on normalcy
diss diary #8: feeling settled, but what's next?
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Dearest weed-ers,
I’m going to be so honest. I had a whole other idea drafted out for this installment of the dissertation diaries, one that was going to be in 3rd-person omniscient and be this glorious piece of lit fic with a cool meditation on the human condition. But then tonight, I opened up the draft and deleted everything, abandoned it because it was stressing me out. And I realized that I was procrastinating on my goal of posting twice this month, which is always a sign that I need to stop overcomplicating and overthinking. Like my dad said on FaceTime the other day: “You? Overwhelming yourself? Crazy.”
Anyway, it was going to start something like this:
it’s 19h45 on monday, in a residential area within paris city limits: not quite a banlieue but away from the hustle of tourists and street buskers. the people in the quartier seem remarkably normal. everyone she talks to says there is “good food” around, which always feels like a hidden comment about immigration or gentrification. probably both? she should read up some more on that.
there’s an ambulance siren spinning outside. it’s an open-4th interval that reminds her that she’s still, in fact, in the EU. “pinch me.”
the siren song is key because she still has out-of-body, out-of-place moments. there are some mornings when she doesn’t quite understand where she is or why the neighborhood looks different than the one she called home for 3 years. she figured that the feeling of waking up and not recognizing the space would dissipate by now. but the truth is that she still fumbles around in the kitchen every morning making coffee, and struggles to find the right bottle of skincare from the right shelf, even though she’s the one whose put it all there.
It’s true that whenever I hear a siren in the distance here, it really does remind me of how I’m not in the U.S. In Cambridge, I live near both a retirement community that often has emergency vehicles show up, so sirens are whirring regularly. Nothing crazy but, at least once a day, something whizzes by.
But that open 4th really catches me off guard, and I pause every time wondering what I’ve heard.
At some point, I need to look up how ambulances came to sound how they sound because I feel like the differences must say something about cultures of listening, and probably something about noise politics in different places.
Since the last diss diary, I’m realizing that I still have lots of moments where I feel both out-of-body and out-of-place. As a result, it feels like so much has happened and that nothing at all has happened.
I shared some of those feelings about a month ago based on some journaling I had done during my first week in Paris. But I’m going to try to give y’all a snapshot of what my days have felt like, and how I’m trying to thread the balance between establishing a routine while also claiming a sense of spontaneity, too. The TLDR is that it’s been hard.
the updates
I have had a really productive season of dissertation writing. I haven’t been good about keeping track of my actual word counts, which is maybe on me, but my god it would be *really* satisfying to give some raw data here. In comparing an early draft of my chapter from early September with the current one, though, it is double the page length!
This chapter recaps bioacoustics research related to plant sounding mechanisms, whether they like music, etc, and I also analyze several musical examples where musicians use some of those scientific ideas to justify their technique of making music “with” plants. It’s sort of a grab bag assortment of what comes to mind for people when I say that I research various ways of how plants have been considered musical beings.
Doing all that writing has also meant that I’ve *gasp* done a lot of research, mainly on the science-y bits that I’ve been putting off for 3 years since writing my prospectus. A lot of that writing has been summarizing other people’s research or writing up prose descriptions of the musical examples, and I’m about to start the bigger harder (s c a r i e r) work of articulating my big argument. But that’s a challenge for November because this week’s attention has gone elsewhere.
This coming weekend, I’m going to Oslo for the symposium I’ve been co-organizing! It has been a joy to don the conference-organizing hat again, and to do it with a newfound dear colleague. I love working with the details related to logistics and building a conference program, and I also love being able to bring people together especially around ideas (anything music and environment-related) I care about. I love it, and because I’ve done it several times now, I feel like I can confidently say that I’m good at it. Super rewarding stuff
In addition to co-convening the event, I have to get to present some work-in-progress. This week I pivoted away from chapter writing to focus on a completely different part of the dissertation. Luckily, I can use bits from elsewhere, but I’m trying to bring in sources I haven’t used much until this point. But also I’ll be with a group of scholars I’ve never met before and who aren’t all that familiar with my work, so there’s not a ton of pressure to bring out the big guns of completely new stuff either. But ALSO I still want it to be good and representative of how my ideas are developing. It’s been a minute since I’ve presented somewhere, and I’ve apparently forgotten how fraught these things are!
Oh and also I turned 28! On actual day of my birthday, I had meetings and an evening choir rehearsal, but later in the week I celebrated properly by treating myself to a falafel plate, new running shoes, and a splurge perfume from Le Labo (it’s a funny story).
