I don't mean all writing; this isn't a statement on writing, or writers, or anything like that; I mean just mine. Me. I need readers - even just the illusion of readers, which the blog maintains, compared to say writing an email to myself.
Some thoughts:
1. I have never procrastinated so much in my life as in the last five years. Also known as grad school.
2. I've been reading Jenny Diski's books. Not all procrastination (see (1)) is mindless, but it is procrastination.
3. Looking after the baby - the toddler! - now is high-level procrastination. Or perhaps this dissertation is high-level escapism; most escapists (escapees? no) have to make do with less high-falutin means of procrastination. Either way - I'm doing both in half-assed fashion.
4. I'm much less patient with other people (my parents, my husband) when displeased with myself. This is not a new observation to me, just one borne in again and again and again upon me.
5. Maybe the thing to do is to suck it up and accept that my parents show love in the way that they can, for me and for the kid. You can't dictate people's responses. You can tell them your needs, though - or can you? Perhaps that's too close to dictation? At any rate, I don't appear to be able to suck it up. And I do appear to have different needs.
6. I don't want to outsource my child.* I think I have legitimate grievances, although that's not to say that my reaction to my parents has been generous, or that they don't have legitimate grievances against me. I'm finding out that I'm more my mother's daughter than ever I realised - than ever she realised? Her reaction is mine - to say yes, yes I understand, but really only seeing the rejection and the instruction. Learning the words but not the vulnerability and openness that would give meaning to the words. A defensive technique. Which is perfectly, yes, understandable, but also frustrating.
*That's not a generous way of looking at the matter. But for me, it would really be outsourcing.
7. I should subscribe to the Straits Times. To some local news source. I'm one of those people who gets their news from FB, and it's not like I have a diversified FB feed, or even that I check it very much.
8. None of this is about the dissertation. Which I've lost interest in. And lost faith in myself. Both of these precede the child, but having her around (see (3)) isn't really helping.
9. The usual thing to say is: do better, pull your socks up, get your act together, pull yourself together, work harder, just do it. And if you can't? If all this panicking and procrastinating and muddling around in circles is all there is to it?
10. I have to go.
