The suck. Oh, the suck. Son is mostly over his new tooth, and that is something. (Yay sleep.) But this part of my chapter continues to be slow going. I go wandering into the forest every day, and if I'm not careful, I'm liable to get lost. I have to keep remembering just where it is I am trying to get to, or I stop and stare at all the local points of interest, instead.

I am not obsessively rewriting this section over and over again. (Not yet, anyway!) But I do keep moving bits around, roughing out new paragraphs in the middle of a page that I had thought was finished, and pouring out endless notes onto the page about where to go next, no here, no there, no, what about that neat little thing over yonder?

So I am writing a lot and working hard, but it is hard to get a word count. I guess, for the past two days, my polished word count total is a rather unimpressive 354--and one large chunk of that has gone adrift. That's right: I have an absolutely solid, necessary paragraph that I cannot for the life of me figure out where to put.

Sigh.

Hard to gauge today's work, seeing as I yanked out a bunch of stuff, then wrote new stuff, then pasted some of the old stuff back in. Overall my total word count increased only by 49 words, but I wrote 327 new words. Wait...73 of those I salvaged from my old draft, so does that mean I wrote only 254 words? Ugh, this accounting is getting complicated. And what about the extra 50 or so words I have in notes for finishing my current paragraph?

Never mind. Let's just say that the day went OK, and that I am starting to feel more certain of what I want to say in this very difficult section and how I want to say it.

For now.

But, oh, if I get into the same cycle of writing and rewriting as in my previous draft, someone will hit me with a tranquilizer dart and drag my slack body away from my keyboard, right? Please?

PS: I estimate I will need another seven working days to finish this section of my chapter and move on to some less agonizing material. Let the countdown begin!

PPS: Yesterday? Zero words. Felt like crap. Got nothing done.

PPPS: Except baking a very tasty banana cake! So, hey, there's that.

Where have I been? Saturday I decided to work from home, as per the usual, but I got nothing done beyond looking over my work and jotting down a few notes. I remember now why I had such a hard time on my first draft: it deals with some of the most difficult material of the chapter. And now I am up against it again, struggling both to get a good grasp on it and to not be overcome by my fears that I cannot do it justice.

Sunday my husband and son went out for several hours with my sister-in-law, and I spent up all the time in cleaning. I had planned to clean a little and bake a little and write a little, but the cleaning swamped everything. Our apartment had become quite cluttered and dirty over the winter; it is hard to do a really good cleaning if my son is underfoot, and it has been too cold for my husband to take the child out to the park for a few hours. So I took the chance while I had it and gave the place a good shake down. And let's face it: my son is a toddler, my husband is a packrat, and I am an anal-retentive obsessive-compulsive neat freak. When I settle down to a really thorough cleaning, it takes a looooooong time. There was no writing. But the apartment is much more pleasant now.

Yesterday I had to stay home, as the babysitter was out of the country. Honestly, it was a delight to be able to stay home and play with my son all day. We had some great romps, and then he crashed for his nap--and then, rather than write, I curled up with a book. I figured I deserved it after all my work on Sunday, and I figured I'd be up and out early on Tuesday (today). What I did not figure on was a new molar growing in in my son's mouth, poor pea.

Last night he woke about once every 60 or 90 minutes--well, I say "woke" but really, he only became sort of half awake, writhing around and mewling in pain, his hair all damp with sweat. I should have got up and got him some painkillers, but I was so tired myself I just kept rolling over and nursing him some more, which he finds the nicest treatment for teething, in any case. By morning I was totally exhausted and my back was stiff and sore from all the time I'd spent nursing in a side-lie position.

For the one I've been drinking coffee, and for the other my husband gave me a good backrub, but I am still so uncomfortable I just cannot face carrying my heavy backpack out to the library to work. I'm out of Tylenol, but then, it wouldn't help much with this sort of muscle pain, anyway. I can't take NSAIDs, due to allergy concerns, and I can't have steroid, either, while I'm still breastfeeding. Our campus health center does employ a massage therapist, though, and maybe I will see if I can get a session or two, if my back isn't better tomorrow. For the meanwhile, I am trying to rest and write a little from home. And tonight I will dose the child up with painkillers prophylactically, before he goes to bed.