I am in a completely different place than when I started graduate school in 2019, and I have built a life for myself that is so different than how I imagined when I was younger. And maybe that’s for the better? At the very least, it means that I’ve let my experiences guide me rather than just sticking to an arbitrary plan I set for myself at 8 years old. Mostly this year, I am feeling grateful to have a career calling I love and to have really supportive friends and loved ones in my life.
the reflection
One of the things I’m getting used to is the abundant proximity to other people. Rarely do I get on the metro without struggling to find a car that isn’t packed. An older woman is always lingering with her dog out in the common area of my own apartment complex, and it’s never the same one every time. There are never not hundreds of people in the Parc Buttes-Chaumont or the Jardin de Tuileries, no matter the time of day.
I also live on a one-laned one-way street, which means I could easily throw a well-aimed frisbee onto someone else’s porch. When my bathroom window is open, I get a window (lol) into dozens of other apartments in the building across the street. One evening, I finished washing my face and brushing my teeth when I decided to take a moment to rest my elbows on the silll and take some deep breaths in the quiet of the night. (I wasn’t being creepy, I swear.)
Nothing particularly spectacular was happening. Like diorama scenes, most of the vignettes across featured people washing dishes with the glow of television screens in another room. Dogs barked at one another in the distance. People straggled out of the basketball court after an evening pick-up game. It was all such normal shit, and I was like, “Have I been missing the plot? What am I doing here? What did I want to be doing here?”
And I found myself in tears.
I’ve been caught in this position where I can’t find a balance between doing the work and trying to enjoy this new place I’m living. I feel like I should be doing big vacation things because this is not my permanent home, after all: eating out all the time, going to museums, buying souvenirs. I feel guilty for being a regular at the coffee shop that I love instead trying new ones all the time, and I feel guilty for spending my evenings reading and hang-drying my laundry and washing my dishes. As if everyone else doesn’t have a regular spot they frequent or have quiet nights at home...
I have had shamey thoughts around “oh you’re not doing enough, why aren’t you going out more, why are you so boring” at the end of every day, and they are more annoying than anything else. Because it’s a tired narrative that I’ve carried around about how I don’t feel like I know how to have fun in “normal” ways, and that perfectionism makes it hard for me to feel like I can fully let myself enjoy things because what if the waiter is really rude about my food allergy or what if the store I go to has nothing in my size or what if the exhibit at the museum is terrible and then I end up wasting $20.
But for the first time in the month that I’ve been here, I acknowledged these glimpses of my neighbors leading cozy lives similar to ones I have cultivated for myself. I took a moment to sit with the realization that maybe I’m actually doing fine? After all, the beauty of being in a city is that no one can afford to care about what every other random person is doing. For better or for worse, I am anonymous.
Sometimes comparison is not the thief of joy.
Comparing my state of being to those around me was a moment of realizing that living in a new place is not the same thing as being a tourist in that place. And that living is harder because it’s longer and so the world and the options feel more endless. And then I felt a little more okay for feeling like what I’m doing is actually quite a hard thing, and that needing to take some time to feel settled is also okay.
With the newfound close proximity to people and places, there is so much more unwanted input that I have to filter out. Admittedly, I do find myself wondering what people think of me when I’m out and about, and I’m comparing myself to so many more strangers than I’m used to.
However, I’m taking my worry about being boring not as an anxiety about what other people will think of me, but instead as a sign that I don’t want to leave Paris feeling like I didn’t do what I wanted to do: archival deep dives, visiting new parks, finding vintage jewelry at flea markets, taking afternoon coffees with novels (English ones and French ones!), making a new friend or two, learning the layout of the city, building out a scholarly network.
At the same time, I absolutely do not want to rush. I am content with living a slower and quiet life that feels normal, and I know that I don’t need to do everything all the time, and starting slow is the best way to sustain myself when the momentum starts to pick up.
It’s always Libra♎ season over here. Just out here always trying to find a good balance.
thank you dearly for your eyes and ears. it took me longer to string some thoughts together, but i feel better for having done it. which is another sign that i just need to do what feels good for me. if you feel so called, please share this snippet of my journey with a friend, upgrade your subscription, or leave a one-time tip! i am so grateful to have you here in the weeds with me. :)
my hero 💕 you are (doing) enough!! Also loving the aesthetic latte shots. And bioacoustics??? Brother thatll be one cool chapter!