ABCs, 123s, CH1.docx

Friday, 29 November 2024; 07:00am

I know it will be hard to conjure up the wonderfulness of this precise feeling later, so let me do my best to set the scene of my ‘right now.’ The warmth and comfort of having spent the last two weeks at Home is not unlike the blissful heat of the hot water bottle that is perched on my lower back.  Both are temporary but necessary right now; both require adaptability and maybe some pain. Still, Home heals me every time I come back, usually right in the spots that needed extra care and attention. I recognize that this excitement probably has a lot to do with the sacredly cozy feeling of kicking off the holiday season with loved ones, and the relief of feeling as though my life, research, degree, purpose and/or calling are finally  falling into the right places—two privileges that I refuse to take for granted. I suspect that the general (and personal!) sense of impending doom (ahem) might also have something to do with this breakthrough, too… These days, I’ve been feeling the same spicy panic that I often get when I’ve procrastinated too long, except lately it seems I’m always buzzing, and never do-ing. My point is that being at Home—a prospect that can, in itself, yield panic—is instead the very thing that lit the motivational fire in my belly, this time.

A few days ago, beneath this same blessed roof that has housed this family my whole life, I finally finally finally started writing my dissertation. I was wrapped in blankets and tucked in a corner of the childhood bed (twin-sized, if you’re wondering) that remains to this day, THEE most comfortable place I’ve ever slept. I’d been home a week, having escaped here at the tail-end of a semester during which I was supposed to be “working on my first chapter,” according to my idea of public opinion. I’d also spent the last few months telling people who hadn’t asked that I’d “started my dissertation,” and telling the few grad student friends who did ask that “yes, I have a deadline!” When I first pulled up at Home, I felt beyond ragged, and burnt by my own bravado. But after one week of GOOD sleep, extra-spicy food, and  belly laughing ’til my abs cramped up,  I got the wild idea to craft my lack of a first chapter, into my first chapter.  I also decided to take a cue from my most supportive friends and celebrated this big little win, just like they had taught me. With some creative scribbling, I engrained a pivotal moment into my grad journey while it happened. As I wrote, I also played with how to think of/look at the creation of a document, and also of a moment.

At Home, this time, I am whole, endlessly happy to have had the chance to be with my parents and siblings for two weeks instead of the one that I usually get, and I have never felt more safe. I’ve also kinda never felt more rude/icky than I did when putting up a note that says ‘WRITING!’ on my door, because even a closed bedroom is a bold, often ignored boundary in a Haitian household. (So I made sure to add a little happy face.)

Today I write with a narrator’s awareness of so many heartbreaking events, health struggles, and fast-moving life decisions that also woven into this comfort and gratitude. While those moments feel as relevant to this chapter as they feel deeply personal, being at Home is showing me exactly why I can, and should work to articulate and share them. After all, the chaos that swirls around in my head, combined with all of the pressure and importance that I’ve been mentally piling onto this document and to this project, is precisely the thing that has me so IN MY HEAD (and therefore, unable to work) on most days.

Being [at] Home this Thanksgiving has shown me that I am allowed to truly pause between being two versions of myself. Someone who was not actively writing her dissertation came crawling home to Northern Virginia, but someone else with a MUCH better hair style (thank you, Mama!) will soon ride the winds of a written hurricane back to central Pennsylvania. The battle scars of recent semesters still ache as they heal, but I find joy in hanging up old habits while finding new ones. For example, deadlines make me incredibly anxious, but a big recent change in my dissertation committee is teaching me how to find peace with them. I’ve also stopped relying on word counts or even regular page formatting to show me what progress can look like (note to self: web layout lets me write and write without caring about the paragraph structure).  I’ve also figured out that I simply canNOT get hip to using outlines as a brainstorm/get-going tool, because I will bullet and indent forever and never get to the writing itself. I can, however, handle very detailed lists. This specific paragraph-thing is proof of that fact, because it started out as one! In more general FFS/WGSS grad student speak that future me would be delighted to unpack: once I start thinking beyond the system to which I’ve been confined, I am able to call attention to the ways I have worked with and against that system and in doing so, can make it work for me.

As for the combined lessons of 1) being at Home and 2) writing a dissertation that are more difficult pills to swallow, I’m still working on those. As in, the SAME three basic things that I’ve struggled to learn and unlearn as a Black child of immigrants; who is just as Haitian as she is American; and is also an ADULT—even though the traditional, patriarchal structure of her strict culture, demands otherwise! —still ring true:

a) Not everyone will agree with everything I do or say, nor how I do or say it, and this is OKAY.

b) Communication is key: remember to be specific, but to keep the point simple and clear.

c) My main priority is to successfully tell my story and to lift others’ stories while I do this project, so how I work is how I work. It only has to make sense to me. The challenge is to clearly and accessibly explain my work to others.

Like I said, those three lessons trip me up so much that I even stumbled through writing them out. There are also several life events, decisions, changes, and more referenced in this post that I’d love to explain eventually. We’ve got plenty of time, and Lord knows, plenty of pages for a lot of storytelling. Apparently, writing a dissertation is a frustrating practice of taking one’s time first, and THEN hurrying up and getting to the point. And yes, I will eventually explain that bonus nonsense, but I’m also going to finish this piece.

With that in mind, the goal of this blog post was an attempt at learning when to stop editing. I played with how to take a new habit (celebrating my wins, even the silly ones) and turn it into a memorable object. The first-ever scribbles of my dissertation are messy and very purple, but they are now as permanent and tangible for you as they are to me. As I share these words, I am learning to not wonder how many of them will make it to the final version of my dissertation, but I’ll pretend that I don’t care, later. Not every day is going to feel as joyful, as heightened, or as noteworthy as that chilly Alexandria evening felt, so I’m choosing to lean into the awe. Choosing to find wonder in the sense that I have no clue what I’m doing. Choosing to have fun, not knowing. 💖