{"id":189,"date":"2010-11-02T12:03:12","date_gmt":"2010-11-02T19:03:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/?p=189"},"modified":"2011-01-15T20:41:55","modified_gmt":"2011-01-16T03:41:55","slug":"11-tackling-perpetual-uncertainty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/?p=189","title":{"rendered":"Tackling \u201cPerpetual Uncertainty\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

“One of the gifts of being a writer is that it gives you an excuse to do things, to go places and explore. Another is that writing motivates you to look closely at life, at life as it lurches by and tramps around.” (Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life<\/em>, p.xii).<\/p>\n

This is true of research too, when the research is about life and meaning and our social world, as mine is. It’s the wonderful thing about my work, what makes me come back and keep working on my dissertation and imagining that I can dedicate myself to this work. While I was doing fieldwork last year in Barcelona, there were days where the writing and ideas and deeper meaning of what I was seeing were all coming together and flowing like swollen rivers in spring.<\/p>\n

Yet it’s also true that writing in academia can be as uncertainty-provoking as any other kind of writing. You obsess and try to start and worry over whether your ideas are worth anything. You write ten different versions of the same first paragraph. You try and fail to institute a morning writing routine, and then you try again. You do other kinds of writing, hoping it will spark new ideas and ways to connect the academic work to questions and struggles people have in their real lives.<\/p>\n

I’m in the midst of fall fellowship applications for my dissertation year, trying to get started on yet another iteration of a personal statement, selling who I am and what I do for far-away committees of people to evaluate. Maybe because of all the uncertainty of this process, this poem Anne Lamott quotes in Bird by Bird<\/em> also resonated with me and made me laugh at the obsessions of the writing process (just substitute advisers for friends and approval for affection!):<\/p>\n

We who are
\nyour closest friends
\nfeel the time
\nhas come to tell you
\nthat every Thursday
\nwe have been meeting
\nas a group,
\nto devise ways
\nto keep you
\nin perpetual uncertainty
\nfrustration
\ndiscontent and
\ntorture
\nby neither loving you
\nas much as you want
\nnor cutting you adrift.
\nYour analyst is in on it
\nplus your boyfriend
\nand your ex-husband;
\nand we have pledged
\nto disappoint you
\nas long as you need us.
\nIn announcing our
\nassociation
\nwe realize we have
\nplaced in your hands
\na possible antidote
\nagainst uncertainty
\nindeed against ourselves.
\nBut since our Thursday nights
\nhave brought us
\nto a community
\nof purpose
\nrare in itself
\nwith you as
\nthe natural center,
\nwe feel hopeful you
\nwill continue to make unreasonable
\ndemands for affection
\nif not as a consequence
\nof your disastrous personality
\nthen for the good of the collective.<\/p>\n

(by Phillip Lopate,
\nQuoted in Anne Lamott\u2019s Bird by Bird<\/em>, pp.11-12.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“One of the gifts of being a writer is that it gives you an excuse to do things, to go places and explore. Another is that writing motivates you to look closely at life, at life as it lurches by and tramps around.” (Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, p.xii). […]<\/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":[45,24,40,21],"tags":[47,49,50,51,46,48],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189"}],"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=189"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":366,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions\/366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}