diss diary #13
conference cana is back... but what happens next?
Dear Weed-ers,
A couple weeks ago, I planted flowers on my balcony, and on a cloudy day like today, they’re bringing a little bit of joy into my space. I love stepping outside around sunset to give them their daily drink, and then sitting out there with my own afternoon beverage watching the teens play basketball across the street. It’s become a sacred slice of life.
I’m going through a bit of an identity…shift? Not a crisis, per se, but I feel a LOT of momentum shifting inside of me. And I’ve been sitting with that. My energy feels uncontainable. My appetite (literally and otherwise) is unsatiable. I am craving newness: in my appearance, my writing style, my running paths, my approach to advocacy, falling back in love with making music and not just writing about it/listening/etc. (Longer post on that last one to come, I think: Hold me to it!)
At times, it does feel like a crisis. I suppose because a lot of other things feel like a crisis right now. Certainly back home, and even a little bit here since the Marine Le Pen verdict.
I don’t know that I identify as an empath. But a colleague once referred to me as the department’s “affect verifier”: aka, the vibe checker. I like to know how people are feeling; I like to feel like I can help and provide support. I have grown to appreciate that I feel deeply, after spending my early adulthood downplaying my emotional life to make room for everyone else’s.
But lots of other things feel like a crisis right now, even when I know some of it is not. The fact that I am changing is not a crisis; it feels that way because of how everything else feels, and affects are porous and slippery and un-pin-down-able.
Does that make sense?
the updates
A few weekends ago, I ran the longest run of my training cycle: 20 miles!!! Aside from having to wait out a pop-up rain shower, it went really, really well. Very little pain, didn’t stop to walk much at all, the outfit gave me no issues, and the sun even came out by the end of it! My runs are always better when it’s sunny, I don’t make the rules.
The next day, I left for a 3-day trip to Lisbon for a friend’s wedding. She’s a newer friend, so I was grateful to be invited to this intimate gathering of friends and family from throughout her life, and that I had never met.
Conference Cana got to come out to play. As her name implies, she usually comes out during conferences, and she is someone who says yes to things spontaneously, who shuts out noise in her brain and answers questions with confidence, and who craves connection and sows the seeds for Everyday Cana to cultivate later on.
I brought her along on the trip, and she helped me meet amazing people leading their own unique and interesting lives. Spending so much time among academics sometimes disconnects me from reality: we treat everything like an intellectual puzzle to solve, when sometimes it’s not that deep. So it was nice to interact with “normal” people, and also affirming to know that we’re all experiencing similar things in our late 20s/early 30s.
Many went to my undergrad institution, and I heard stories about their experiences that were so different from my own, almost 10 years ago now. Many have partners from abroad, and we talked about their experiences navigating mixed-heritage relationships and spousal visas. Some have left their jobs to pursue something different, or are in the midst of transitioning to something new. I gained so much from our tipsy chats and from allowing myself to just talk to people and be a little bit cringe.
It reminded me how much I thrive on meaningful conversation and fostering connections.
Admittedly, Conference Cana had been primed for this trip because a couple weeks prior, I presented at a virtual conference a few weeks prior. I had a bit of a hard time, to be honest, for a couple reasons. First, I felt wildly uncertain about the material I presented on. It was on art songs that a lot of the scholars in attendance were familiar with, but I was giving a new take on it. That’s always the harder approach to take as an academic. I think it was received well? But I didn’t get a lot of feedback during the session, and I was the last presenter on Day 1, so it’s hard to say. I didn’t feel great about it.
Second, the senior scholars in attendance are some of the biggest names not just in the subdiscipline, but also in the field. One of them would have been my advisor had I chosen a different grad program. Another just won a couple of the big book awards. Another was recently knighted by the French Academie des Lettres. Dizzying stuff. Big imposter syndrome flare-up of a magnitude that I haven’t experienced in awhile.
