Bloggy recap

The big bad dissertation is officially submitted and after dedicating more than a decade to their pursuit, I can now officially add those three little letters after my name. So now I face the task of acclimating myself to my new condition wherein I can read/watch/do what I please without work hanging over my head, work about which I will inevitably feel guilty for blowing it off. Admittedly, I still have trouble silencing the voice in my head that keeps needling me that there are dissertation chapters to be turned into articles and conference proposoals to be written. However, I have decided--for good or for bad--to ignore that voice and instead embrace the realities of being an "indpendent scholar," namely the reality that none of the respected journals in my field are gonna serioulsy consider anything submitted without university affiliation.

I did interview for a visiting teaching gig at the local SLAC and as I've yet to hear anything have assumed they went in another direction. A fact that is all well and good as had they offerred me the job I would have taken it and then the guilt would be back--not only the "I-should-be-grading-papers-but-instead-I'm-watching-TV-guilt", but the much much harder to rationalize "I've-schlepped-Boyby-into-DayCare-guilt."

Yes, I am stuggling a bit with my new found blank-slatedness and much to my chagrin my house still isn't clean and dinner is still far too often takeout. However, I am well-rested, taking Boyby on lots of trips to parks and playgrounds and various other adventures, and heavy into planning our kid-free summer vacation during Boyby's visit to Grandma's--only our second real vacation in over a decade of coupledom. Not surprisingly our coupledom has corresponded with my gradschool career and pathetically enough our first real vacation was only this past December, post drafting, pre-defense to celebrate our 10 year anniversary.

I enthusiastically headed out to the local library last week intending to browse the shelves for whatever looked interesting, yet I found I was more than a bit overwhelmed with the sheer number of options and ultimately, with the exception of a few gardening books, left emptyhanded and decided first to peruse my own book shelves for some of those bought, but yet to be read possibilities. ET, a friend who was a Russian major as an undergrad, frequently waxes poetic about the pleasure of a "Russian Summer", so perhaps I'll dust off the Tolstoy, Doystoevsky, and Turgenev and start there.