Dissertation. Paleo & Exercise.

As much as I’d love to go around telling each person who has meant anything to me in the process of trying to earn my PhD the following information, I can’t. There are too many of you, so I am writing it here hoping some people actually read these things  and hoping you will not feel betrayed that I am not telling you to your face.

I have made the decision to quit and not finish my dissertation. I am not going to complete my PhD. I am totally and completely okay with my decision. I have not fallen off the academic wagon, and I still feel like I can be a valuable part of the academic community. I am simply choosing to focus on teaching my beloved middle school and high school students, instead of splitting myself between my two loves. I still plan to write and research, but my interest will likely switch from literature and literary theory to literature and teaching literature. Of course, theory will still be a part of that process, but so will pedagogy, methodology, pragmatics, and all of those educational tidbits I’ve been ignoring in my research.

*

I realize I’ve changed my life by eating paleo, and I feel like shit when I eat wheat and corn, so I wonder to myself, “Why is it that you still insist on eating things that make you feel like shit?” There are two pretty obvious reasons: they taste good, and that’s what’s available. I am sure there are other not so obvious reasons, too. On Thursday, at Thirsty Thursday, I decided I had a hankering for a corn dog. Savage’s has corn dogs, so I ate one, and when I woke up the next morning, my belly was bloated, my tongue was swollen and my mouth was on fire. Think there might be an allergy there? I felt horrible, so I decided then and there that non-paleo (or primal if I’m feeling more lax) foods will not be going into my body anymore, no matter how appealing they sound, nor how readily available they are.

In addition to just (sort of) eating whatever I want, I haven’t been exercising the way I want to (or need to). I’ve been sleeping in, instead of going swimming and running. I’ve been couching, instead of going for bike rides or walking the dogs. I’ve been doing pretty much everything to avoid the exercise schedule I’ve created for myself. Because of this neglect, I’ve had to drop out of the Flying Pig half-marathon that’s happening in two weeks. I still have my entry, so I suppose if I feel like it that day, I could head over and make the attempt. I’m pretty sure I could do 16-minute miles for 13.1 miles. Maybe not. Anyway, I haven’t been where I need to be, and as per usual, I decided to “exercise punish” myself. I made up a circuit last night. Four reps with a 3 minute vacuuming break (I was doing housework, too. What can I say?):

1. 10 air squats with the kettlebell
2. 25 kb swings
3. 15 bent rows per side with kb
4. 15 lat rows per side with kb
5. 15 overhead arm extensions with kb
6. 15 tricep extensions with medicine ball
7. 15 per side side to side crunches with mb
8. 15 heel-tapping oblique crunches
9. 15 diamond-bent leg crunches with hands overhead
10. throw the medicine ball up in the air 15 times
11. slam the medicine ball to the ground from overhead 15

For dinner last night, I made lamb chops marinated in Bell’s Porter (which is technically not paleo, but I didn’t drink it), broccoli, and sweet potatoes.

Yummy.

I slept so well, like a little baby. When my alarm went off at six this morning, I got up and ran 2 miles to Ball Pool, swam 1.5 miles, and then ran the two miles home. I ate eggs, bacon, a banana, and some tea for breakfast, then walked down to the park to take tickets for the ball game. It was freezing, so I came home and took a really hot shower before I ate squash, uncured hot dogs, and tea for lunch. Basically, it’s been a beautiful couple of days. My body is sore, but my spirits are reeling. I am so excited for summer and for what my future holds. I’m Pollyanna-ing all the way.

Last Minute Jitters Turn Into Legitimate Concerns

Menses alert (like a spoiler alert, but more important): As if it wasn’t enough to attempt to move my fat body 26.2 miles, I get to do it while Mother Nature does her thing to my uterus. Thanks, lady, you’re supposed to be on my side. You are a woman after all!