I spent a little time lying down, and on the up side, I had some good ideas about dealing with the next section of this chapter. Now I just need to wake up a little more and maybe stretch out some, and then I will see if I can't write at least 250 words. Time to get back to it!

As expected, yesterday stank: 162 words in the draft proper, and 99% of those a lengthy quote. However, I did write a bunch of notes and plans for how to proceed through the next, well, however many pages. And today I got grimly back up on the mule and wrote 415 words. It's moving, it's coming. Another day or so and my joy in my project will come back, too, but for now I am still suffering a sense of defeat over my lost pages. Really, I'm going to feel much better once I let the old draft just go and stop searching through the wreck for salvage. When I reread those pages, I am infected with something of the miserable, airless coasting of the original, and the fear seizes me that I will not be able to do any better my later drafts. I've got to stop rereading--heck, if for no other reason than because crap like that doesn't deserve a long mourning! Onward.

I'm having a bitch of a time today. Partly, I'm still reeling from yesterday's sucker-punch. I mean, seriously? Several thousand words down the shitter? I am Not Happy.

My other trouble is exhaustion, pure and simple. Last night the son woke me a bit after midnight, with ear pain. Now, I've taken him to the ped, and been sent home again with the diagnosis of "nope, nothing's wrong." And to be fair, he has no fever, no runny nose, mostly no symptoms at all. But he tugs and tugs and scratches and twists his poor right ear, and sometimes he is in obvious pain when he tries to sleep on it. I'm going to have to try the ped again, I think, but I expect the same reaction. Our ped is very chill, very wait-and-see, and mostly I like that, but dude something really and truly is wrong when my kid is crying from pain or scratching his ear open, and hey, why don't you take a more thorough look and figure out what it is, okay?

Anyway.

I gave son some tylenol drops, then cuddled him on the couch in front of a kid video, until the pain killer could take effect and leave him able to lie down comfortably again. Which was all well and good, except I just never seem to learn this cardinal rule of nighttime parenting: don't take them out of their bed, don't interact excessively with them, and for heaven's sake, don't let them watch any TV! Of course (of course!!!) once the little one was feeling a bit better, he wanted nothing to do with going back to bed. Mom was up, he was up--it must be time to be up! There commenced, until sometime after 3am, when he finally dropped back off again, an escalating series of battles between son and parents. Son wanted to run around the apartment, bounce on the bed, sing songs, and climb all over Mom. Parents wanted to sleep. Oh, sweet, precious sleep. Toddler had to be shown to his tantrum spot multiple times, and Mom had to storm out of the bedroom and stomp up and down the hall counting to ten at least once. By 2:30am, parents were sniping at each other (score 100 points for toddler!) Eventually, son did pass out, although Mom had to relax her "just lie down and go to sleep, already" policy a little and stroke his back to achieve this end.

I slept in till 8am, and son and husband till nearly 9am. The rest of the morning mainly involved sitting around, drinking tea in a vain attempt to wake up (not to mention feeling bloated, which is what happens when a mostly-vegan indulges in a giant cheese plate for dinner the previous night--my cheese goddess sister-in-law's treat, and my lands, was it ever good). Then I decided to do the cooking early (some banana-date bread and a pasta-and-TVP dish for dinner that came out quite well--and I'm not a big TVP lover), before heading to the library. Except there was still the tiredness, and did I mention it is fricking cold outside? No? Hey, it's seriously fricking COLD outside.

So I have set up shop in the kitchen. (Yes, the kitchen. That's where I write when I write at home. Don't judge me. My other major job in life is to cook for my family, so the kitchen is my natural workstation.) Only...I'm not getting much done. Because of the discouragement over tossing my first draft, and because of the unshakable tiredness. And now we are back to where we came in.

OK, this post is really just a time-waster, let's be honest. I will now drag myself back to work by the scruff of my own neck. But don't look for a good word count today. Just sayin'.

Today's word count: 343. The total thus far in my draft: 5,181. Not bad. I wish I had accurate stats for the past week, though. I'm still trying to figure out how much I write in a day.

I guess I'll know in another week or so.

Now off to set the bread dough for its second rising, fix myself a cup of tea, and make some phone calls.

