Writing a 120 page thesis takes the wind out of me. And the brain power. But this whole sometimes-tedious experience has also given me something. Mainly, more confidence. A better awareness of what it means (and doesn't mean) to be that fearful something called "AN ACADEMIC." I will never be an academic as much as I will be someone who needs theory and poetry and literature to live. I'll spend my life writing if it means I can do what I love.
But I also love working out, and feeling the muscles in my legs ache after a session. And I love cooking, the saturation of smells, the satisfaction in completing something in less than an hour (there is joy in that, given the tedious hours I spend writing) and fueling my body. I love making things. It is such a cliche, too, the philosopher who retreats into wood-working. I have discovered a new joy in being embodied, in feeling my body move, and in being outside of my mind. And if I am, in fact, an "academic," I am also a myriad of other things.
I have entered one of those spaces, again, of peaceful isolation. Realizing who matters and learning how to be okay with letting those others - those others that don't - go. Of course its melancholic. Of course its nostalgic. But the intensity I used to have and cherish so much, the intensity that, only a year or two ago, I realized was mostly artificial and contrived, has ebbed away so that a different type of intensity remains. I don't want or need to prove myself anymore. Letting that fierce girl go means letting go of the people who loved that, but never me. In the meantime I have discovered new relationships that matter more.
Why not blog? Why blog now? I suppose I am winding down. I hate blogging, even though I subscribe to about 300. After being slapped on the wrist with a little bit of hate-mail I realized the implications of writing about personal things on the internet. Blogging feels very self-indulgent. Guilty as charged, I guess. My creative drive - along with the depression and anxiety that fueled all that "poetic angst" - has been siphoned off into other pursuits. I feel the weight of being in my mid-20s. Not that my awareness is tinged with a fear of getting older, or of "aging" in any sense. Its more or less a startling new awareness of just how fast time goes, how much living matters.
I know sincerity tinged with sentimentalism isn't "cool" or common, especially in the blog world. I'm not sorry about it, though.
xo