If nothing else, though, I have plenty to think about on this 6-hour journey. I can replay recent disappointments with friends to investigate what I have done to offend. I can revel in recent—and fantasize about future—growths in my professional life. I can contemplate my (partially) new-found spirituality, reviewing the texts I’ve been reading as I run. I will repeat a mantra: “Just keep swimming.” I can pray for personal and universal plights and rejoice over successes. I can consider social justice issues and the ways in which I can . And, if I finish, I will feel like I’ve accomplished something big.

*

Well, it’s the Tuesday after the marathon, and I didn’t finish. I didn’t accomplish something big. This time. I was going strong until mile 10 when I noticed my chest starting to tighten up, and I started to have a difficult time breathing. I’ve run 15-mile training runs, so there should have been no problem. But there was.

I don’t have a formal asthmatic diagnosis, unless you count the exercise-induced one from when I was still young enough to go to the pediatrician, so I hate it when I can tell my lungs are starting to spasm and constrict. I can’t do anything to fix it because I don’t have an inhaler. By the time I turned onto Pennsylvania Avenue, I could tell I wasn’t going to last much longer. Maybe it was the gingko trees, maybe it was my imagination, but my breathing was difficult. I started crying, and then I started walking. I made it to mile 11 where I promptly got scooped up by the slow wagon.

*

I learned a lot about myself through this huge disappointment. I know I need to start my allergy shots, and I am hoping I am part of the 50% of the population they work for. I know I need to train much more diligently and much more thoroughly for the next go around. I know could stand to lose some weight, which would only make running 26.2 miles a little less painful. I know I need to be more careful about what I eat between now and then, maybe adding in a bit more protein and fewer “treats.”

I learned I need to give myself more grace when shooting for lofty goals, like I need to give myself grace for not having time to work on my dissertation. I learned I need to count on my friends and family who are steadfast and true and revel in their love for me.

I don’t know what else to say about this whole journey, except that I lost it on Saturday when I stopped running. The bottom of my world fell out, and all those dark feelings came rushing in and I was drowning. I came back (or to put it evangelically, I was redeemed) when I decided that not making a goal I set for myself isn’t the end of the world, and that I always have next time. Sounds trite, sounds cliché, sounds sickeningly like something I wouldn’t want to hear, but it’s true. I don’t have a terminal illness. I am not incapacitated in some way. There is always tomorrow.

While I was running,  I thought a lot about the legacy I want to leave behind, and the one I was heading toward leaving behind wasn’t exactly it. Recently, I have spent way too much time wallowing in self-pity. I haven’t spent nearly enough time thinking about, dwelling on those things I have to rejoice about. For my legacy, I want to leave behind peace and compassion, not anxiety and anger. I may not be happy in every situation, but I can still be grace-filled and experience each moment for what it brings.

Funk. Dissertation. Running. Vegan.

My funk has been clinging to me like the flesh to the pit of a peach for about six months now. I see no way out. I go through every day trying to fake happiness and trying to pretend like everything is okay, but I know some people see through it. It started in June when I was, theoretically, working on my dissertation and it clings on, even through today. I have tried all those things that one tries when prying the peach off the pit. I’ve pulled. I’ve pried. I’ve done everything short of pulling out a knife to scrape it off. It’s stuck here.

(Dont’ worry about me, though, because I am trying to use a combination of vitamins, Christian thought and prayer, Buddhist thought and meditation, and solid nutrition combined with exercise to get back into a good headspace. I will get the funk off if it kills me!)

The funk began when I realized I couldn’t write about my chosen topic for my dissertation, because it was too intensely personal. Who knew I couldn’t just whip off a couple hundred pages about spirituality, sexuality, and wholeness. As if being fragmented for so long would lend itself to writing about wholeness! I began this topic in earnest a year ago, but teaching middle school and high school does not lend itself to writing a dissertation. The students are so needy, and I have such a desire for them to learn well, that I pour my whole self into them and tend to leave nothing for myself.