Third, it revealed to me that I feel that my strengths are less in what I find but how I write about my materials, and the connections I can make: again, I love connecting. I’ve been making headway with archival sources, and am setting aside April for touching some old paper (the historian’s equivalent of “touching grass,” so to speak). An archivist sent me a juicy email reply the Monday after the conference with cool possibilities to pursue in-person, and I also have a growing list of things I can consult online. Hooray.
At the same time that I have these new directions, I’m worried they won’t work. I know what I want to find but unsure how to search for it or where to find it. It’s so frustrating. And I feel impatient, and that impatience is actually slowing me down. My mantra when I was writing the conference paper was: “you do not need to rush.” Because I have learned how much I hate when things feel urgent: it traps my thought patterns and creative thinking skills, makes me sloppy and less attentive. It makes me desperate, and not in a “despair breeds hope” kind of way.
Ugh.
This is probably one of those times when I should not think, and just do:
Just go consult stuff.
Just email someone and ask questions.
Just set a timer for 30mins and free-write about anything (anything!) I find or listen to.
Just look at the primary source bibliography in the helpful secondary sources I love and work backwards.
C’mon, Cana. You can do it.
the reflection
I have been thinking a lot recently about what happens next.
In the short term, I’m sad about the marathon journey being over in just two weeks! I’ll be grateful to incorporate more variety back into my exercise life in April, don’t get me wrong. And it will also be nice to have a bit more energy for big brain work when I’m not running so much.
The structure of a marathon training plan has been really wonderful for me, though. I don’t know if I will run another full again because it just takes so much time and mental energy to worry about giving yourself time to finish the run, stretch, shower, eat enough, sleep enough… The only way I was able to manage it is because of how flexible my schedule is right now. But I have learned a lot about why I love running: namely, that I am always more capable than I think I am, and that it is possible to be strong and not look the way an idealized “strong” body looks.
In the longer term lies an existential question about my future as a writer, a teacher, a researcher, as a biracial woman.
Undergrad and graduate students alike are being punished, if not arrested or detained, for having exerted their right to free speech. Researchers are losing funding because of how their work addresses foundational questions about identity and socio-cultural difference, not to mention climate denialism. Momentum seems to be swinging away from protecting people I care about, and away from resources that contribute to a world I want to help build.
I keep telling myself that academics are always facing political pressure, and that artists have always dealt with insecurity and inequity. Being a good scholar and a good creative person requires going against the grain, which is scary for everyone, albeit for different reasons. Everyone everywhere right now is dealing with uncertainty, and to a certain extent, it helps to know that I’m not alone.
It’s hard to find the right words to say to myself, and hard to know the right thing to do. Do I grit my teeth and obey what I have felt called to do? How loudly do I stand up and speak? Will I have to pivot away from academia, and is that something I seriously want? Is it gaslighting to say to yourself that “everything will be fine,” or is it more unhelpful to add to the voices of terror and danger already prevalent? How informed should you be? How much should I care?
We have never known what will happen next, try as we might to let history inform our future. And still: what happens next?
the fertilizer
It will help if I can finish some things. We can start there. I know that closing a few chapters will create space for new things to open. I already know for sure that, by the end of April, I will:
finish the bibliography work for my friend’s book project!
run my full marathon!
complete 3 books I have in-progress, and probably more!
book my summer flights!
discuss my most recently completed dissertation chapter with my committee!
I might try implementing some of the things I did during my ideal week of productivity to help me in this endeavor. But in the meantime, I would love to hear about some things you’re hoping to finish as we enter a new season, and as our semesters start drawing to a close! Let’s try to combat some of our fear with hope and excitement, shall we?
It really feels like we are all weeding through something these days, and I so appreciate you for getting a little muddy as we go through it together. Make sure you’re subscribed to receive future dissertation diaries like this, and you’re always welcome to upgrade for some bonus content, or grab coffee with me anytime you like! 💚🌿