It's All In Your Head

No, I haven't been writing.

No, I haven't been writing at all.

Not letters, not content for my job, not in my journal, not on my blog.

The only word document that's gotten any love from me over the last month is my dissertation.

Let's be honest, it isn't going very well.

Sure, the research is done and the brainstorming has happened, and I've organized all my quotes and primary sources, but the actuality of writing this is just not coming along.

Wrote 4400 words.
Submitted them.
Received comments back saying it was interesting but needed an entirely different focus and direction.

I have a secret for you.
Please don't tell.
The literary community as a whole will for sure judge and ostracize me.

I don't get it.
I don't get literature.
Or its purpose.
Or why anyone would spend years of their life writing about literary theory.

Don't get me wrong. I absolutely love literature--to a fault really.
I also enjoy reading up on the theory of it.

But what is the purpose?
I can't find it.

And because I can't find it, I can't write it.

Somehow, literary theory is like math to me.
And results in very near hysteria from me.
Okay, so not "very near".
Actual hysteria.
The hissy fit kind.

The truth is, professor, that I can't write on how the knowledge of family structure and mental health illuminates a global understanding of the literature because I don't know myself.

It's the same struggle I have with other human beings.
I can see when they are feeling something, but I don't know what it is or why or how to go about deciphering it.

My vision is so literal. It isn't for lack of study or effort on my part. It feels as though I am blind and deaf to that sort of thinking.

So yes. This is me admitting that I have spent four years of university coping, finding alternative strategies to writing my literature papers in order to avoid literary theory.

Remember that "impostor syndrome"?
In this area, it really isn't so much of a syndrome so much as it that I really have been tricking people into thinking I know what I'm doing and have now been found out.
I haven't the faintest idea of what I'm doing.


So yes, my life is full of wonderful things.
I'm so glad to be here in Siloam.
I love my job.
I like being around my friends and housemates so so much.
My blog writing will probably be filled primarily with strategies, small wins, and struggles of writing a dissertation for a few weeks.