Many of my professors might say that teaching will take care of itself, and that I would be wise to invest in myself for a change, but would they still say that if their own child sat in my class. Would they want their child’s teacher putting herself before their child? I can say with unwavering certainty, the answer is no. Each parent believes that his or her own precious darling deserves the best from a teacher, and I agree. If I had a child, would I want his or her education coming at the hands of a person who had spent the night before reading Foucault and food theory, rather than reading the chapters I had assigned their students to read, so s/he could lead a decent discussion or plan a thought-provoking activity? Um, no. I would want my child’s teacher to work hard to teach my child. So, needless to say, I don’t get much done in the way of dissertation work during the school year.

That being said, I am in the process of changing my dissertation topic, so I have to have a new proposal to my director here very shortly. Since I go home from school each night and work three to four more hours on lesson planning and grading, I want to know how it is that I thought I could get this proposal written? What was I thinking? In my head, I see how it works out. The topic is food in ethnic American novels. The chapters have to do with cultural (ethnic) discipline, spiritual discipline, an sexuality/gender discipline as it is evidenced through food and meals. I got the idea when, at my wits end, I received a package in the mail this summer from my friend Rachel. These two books were my birthday present: The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist Vegetarian Critical Theory and From Betty Crocker to Feminist Food Studies: Critical Perspectives on Women and Food. I had already been considering a topic change and this idea had been ruminating for  a while (it had been a small part of the original dissertation topic), so the books seemed like some Divine confirmation of the change. As soon as I get a few minutes to myself, I plan to start writing my new proposal. I’ve been researching and I feel hopeful.

I have been sick for a few days with what I assume can only be allergies. I didn’t write about it because I was otherwise occupied, but over the summer I found out that I am allergic to pretty much everything inside and outside, except cedar trees and mold. I am very allergic to dust, insect stings, and ragweed. Probably the ragweed is my current nemesis, but I digress. The worst part about being sick is that I am training for the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon on November 5, which is forty-four days away, and I haven’t been able to run for about a week. The last long run I did was 15 miles, and it went really well as I was able to finish close to my goal time. I am hoping that November 5 will be cold and dry. The colder, the better. Last years race started at 20 degrees, which would be ideal for a big girl like me! I was hoping to run it barefoot, but I am planning, instead, to run in my Vibram Five Fingers. I just want to finish the course this year, and after this one, I plan to try to get faster.

I suppose that running really helps with my level of stress, too, unless I am training for an event. When I have a training plan to follow, I stress about missed runs, I stress about not getting faster, and I stress about what I am eating. Am I getting enough protein? Am I getting enough carbs? Am I running too much or too little? Am I eating too much junk food? Will missing a week of runs make me not finish? Sometimes it seems like just another stressor, but then I go out and run, and I hear that Kshkshksh sound and all seems right with the world. My breathing is good, my legs feel strong, and my feet lightly touch the pavement with each repetition. And, I just feel good. I feel like the funk, the drudgery slip out of my flesh, just like the pit of the freestone peach. I feel freestoned.

I’ve been vegan for a bit over a year now (off-and-on vegetarian/vegan for close to 20 years), and I love it most of the time. I’m not one of those vegans who pretends that now I have some grand moral compass that disallows me to experience cravings for particular foods. I have had a serious pork craving for about three weeks now. I fantasize about chowing down on some big ol’ QL’s pulled pork BBQ sandwich on white bread with some hot sauce. I fantasize about making some ribs on the grill with my own hot orange BBQ sauce. I fantasize about slicing into a huge oven-baked pork chop and dipping it into Heinz 57 on the way up to my mouth for a seriously decadent treat. I say all that to make it sound less horrible when I tell you that I ate 3/4 of a cheese, mushroom, and spinach frozen pizza last night. I followed it up with ice cream. It was my first intentional non-vegan moment (not counting in WI on vacation where there is no food without cheese) in more than a year. And, while my body enjoyed it, my conscience did not. I had dreams about dairy cattle, their babies, and veal farms. I thought about calling up some local dairies and asking if they sell their calves to veal farms, so I could make a conscientious choice to steer clear of the whole nasty dairy farm back-story that no one ever wants to talk about.

Peace, yo.

