Sex Lectures

My 95 year-old landlady came to the Regent "sex lecture".

Recipe for disaster? Nope. She did brilliantly, and was even used as a object lesson on how just how recent many of the changes in modern views on sexuality are--the ones talked about in the lecture have all happened within her life time. (She met Sarah just before the lecture started)

It was also interesting to hear her perspectives on things as we sat for coffee in the atrium afterwards. She's seen these changes from the inside, and has both an important affirmation of some of the changes that have occurred, and a wise critique.

I wasn't sure how she would respond to the lecture, but she responded with her typical thoughtfulness, graciousness, humour, and deep interaction. If I could grow old with half her grace, I would count myself lucky.

Everything is rushing in... and I am still waiting...

I am frustrated. I feel like I have no time for doing my assignments left, and at the same time I feel utterly frozen in time. It's like being on a medieval rack, while neither being able to move forward or accomplish things I need to.

What am I waiting for?
-Thesis proposal submitting and approval
-Word from Cambridge
-Acceptance of an abstract for a conference paper
-Three TA positions I've applied for

These things will absolutely shape the next year for me. I know what will happen for the next two weeks - after that, it all depends on these things. I can't hurry it up, nor can I enjoy the time leading to it, since that is filled with doing assignments that feel like eating chalk. The assignments are not bad, I'm just already looking past them. I don't even care about the actual answer, I just want to know one way or the other. I've been left in limbo with Cambridge since October...

Maybe I need to take a page from my father's book: be all here, now. Or maybe that was Jesus: "who of you, by worrying, can turn one hair black or white?" "each day's evil is enough".

So, I'll put my blinders on and get to work: Hebrew, another history gobbet, and my cosmic fall paper. It's all I can do.

I should be working

I'm sitting in the Regent library, completely unable to concentrate.

Weird.

Typically when I want to get down to work, I can. But my thoughts today are flying out of control. I'm in an awkward phase of waiting... waiting on things that I can not control in the least - my applications (both for TA positions and for PhD admittance) and for my supervisor to look over my new thesis proposal (my original one was rejected by the thesis proposal committee last week). I've rewritten it, and sent it to my supervisor, but because it is reading week, I haven't heard anything back.

I don't like waiting. I like working. Give me something that I can get down to - that I can change and work on. But being left in suspense with literally weeks ahead promising little change and no answers is hard. I've been told that Graduate school is often an endurance race. Due to the heavy work load, I hardly ever feel like that is the case - more like a sprint for the finish. Today, however, things are moving as slow as molasses, and the one thing that I can work on is entirely unappealing. Regardless, I must buckle down and plod on, setting everything else aside to finish a paper I'm only tangentially interested in. If I can only get this one done...

... I can get started on the next one!

Where does it end?

May your road, dear reader,
be clear and enticing,
both calling and inviting you forward,
into the newness that is now.

The Most Gratifying Feeling in the World