{"id":1023,"date":"2013-03-24T21:56:44","date_gmt":"2013-03-25T04:56:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/?p=1023"},"modified":"2013-03-24T21:56:44","modified_gmt":"2013-03-25T04:56:44","slug":"baby-thesis-baby-thesis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/?p=1023","title":{"rendered":"Baby, Thesis, Baby, Thesis"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

My days have been a river of one thing to the next lately, baby, shower, breakfast, thesis, baby, park, write, lunch, baby. A nap on a good day. Then baby, clean, cook, baby, baby, maybe thesis, baby, dinner, husband, thesis, write, read, sleep, baby, sleep, baby, sleep.<\/p>\n

Then get up, and do it all again.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s really hard, this final push of my dissertation, with a one year-old. Thankfully, I have help. A babysitter two mornings a week. My mom a few days a month. A sister now and then. And most importantly, a supportive husband. A partner who\u2019s thrilled to get home and scoot Basil off to the park, who loves being his dad as much as I love being his mom. But still, it\u2019s really hard.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to nurse Basil, put him down, kiss JJ, maybe make a cup of tea, and go sit down at my desk, every night. It\u2019s hard to be tired, and to work anyway. It\u2019s hard to think<\/em> so much at the end of the day, every day.<\/p>\n

All this focus makes me lose track of days. Whole weeks go by like a blur of fence posts on the interstate. Thesis baby thesis baby thesis baby. What, it\u2019s Sunday again?<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve got so much other <\/em>writing I want to work on. An essay about motherhood and work, inspired by an excellent post<\/a> I read last month. Another for a post about how to get things done. And a page of scrawled notes about what it means to be original in the age of Instagram.<\/p>\n

Maybe someday I\u2019ll learn how to share these notes and ideas without feeling I have to refine and refine<\/em>. I mean, we can have a conversation, tell a story, without perfection, right? The more I write, the better I feel at it. But it’s still so hard to post here sometimes, especially when I’m so tired. I can\u2019t wait to have more time for all that other<\/em> writing.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, I jot things down, keep 5 different draft documents open and work on them when I can. And I keep wrestling the wild work in progress that is my thesis. Thanks to Annie Dillard\u2019s The Writing Life<\/em>, I think of it as a wild tiger:<\/p>\n

\u201cA work in progress quickly becomes feral. It reverts to a wild state overnight. It is barely domesticated, a mustang on which you one day fastened a halter, but which now you cannot catch. It is a lion you cage in your study. As the work grows, it gets harder to control; it is a lion growing in strength. You must visit it every day and reassert your mastery over it. If you skip a day, you are, quite rightly, afraid to open the door to its room. You enter its room with bravura, holding a chair at the thing and shouting, \u201cSimba!\u201d\u2019.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve learned that if I \u201ctame the tiger\u201d a little bit every day, I can remain the boss. Sitting down and writing for an hour or two today makes it possible to sit down more easily tomorrow. And when I stick with it, I have days when the tiger is curled at my feet, docile and purring, while my fingers fly over the keyboard with clarity and inspiration. Sometimes even at 11pm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My days have been a river of one thing to the next lately, baby, shower, breakfast, thesis, baby, park, write, lunch, baby. A nap on a good day. Then baby, clean, cook, baby, baby, maybe thesis, baby, dinner, husband, thesis, write, read, sleep, baby, sleep, baby, sleep. Then get up, and do it all again. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[136,146,21],"tags":[147,134,48],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1023"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1023"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1026,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1023\/revisions\/1026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}