Well, crap. Two nice things started my day, and then it came to a crashing, screeching, shards-of-plastic-on-the-pavement halt. First of all: I discovered that Word had been set to disregard my footnotes during word counts. I've been writing more than I thought! Isn't that nice? I am actually at over 5,000 words. At day's end today, I will provide a count that includes the day's footnotes, and also gives the corrected current total.

Second, I blazed out another 267 words (including footnotes) this morning and made it to the point where I was ready to revise and add all the pages and pages of material I'd written in my first attempt at a draft.

And this was where I hit the wall, because, upon re-reading those pages, I realized that they would have to be not so much revised as completely rewritten. Why? Because not only did I write that draft without establishing a bunch of needed background, but I also, apparently, wrote it without any structure, goal, or, y'know, point. I looked for a cogent thesis or several and a set of arguments and evidence backing it/them up, but all for naught.

Oh, ye gods above.

So I sat and thought and came up with a new plan for handling the material around which my previous draft had aimlessly drifted, and it is a good plan and all, but seriously, I am now faced with a whole new mountain to scale, just when I thought I'd made it to a nice, grassy meadow with a glass-clear lake and nodding blue flowers and wild ponies and all that idyllic shit. Argh.

I'm going to finish my lunch (black bean chili, cornbread, and some blanched kale with a crunchy sprinkle of kosher salt on top), then do my best to get started on this next task. What I want to do, however, is crawl up into the blogosphere and spend my remaining half hour at the library reading cute stories about cats and kids and vegan baking.

Damnation.

Today's net: 365 words. And before you ask, NO, I still haven't quite finished my "intro-y" stuff and moved on to the previous draft stuff yet. It looks like it will take an extra paragraph.

I am so close to done with this section, I can just about taste it. There is even a part of me (the insane part) that wants to sit and write it now. The sane part reminds the insane part that I have been up since before 6am, and should take my sleepy ass to bed now.

An average day in the life of a snail:

Up by 6am (and on really crazy days, before 5am). Read blogs, do food-related chores (plan meals, make shopping lists, do prep for dinner, bake, pack lunches, etc.), drink some tea, whatever.

Son wakes up around 7am, so then it's time to snuggle him, change him, feed him, romp with him.

Eventually, we go in to wake up husband. We take turns showering and dressing, and then I try to get out the door by 10am at the very latest, leaving son with his dad or the babysitter.

Library! Work! Typity type type pause think think type type no all wrong ALL WRONG delete delete delete pace pace type type type consult reference work delete delete type... Sometimes I break for lunch. Sometimes I skip it and get a little hungry in the interests of capturing a thought right now right while it's on the tip of my tongue or brain or brain's tongue. Sometimes I listen to music and boogie along while I work, or sometimes I must have absolute silence sssshhh!

Then it is time to close up shop and go home, often with an errand or two first. I get back in the mid-afternoon and have a little time to play with my son and chat with my husband.

By late afternoon, I have to hit the kitchen and get dinner started. (Or sometimes there are departmental functions I have to attend, and those nights we eat shit from a box, instead. I can only take my eat-healthy, eat-homemade, eat-budget philosophy so far.) The idea is to get dinner on the table no later than 6pm, but somedays it gets to be 6:30 and the toddler is cranky and then everybody gets cranky, oh joy.

Dinner is followed by extensive clean up. Did I mention I have a toddler? He has to be wiped down and often bathed, his high chair has to be wiped up, and the floor has to be vacuumed. Said toddler usually insists on naked time in the evening, too, so there are sometimes, ahem, puddles to wipe up, too. (Although, bonus: toddler seems to be figuring out potty training right quick, thanks to naked time.)

Finally, around 7:30, the toddler is captured, diapered, dressed in jammies and in protest, and hustled along to the bedroom. There it is time to bounce on the bed, play tickle games, read a stack of books, nurse, insist on song after song after song, and finally pass out sometime around 8:30 (or on late days, more like 9pm).

My plan is always to put the boy to sleep, then rejoin my husband to finish the chores and have some grownup time. Most nights, I pass out when my son does, instead. But two or three nights a week, I do manage to stay up until the late, late hour of 10pm. (Or 11pm, but then I sleep in until 7am the next morning and don't have any early-morning me-time and am grumpy.) (Why do I need so much sleep, you would ask, if anyone were reading this and I had comments enabled, which ain't never gonna to happen, because then I would have to give a crap about this blog, and that is too much energy for a diss-writing gal like myself? Because aforementioned toddler son still wakes up every three hours or so all night long to nurse. Fun! Not!)