A Whole New Chapter

On June 2, I plan to start a whole new chapter of my life, a technology-free chapter. I have been spending far too many hours with my face smashed into the computer screen, most of which has been spent on Facebook, Twitter, and email. My addiction has gotten to the point where I spend more time clicking back and forth between social networks and email, compulsively and to no good end. When I open my computer, I automatically open several tabs that I check obsessively until I log off the computer. I have found myself mindlessly clicking back and forth from tab to tab for hours. Sometimes a whole day will be taken up with the mindless shuffling between sites. There is no good reason for my compulsion, so I need to stop. I am giving myself an intervention.

On June 2 (and until August 14), I am not going to use the computer at all. Well, correctly stated, I will not use the Internet at all, but I have to use Word to type my dissertation. I plan to only use my cell phone with no texting for the duration of the summer. Why? Two reasons first come to mind: (1) I have become detached from people who are around me, being absorbed into my computer, even when there are people I care about in the room with me, and (2) I have to get a couple of chapters of my dissertation drafted.

I think this will help me to wean myself away from the social sites. Also, I hope to find myself getting much more done, including painting the house, refinishing the floors, drafting two chapters, writing some creative nonfiction, and running and swimming every day, except Saturdays when I will go for bike rides with Bec. I set goals. I don’t always keep them, but I never lose hope that I might, one day, make my goals.

A New Year. New Goals.

2011. For it’s ability to bring hope and fresh passion to an otherwise apathetic and decaying culture, I embrace the celebration of the new year. I understand that we might experience failures in the new year; we are a fallen people. This is no longer Eden. However, the festivity of New Year’s Eve and the solemnity with which people make vows, create resolutions, and set goals that theoretically will make them better people makes me know that each new year brings restored passion and compassion. There’s hope in the air. People have faith that this year will somehow be better than last. And, we give forgiveness for those failures we’ve previously experienced. Presumably, our goal is to make ourselves better this year. Here are my goals for this year. They’re not much different than last, but they attempt to take what I have been trying to do and to do it better.

1. Read. Both the bible and other books. Hopefully a little bit of each, each day. Watch less television, even though I already don’t watch much. It’s amazing to me how productive I can be when I don’t watch the television. I will however watch Bones and Big Love.
   
2. Run. Every day except Sunday. My goal is to run three miles a day on Monday through Thursday. On Friday, I’ll run two miles, and on Saturdays at least six miles. I also plan to add some other types of exercise. I want to finish two marathons: my own Ivanhoe’s Marathon and the Towpath Marathon.
3. Eat. Only food I can recognize as food. I want to remain vegan, but I want to narrow this down a bit more and eat only whole foods, such as beans, rice, vegetables, and the like. Cut out processed foods and sugars.
4. Dissertate. Two chapters. I want to finish two chapters of my dissertation this summer, and I have set forth a plan to make this happen.
5. Teach. To the best of my abilities. Love each student. Be firm with each student. Guide each student to his or her highest potential. Be more diligent in grading.
6. Attitude. Change it. I need to work on being more relaxed and carefree. I need to talk less and listen more. I need to remember that I don’t always have to be right. Loving people is more important than anything else. My stress level is through the roof, and I need to remember that the only person I have to please is God. What this means and where this will take me, I don’t know, but I am open to doing whatever it is I am supposed to do. I would just like to know what that is!

I am also working on an art/writing project. Once I get it going and hammer it out, I will post a link to the ongoing project. I am pretty excited about it.

Sleeping and Waking. Injuring and Running. All in a days work.

I would teach from nine to four, sleep an hour, and write from six until midnight, night after night.—Marguerite Young

I wish I was this motivated.

I should be. There is no reason I am not.

But, I am not.

So, instead, I teach from 8AM to 3PM—or 4 or 5 if I have a meeting—everyday, coming home to walk dogs, eat dinner, grade, then couch. Instead of writing, I fondle the remote control, waiting for some titillating piece of cinematic prowess to stimulate my mind into wanting to write or read or do anything productive. What I do instead of doing anything remotely academic or intellectual is I fall asleep watching Jeopardy before 8PM. Then I get up at  an ungodly hour in the morning to grade or to read or to plan my day. It’s sad, really.

