Blah-dom

December is running by more quickly than I really want to intellectually deal with. It's been and continues to be one of the most relaxing and one of the most stressful months I think I've had in recent memory. The major project is slipping by the wayside, an indulgence I'm justifying by telling myself all kinds of cozy, laziness-justifying things like these: 1) Clearly, my brain needs a break. I need to listen to my brain. This is the "work out lie." While true to a certain extent, my vacation has far exceeded my real need for it. Now I'm just taking pleasure in curling up on the slightly furry fabric of my undersized couch, reading a novel through the body buzzing post-exercise and breakfast haze when I really should be reading, say, Imagined Communities. 2) A more logistical excuse. I can't start working because I don't have the books that I need. Again, this is seductive because partially correct. I ordered the last novel that I think I really, desperately, need to read before starting my chapter on the 18th century, and they're taking a very very long time to arrive. Silent scream. This is not, of course, to say that I couldn't be doing other, also quite relevant reading, which I currently have in my possession. 3) The paralysis of the overwhelmed. Do I start, as I said I would, on the introductory chapter? This sounds fun. I could hone my genre and theory chops, flesh out other ideas, make promises that I may find I can never fulfill. Or do I launch into the 18th century? There's something very seductive about starting to do secondary research. Reading about what people have said about specific novels and finding them all laughably inadequate to the task I've undertaken. This kind of research has the advantage of filling one with a sense of the exigency of her work, while also hazarding certain feelings of hopelessness.


I'm setting goals now. Truly. Monday I'll go to the library and try, as they say, to light a fire of some sort under my ass. It would be deeply lovely to have some sense of purpose and accomplishment ensuing from the pending holidays which are promising to be solo drunken revels, perhaps accompanied by insipid popular movies that C has the good taste not to watch.