Six days a week, that is my schedule. Sunday is my day off, but lately it has collected extra chores: goodie baking and mopping and such like. I am thinking about spreading more of the chores out into my mornings, so I can enjoy a really and truly day off once a week, to just hang around with my son and husband and be unproductive.

Well, anyway, I have to go throw some dough in a bowl for tomorrow's bread, then hie me to bed. It's after 9pm, and in my hectic, non-stop party world, that is time to get my beauty sleep.

124 words on the diss; several hundred more on my application, which I finally finished today. I am wrung out. The final step in the application was an hour-long test, which seemed ample enough time at first, but in fact passed in a few eyeblinks, leaving my pencil nearly out of lead and my hand cramped. I have mixed feelings about how I did on it, too. Well, we'll see.

I am now a mere summing-up paragraph away from beginning to revise and glue in the 5,000 words of my earlier attempt at a draft. An exciting thought, except I am too tired to care. My son will wake up from his nap soon, and frankly, I'm just going to sip some green tea and read one of my science fiction pulps until he does.

My brain is done for the day. Fork, anyone?

268 words, written at home instead of the library--a treat I sometimes take on Saturdays. Within the next week, I believe I will settle on a minimum target word count per day. Probably 250 will make for a nice, reasonable goal. Of course, more will always be welcome! Perhaps I will start at 250, then raise it by 25 or 50 words per week until I reach, oh, I don't know, 400 or 500. All this will be complicated, however, by the need to sometimes leave off writing this chapter to work on my prospectus or bibliography, or to write the two talks I am scheduled to give this spring. Well, one worry at a time.

For now, my son has awakened from his nap, and I feel the intense need to give him a huge hug.

Sunday is my day off (where "off" means "to do much of the week's baking, not to mention give the apartment an extra bit of cleaning"), so I'll be back on Monday. (Someday I will take a real break. Where "someday" means "after I have tenure or am dead, whichever comes first.")

380 words. Also the realization: my dissertation writing should come before any other writing that day. Smooches, blog, but no, you may not bleed off my writing energy.

Lunch before work. Roasted green beans, brown rice with flaked arctic char and a walnut-cilantro pesto. Not bad. I'm here late, though, and lunch will delay me a little longer. I am trying not to care too much, though. I am trying to escape the cycle of guilt and anger that often threatens to engulf me, and through me, those around me.

It works like this: I feel guilty about being a bad wife or mother or friend or cook or writer or professional or whatever, then I deflect those bad feelings about myself into bad feelings towards others ("I'm a bad _________ because so-and-so is forever messing me up," etc.), then I get angry and either snipe in little mean ways, or, if anger has been festering in me for a while, I snap and lash out in big mean ways. It doesn't matter that my perception of being a bad whatever is distorted, and it doesn't matter that other people are not really to blame. I have come far enough now in dealing with my guilt/anger complex to recognize both truths. The knowledge is helpful, but no magic bullet. Anger still gets hold of me. Right now my spine feels crumpled up, bent unnaturally, with all the anger twisted around it. It hurts, and I don't want it, but that is still not enough to exorcise it.

As with many other problems I've faced in life, thinking through the ethical ramifications is useful. When I snipe or snap or sigh or scold, here is what it says to my target: You are an object that is failing to conform to my desires and to my self-centric view of the world. You are an object that must not, cannot presume to be a person. My wrath is a righteous response to an ill-behaved object. For those who have the confidence of self to know my view is wrong, that they are people, not objects, this treatment will tend to poison whatever trust exists between me and them. And for those whose self-ideation is weak--children, for instance--or who fall under my authority and therefore give special weight to my judgments, this treatment is even more toxic, as they may indeed try to adopt my viewpoint and accept that they are nothing more than objects, deserving of my casual cruelty and disregard. Anger is destructive, and I do not want it in my relationships, whether private or professional.

Remembering this, I can sometimes put aside my anger. It helps to remember, too, that I am not an evil person because I feel anger. Balancing a child and an academic career is hard, sometimes crushingly hard. After I have apologized, I must let the past be the past. And that is the other talisman I hold against this cycle: that as toxic words and actions destroy people and relationships, so kind, respectful, modest words revive them, preserve them, and help them to flourish. The past is the over, but the choice and the power to do good to others is always here. Right here.