I thought this weekend would be different. I thought I had a no-fail plan for catching up on all those things I should have done during the weekends when I was otherwise engaged, be my engagement in conferences or traveling or whatnot (side note: I cannot believe whatnot is in the computer dictionary, and that there is no little red line telling me it’s spelled wrong or not really a word.). I thought this would be the work weekend to end all work weekends, but my neighbors and their dog had another plan.

As I slept peacefully on the couch downstairs where I had fallen asleep watching Bones, I heard a loud commotion outside. I discovered that much like every other weekend since they moved in, my neighbors were having a drunken conversation on their front porch. This conversation was taking place in that I’m-trying-to-be-quiet-but-since-I’m-drunk-I’m-really-being-louder-than-usual radio newscaster’s voice. All monotone and spacey.

They were talking about the beers they were drinking; at least they’re drunken beer snobs, so I get to hear all about different, good beeers, instead of then pontificating about the ins-and-outs of beer pong or Asshole. At any rate, the dog must have had to go pee, because they let her out. Normally, she stays in their yard, does her business, and then goes back inside. But, I am sure, since she’s a smart dog, that she recognized the fortuitous twist of fate, the fact that they were so drunk they didn’t realize they hadn’t put her back in the house, and decided to come over into our yard for a bit. Which wouldn’t have been a bad idea if she would have simply stayed quiet and in the front yard.

However, she decided that it might be nice to go to the back and start snooping around, sniffing by the garage door, and nosing around in our back yard. This one, seemingly miniscule, action resulted in my being up from around 115AM when they awakened me with their revelry until about 5AM when they finally got their dog back in the house, and I finally calmed mine down for the third time. Yes, there were three cycles of Jane (their dog) barking and carrying on, which incited Sydney, who got Celie all riled up, who then got Lily all howly, and then I would come thumping down the stairs to quiet them down. On round number two, I took our dogs outside to pee so they could see that it was just Jane who was in their space. They didn’t really care. They didn’t want anyone in their space at 2AM.

Finally, after this second round, after I startled one of the neighbors while he was peeing in a bush, and after he decided to get Jane into the house, I stayed downstairs, sleeping on the couch until the third round of barking which must have been inadvertently stimulated by a squirrel or something in the backyard. Once those dogs get wacky, there’s almost no calming them down! I fell asleep watching Criminal Minds around 5AM. I should have used the time to write or read, but as per usual, I couched and remoted. I woke up about an hour-and-a-half later and went back upstairs to bed. I got up at 815ishAM. Needless to say, I am worthless today, so I am going to try to read the rest of the books I need to read. It’s about all I’m good for.

*

I finally went to the doctor for my ankle, and I have to wear heel cups, do stretches, and massage it with ice frozen in Dixie cups. I am going to start running again on Tuesday, but I have decided to move my runs to the afternoon, just when I get home from school and after I walk the dogs. I am going to start at the very beginning, so I don’t re-injure my ankle. My hope in running in the evening is that I will be able to run out the stress of the day and run in some energy to read and write for the evening. I figure if I can get to the point where I can get home, walk the dogs, and run by 530PM, I will have an hour for a nap/leisure time before Bec gets home. (I may have to reverse the order of the nap and the run.) Then, I will be more energized. Also, I am going to try to avoid the TV and the Internet between 630PM and 930PM or 10PM. Maybe this will help me get more focused as well.

One thing I will also have to work on is the way I eat. I have been eating like crap lately: lots of cookies, candy, animal products, and soda. I am not sure why I do this to myself, because I feel much healthier when I don’t eat these things. I love grape soda, so I am not sure I want to cut it completely, and a couple of Oreos won’t hurt either. I just need to stop eating ten or twelve Oreos and a couple of sodas each day. On top of regular food! It’s silly, really. And, I will need to stop the caffeine intake, too. No more Americanos that aren’t decaf.

