When the Fish Come

Sometimes in my academic career it feels like I am never going to get to another productive period.  I feel like I am out of ideas and I can't make any progress.  When I emailed my advisor in early June to say I was having trouble getting much done, he reassured me and gave me a pep talk along the lines of the scene I always return to from The Old Man and the Sea: the one where Santiago reminds himself that he'd rather be exact than lucky.  So I went back and read that again.

Then the sun was brighter and the glare came on the water and then, as it rose clear, the flat sea sent it back at his eyes so that it hurt sharply and he rowed without looking into it.  He looked down into the water and watched the lines that went straight down into the dark of the water.  He kept them straighter than anyone did, so that at each level in the darkness of the stream there would be a bait waiting exactly where he wished it to be for any fish that swam there.  Others let them drift with the current and sometimes they were at sixty fathoms when the fishermen thought they were at a hundred.

          But, he thought, I keep them with precision.  Only I have no luck any more.  But who knows?  Maybe today.  Every day is a new day.  It is better to be lucky.  But I would rather be exact.  Then when luck comes you are ready.

         The sun was two hours higher now and it did not hurt his eyes so much to look into the east.    

Okay, I thought.  Set the lines right.  Turn your back to the sun when it hurts your eyes.  Soon it will not hurt your eyes so much.  And then maybe some fish will come.

So Billy and I talked about how we could try to set my lines more precisely.  We rearranged our schedules slightly to help me make the most of the time Nora spends at school.  He took over even more household responsibilities.  I started getting up to work when I woke up at 4am instead of trying to go back to sleep while my mind ran in circles.  I began drinking ice coffee in the afternoons.  And slowly, I started getting some work done.  Once I started getting some work done, it was easier to get more work done.  Although I didn't get done as much as I'd hoped, I have managed to get the most important things done, so I wanted to take a minute to document those things here.  This summer has been a success because I have:

-completed "enough reading and research" for my dissertation prospectus (according to my advisor)
-written and submitted the first draft of my prospectus (my first written assignment since giving birth to Nora!)
-revised the first draft to address my advisor's initial critiques
-submitted the second and much more polished draft of my prospectus
-recruited two new professors to serve on my dissertation committee who are enthusiastic about my project and have backgrounds in feminism, archive research, and modernist women's writers
-came up with a plan for passing the translation exam in order to satisfy the foreign language requirement that is currently preventing me from advancing to candidacy
-worked 10 hours a week on the Katherine Anne Porter project
-set up my syllabus and lesson plans for my fall teaching assignment

Phew.  It's been busy.  I've also managed to enjoy some fun with family and friends along the way.  Here's to hoping I'm getting closer to achieving a sustainable work/life balance!!