supervisor's blessing to write an abstract for this conference. (I'm still not sure what I'm writing the abstract on, but details! Details!) I exchanged actual spoken words with other humans, including my supervisor. I wrote 150 words on my thesis, and feel I may possibly be beginning to reacquire momentum. I ran 0.5 miles and exercise biked 5.5km. I bench-pressed 3x12 18kg. I bicep curled 3x5 20kg. I queried the status of poems on submission.

I drank too much diet Coke and ate too much chocolate. Working on healthier habits = hard.

So I didn't really do all that much today.

I have achieved a second draft of my conference paper, "The Experience of Entrance at the Pergamene and Koan Asklepieia." Hopefully this is a near-final draft.

Maybe now I will feel less useless and depressed. Next thing to do, make powerpoint with sanctuary plans.

There are four weeks left during which I must take classes. It will be a great relief when I can sit down to do research without having to keep up with Greek homework also. Perhaps then I will be able to write again.

Interestingly - and in things which give me hope - I wrote a whole paragraph of fiction today.

( Read more... )

Not that it'll go anywhere. But, hell. Writing that in half an hour made me feel a hell of a lot better than I have in at least a week or so.

Damn the world for being so big and inimical anyway.

Snow is really quite baffling.

Hopefully there will be sufficiently little of it tomorrow that I can pop into town and collect a last couple of books from the library before the Christmas closure. (I tried yesterday. Spent 2.5 hours not getting anywhere, due to SNOW which had COMPLETELY SCREWED our public transport system. The bus turned around and went back, eventually.)

If I can get that done, and this sneezy schnoz/icky cold clears up soonish, I'll have clear decks for making a productive go of the season of joy and good cheer. It seems to be a good way to spend the darkest part of the year: settle in with a stack of academic books and try to produce a workable Chapter 1 by mid February.

I also have a bunch of Greek to do, a couple of articles that hopefully someone will pay me for (money situation: not getting better, but I am not panicking yet, because something will turn up (it damn well better)) and some fiction to write so I can pretend I still think of myself as a writer. Which I do, damnit.

And the gym reopens over the holiday period, so just as soon as I get this cold gone, I can start reclaiming the (very large) stretch of ground I've lost.

We're supposed to get a thaw for Christmas. I'm looking forward to not shivering my socks off. I do not have the clothing for constant sub-zero temperatures. (And can't afford to buy new clothes till the end of February. So not yay.)

Anyway.

...Although I can't honestly say you're my only hope.

Fantasy empires. What's the first one that leaps to mind?

(Or two.)

Things to do, in no particular order:

1. Start laundry.

2. Organise the on-desk mess. Preferably into something other than an on-floor mess.

3. Revise bursary app in line with supervisory recommendations.

4. Advance further through Byron Good, Medicine, rationality and experience.

5. Random errands. Bluetack. Turnip. Reporter's-size notebook.

6. Further tasks to be determined.

One of the things I'm learning about myself -

I do learn. I'm a better person now than I was a year ago, two years ago, with a more nuanced understanding of the world and other people. I still fuck up, of course. I commit stupidity, as well as - on occasion - matchless self-pity.

But that's okay, isn't it? Because as long as I keep trying to learn, to do better, to improve a grasp of nuance, to be better -

You learn best from your mistakes. And other people's examples, too, but one's own mistakes do leave a stronger impression.

I've figured out, I think, what I want to do with my life. Which is something of a relief, and it's a relief to think it might actually be achievable. I'm drawn, overwhelmingly, to research, and rereading my thesis it looks like I'm not terrible at it.

It took me about two months to achieve that much perspective on those ten thousand words, and even now, the most I'm prepared to say is that as a piece of work, it doesn't actually suck. But that's an apprentice-piece, if that: scholarship has a lengthy apprenticeship, and with postgraduate work, and practice, I should improve.

It's problematic for me, I think, that my attraction is that of a generalist: everything is fascinating, and I'm not sure I'll ever muster the intense focus required to be an Authority in a single area of a single field - very few people do, after all, and mostly after a lifetime of directed labour. But that doesn't mean I can't shape myself into a perfectly adequate scholar within the areas I'm most interested in. Nor does it mean that I cannot take Mary Beard and Robin Lane Fox for my models, and strive in future years to write broad and accessible history with a sound scholarly foundation. (One may criticise Beard's claims to break new ground with her every new book, particularly when some of these have been largely syntheses of existing scholarship, and Lane Fox's biases as a Classically trained Classicist show through in his material, but no one can say they don't have a very solid foundation in their work.) And there's no harm in aiming high - I know both Beard and Lane Fox are successful professors as well as writers of decent popular history - since at least by so aiming, I don't run the risk of shooting myself in the foot.

I know, at this point, that I can do research and write it up with a reasonable competence that can only improve with practice. Despite its many frustrations and moments of flailing despair, writing my thesis was an immensely satisfying experience, and - now that I've had a little time to recover - one that I wouldn't hesitate to embark upon again.

Research, after all, is about accuracy, coherence, relevance, structure, and - in good history writing - the empathy of imagination which gives the past life. And bar the last, those are learned skills. It's only the desire that can't be learned. The passion, if you will.

Or the obsession, if you prefer.

While I still want to write novels, stories, I've no confidence in my ability to do so. Nor am I sure I want to split my attention and try to write seriously while working on something that could conceivably lead to a decent career.

The odds of earning a living as an academic are slightly better than earning a living as a writer. Something like one in twelve (or one in twenty: I understand it varies depending on your discipline) PhD graduates manage to make a career in a related field. What are the odds as a novelist? One in thirty? Worse? How many people who (finish, submit and) publish a novel go on to write full time without the support of a spouse?

Until someone tells me I've been accepted to an MLitt programme, of course, this is moot. And we'll see what happens this summer, and whether in this economy the parent and the government between them can float me long enough to acquire a postgrad degree.

But it is something of a relief, in the end, to actually know (part of) what I am, and where I want, primarily, to go. (The addiction to history books, for fun, after the first year of college, kind of clued me in to the fact that this passion is not one that'll easily suffer to be set aside.) I'm willing to do a lot, if it means I might, one day, write a small monograph that could be judged a worthy contribution to scholarship.

So we'll see. This summer I want to properly start myself on learning German and Italian, with Latin if I can manage it. Odds are against me finding employment, so I'll likely have time, if not money. And the backlog of books on the Unread shelves deserve some attention before I saunter off to learn Greek in foreign places (cash and situations permitting).

So, yeah. I'm feeling remarkably mellow and optimistic regarding my place in the world. That'll last all of a few days, I imagine, but I'll enjoy it while it lasts.

I can has cramps.

Do not want.

Wake me if the world starts ending more rapidly than usual, k?

It's impossible to work when this is the first properly warm day of the year. Fifteen degrees! Sunshine! Shorts weather!

So I went for a painful twenty-minute run on one of the beaches - about a mile and a half, I think - enjoying the pleasant shocking warmth all the way. And there was paddling. The sea's still quite cold. Then there was food at the good local food place, and there was an encounter with a very friendly tabby kitten who's going to grow up into a gorgeous cat. (I wanted to abduct him. He was very friendly.)

And now there is staring out my window at warmth and sunshine and blue skies and green grass.

That was a long winter. I don't think I quite realised how long until now.