Today's total? 100 words. Nor did I manage to attend to that other matter I needed to deal with: an application for work for next year. So some of tomorrow is already shot. What did I do today instead? Cook and bake. Hey, there just wasn't much left around the apartment to eat, and keeping us all fed is my prime household responsibility. One I'd have fulfilled without the extra cooking today, too, except for a massive failure of a slow-cooker dish earlier this week, which had been intended to feed us for several meals. Nope, not one of my more stellar days.

On the bright side, it only took me 20 minutes to pound those 100 words out. Nice momentum I've got going; now I just need not to lose it by dithering around tomorrow.

Off to perform another food chore: planning next week's meals and baking. (Tidbit: every week I usually bake a loaf or two of bread, a dozen biscuits, two dozen muffins, and often a cake or cobbler or other sweet. All that baking ensures we have mostly-healthy treats around to snack on, and helps us stay on budget--no bleeding a buck here and two bucks there to fund daily candy bars, big cookies, donuts, etc. You'd be amazed how fast those kinds of snack purchases add up, both in terms of money and in terms of junk calories!) (Don't I sound like the life of the party?)

3175 doesn't sound like a lot, does it? In fact, it has bothered me all day, thinking of such a low number, and thinking of all the months and months I have worked on this chapter. So I went and counted up ALL of my work, and was relieved at the total result: 22,882 words. Here's how it breaks down:

First pass, my initial work considering the problem: 7241 words

Second pass, compiling my ideas into something like an outline or plan of attack: 7123 words

Third pass, my first stab at a draft, bogged down by having chosen the wrong starting place, but destined for eventual inclusion in my current draft, after revision: 5023 words

Fourth pass, my current draft, going as smoothly and merrily as can be: 3495 words

That figure I gave yesterday of 3175 words was from my fourth pass and current draft, minus 320 words which are a rough mock-up of my next few paragraphs. And now you understand, too, why I was hesitant to use a simple word count to measure my progress. Thus far, in pursuit of one chapter, I have written (at approx. 250 words per page) roughly 90 pages. And of those, about 60 are just "thinking on paper": rough ideas, errors, blind alleys, insights, confusion, clarity, round and round--the foundation for my chapter, but words which will never be included directly in my chapter.

I feel better now.

Grr. Today I gently detached a wailing toddler from my legs, slogged through a cold, steady rain to the library, and discovered that I had forgotten my power cable. And my laptop had no charge. And I'd left my memory stick with my diss backup at home. As they say in this here blogosphere, headdesk

So back home I went. Toddler required much snuggling, and I had to change my pants and socks and shoes, then I turned around and headed back out into the rain again. This time I packed yet another pair of socks and shoes into my bag, so I wouldn't have to work in wet feet. What kind of day was it? A three pairs of socks and shoes day. My day was so late, I didn't bother to eat my lunch (after carrying it to the library, then home, then back to the library, since there are some rather strict no-food-in-lockers-we-will-revoke-all-your-privileges-including-oxygen-supply-and-the-card-readers-will-give-you-an-electrical-shock-if-you-come-ever-back policies). There are only so many hours when I have childcare, and I must seize the precious sixth or eighth of a day, y'know?

For all the wetness and the walking to and fro and the hunger, did I mention the hunger? it was still a very productive day. I have not been counting words on this blog, but I feel I should do so, or devise some other metric. The tricky thing is that I write a whole lot of stuff that doesn't necessarily count towards any official draft. For instance, today I added a lot to my draft, but I also roughed out something like the next three paragraphs, in a separate document. And what about quotes? I sometimes add quite extensive quotes to my draft; should those words count? Or how about the fact that my current draft is in two parts, in two different documents, one half polished and the other half in deep need of revision?