Not only will I need to change what I eat, but when I eat. Seemingly, it would work better to eat more for an early breakfast when I first get up , hopefully by 430 each morning. Then by eating more for lunch, too, I will be able to run five hours later and skip dinner, having popcorn and an apple for a light snack before bed.

*

So here I go again setting goals I may not keep. The goal date for the following is July 22, 2011, my birthday:

1. Finish a marathon.
2. Stop shaving my head. Let it grow for Locks-of-Love.
3. Spend at least half an hour reading the Bible, praying, and contemplating God each day.
4. Have 75% of my students grow one academic year’s growth.
5. Finish two chapters of my dissertation.
6. Run 1000 miles.
7. Stay vegan.
8. Learn to say only what is necessary. Listen more than talk.
9. Read one new book and one magazine from cover to cover each week. Follow the news.
10. Finish painting the outside of the house.

Whirlwinds. Meanness. Writing. Exercise.

I started the school year with an equal dose of confidence and trepidation, knowing my ability to teach would have to somehow balance with the expectations of Burris. One thing is true: this month has been a complete and utter whirlwind. I have never graded so many papers in such a short time, nor have I ever had so little time to do any personal reading or writing. I have found myself getting up at 4:00AM or 4:30AM each day this week in order to get grading and planning finished. I have spent the better part of at least one day, if not both days, of every weekend at school working. I haven’t even touched my dissertation, and now I face a couple of late nights working on a presentation for a conference I foolishly applied to attend. However, I do get to spend a good bit of quality time with friends I don’t get to see frequently, so I am looking forward to that part of it. Writing the presentation is an entirely different story!

One month into this new school year, I have to say that my experience is different than I expected. The people I expected to not like, I have grown to love, and the people I expected to really like, I am recognizing I am not so fond of. As usual, I am left with one driving question: Why do people insist on treating each with no compassion and no respect?  When I die, I fully expect  to move into my afterlife, asking to speak to whomever is in charge and trying to understand why people can’t be nice to each other. I will also demand to know why people get cancer and why it seems that the worst, most hateful people continually get ahead. I mean occasionally kind, loving people get ahead, but it feels as if the predominance of folks who are lauded in the media aren’t very nice. It seems as if the predominance of people in my life who have “the best lives” are the most hard-hearted and cruel. I suppose that is what happens when we continually measure the quality of people’s lives by financial success.

As you’ve noticed, and as I’ve said above, this new gig leaves little to no time for personal writing or reading. Normally, I wouldn’t consider working on my dissertation as personal gratification, but I crave a minute of reading a book written expressly for adults. I want to wrap my mind around a little Toni Morrison, and cuddle for a minute with Gloria Naylor. I have even found myself desiring to read scholarly articles! This need will be temporarily sated by my necessity to complete this conference presentation for next weekend. Sarah, Elizabeth, and I are going to Minneapolis, MN, for a fat studies conference. We are presenting on fat, pedagogy, and images. I was going to write about the students I’ve had who have interacted with the ideas of fat and body image, but I think I am going to shift my focus to include conversations or teachable moments in which my students have said things about being fat.

Finally, my body craves exercise in much the same way that my mind craves intellectual stimulation. I desire a run and a swim. I keep thinking that I will start running and swimming in the mornings, but this week I graded instead so next week I am going to shoot for swimming in the morning and easing back into running with a short barefoot run every evening. I feel like a slug. My ankle still hurts, but it is no longer excruciating. I hope the running won’t injure it again, because I have already missed one marathon opportunity, and it sucks.

*

The sun peeks over the top of the gas station across the street, highlighting the new garage being built next door. The rafters and wall-studs are geriatric dinosaurs darkened against the pinks and blues of the early morning sky. Two men sit, silhouetted by the light, by the windows between me and sunrise. They have discussed baptism, blackholes, and solar flares before moving on to high school cross country. Now they give thanks for their posh lives, reveling in the fact that they are not traveling business men who sit “forlorn and lonely” in hotel lobbies.