Here's the thing: I'm writing a dissertation. That's where my energy, especially my mental energy, goes day by day. I keep this blog to track it, but seriously, if I have to expend much mental energy on this blog, it will transform into a competitor to my dissertation, and shortly thereafter I will delete it. You hear that, blog? (That's why your posts have no names, by the way. Can't be bothered. (Sometimes can't be bothered with subject pronouns, neither.)) Get in the way of the diss, and you are but a fart in the flow of the world's electrons. So you know what? I'm just going to count words in the polished part of my chapter, up to the current spot where I am working. As of today, that is 3175 words. Tomorrow (or more likely Friday, since I have some other distractions I must attend to tomorrow) I will be able to begin counting words-per-day.

This got long. Now I am done.

A fine day, writing-wise, but I left the library feeling as if I had not done enough. This fear always haunts me: that what I do is not, cannot be, enough, unless I am spending every waking moment on my dissertation. Reason responds: you don't have energy to focus and write for more than a few hours in a day. Pride even puts in (hopefully with some justification): you are a fast worker and thorough, too. Still I feel a bit bad when I go to work late and leave a little early, and knowing that my day's page count was respectable is somehow no comfort.

Well, one mistake I made was to take my lunch break right away. (What? I said I got there late!) Instead of letting my energy flow onto the page, I puttered around and expended it on web-surfing. Worse, I lost track of the time and took a much longer lunch than I should have. I suspect this is the ultimate source of my internal nag.

But enough! Guilt and self-recriminations only birth writer's block; this I know. Today is now behind me, and my thoughts may turn to tomorrow.

Lunchtime, after a productive morning. I'm eating leftovers: homemade seitan with agave-mustard sauce, whole-wheat couscous with chopped, toasted pecans, and mashed butternut squash, lightly sweetened with maple syrup. It's a tasty lunch, a nice reward for some work well done. I'm eating it cold, as I do most of my lunches; locating and using a microwave takes to much time from my day. I am also eating in the library stacks, which isn't strictly permitted, but I like how peaceful it is here. I like the smell of the books. I like to sit at one of the desks set into the south wall, with the warm sunshine on the shelves behind me. So I eat in the stacks pretty often, but I eat neatly and quietly and never with any of the library's books on the desk. It's damage to their books that is the issue, right?

My work today has to be cut a little short, as I have errands, plus on Mondays the babysitter needs to leave early, to attend to her own studies. That's OK, though; I miss my little boy dreadfully today. Most mornings I get up between 5 and 6am, while the baby sleeps in an extra hour or two, so I can have a little time by myself, drinking tea, reading, maybe baking, whatever. This morning, though, the little one was restless and fretful and wouldn't leave me be. I snapped at him, and immediately felt awful. He's old enough now that he knows--or thinks he knows--that when Mama speaks angrily, he has been a bad boy. His little eyes flew wide, staring at me and trying to figure out what he had done that earned him a scolding. Of course, I apologized and explained that I was just in a bad mood, that he was a good boy and Mom loves him, etc. Equally of course, the image of his wide eyes has haunted me since I left the house, scrubbing the images of our happy time reading together afterwards over his breakfast or his laughter as he bounced on the bed with his Papa.

Anyway, at least I've no reason for guilty feelings over my dissertation today. It is coming along just fine, slow and steady as a snail likes it.

Aaaaaaand--

--I did get some work done, roughly two pages (although since nearly one of those pages was all quote, does it count?) Got some help from family on the financial issue, too, yay! The diss goes on!

Sunday is my day off. Back to work on Monday.

Already exhausted, and I haven't started work yet today. One of our credit cards withdrew a payment for themselves from our account, despite the fact that we cancelled automatic withdrawals with them over a month ago. The money they took was supposed to pay for the next two weeks of childcare, which now we will have to cancel. This sets me back a lot. Without steady, regular childcare, I cannot keep my momentum going on my dissertation. Oh, how I hate that credit card now! We called our bank, and they said this is a common problem, but the only thing we can do is close our account and open a new one. Yup, well, that's what we're going to do, then. Not only that, we now plan to pay off the rest of that credit card as soon as we can and close our account with them. What a rotten bunch of jerks!

Anyway, I will see what I can get done today. My heart isn't in it, but I must try. Dissertations do not write themselves.

Finished a three-day detour today. I have a conference coming up, and the organizers needed to know some basic details of paper title and topic, and my travel plans and needs. Done! Tomorrow I return to work on my chapter.

And I had the idea today, also, of using a blog to track my (snail-paced) progress. Useful tool or mere distraction? We shall see.