A Word Cloud

I hope you enjoy this. My years of work on Lifting the Shroud: Unveiling a Sympathetic Portrayal of Death in Keturah and Lord Death and The Book Thief came to an end on May 3rd, 2013. That was a while ago. I'm only now emerging from the fog that my summer of freedom and this fall of intense librarian duties cast over me.

I love my thesis. I mean, I was sick of it last spring, but I did, for the most part, love the process, the outcome, and what it represents. Because few of my readers will actually want to digest the 100+ pages of the thesis (though I have 3 hard-bound copies to share if you're interested), you may like to see a visual representation of some of the significant words and themes encompassed therein.

Thanks for your patience. I may yet return to blogging at acceptable intervals. The jury is still out. Until then, know that all of my thoughts and words for the last 3 years are summed up in this image.

A new semester (circa 2005-2006)

[Note: I just discovered this in a "drafts" folder. Apparently, I wrote it while in grad school the first time, somewhere between 2005-2006. Oh, How I can still relate to this completely. Sad commentary on my lack of growth between then and now.]

Every five months when a new school term begins, I am overwhelmed with the intensity with which I try to avoid diving in to the work.

It doesn't help, I suppose, when it appears to be Spring, even though I know for certain it's winter. Dead winter. Though the sunshine does ease the burden somewhat.

Ever since I was a child, I've been terrified of the unknown - whether it was a week at church camp in a woods near a pond or a sleepover with friends - I think it has something to do with the fact that these are not situations that I can control. That I think I can control.

As I got older, the circumstances that brought on these bouts of paralyzing fear had to do with change: going to college, traveling around the world with a group of strangers and then with only my best friend, moving to Arizona for the summers, and coming to grad school. My comfort zone is very small and none of these things fit into it.

I'm approaching another stage right now that is scary and the tightness in my chest and the anvil in the bottom of my stomach are closing me off, weighing me down, and separating me from everyone else, it seems.

The question that flashes across my mind is this: what if I fail? What if I can't pull it off and I'm unable to finish, to succeed? What if, in stepping across this threshold, I lose another part of who I am - the quiet parts, the sacred parts, the ones that make me feel at home and safe and free.

It's ridiculous, this fear. Irrational. And that's what allows me to see it. I can yell at it to go away - "I see you, Fear!" But it sees me too, and wins the staring contest every time.

Voicing my issues always helps...and even though this will never be posted, I feel better knowing it's out there. Perhaps later, at the end of term, when I've completed the necessary work and when I've succeeded, I can come back to this confession and laugh. "Gotcha again." Fear says, as it stirs another pot of hysteria, threatening to break the surface.

This is why they say that focusing on God changes perspective. If He directs my path - I will succeed, eventually, on His terms, in His way, not my own. For that I'm grateful. Now, to extract the anvil from my gut...

Waking Up in 2013

Every time I look at my blog (which is almost daily), I feel guilty that I don't post more often. The reality is, my recreational words are simply fewer than they were years ago when I started this (maybe, too, my life is less interesting now than when I was 22). It might not be that I contemplate or am creating less frequently (my brain certainly feels as if it is still being used quite a bit), it seems as though the trajectory of my thought- and creation-world has shifted instead.

Where am I creating? In the Library, I work with words all day long. I am putting words together in memos, outlines, handouts, marketing materials, and on the web site. I'm teaching in various capacities at some point every day whether in a classroom or one-on-one with students and employees. I'm creating new ways to say old things, exciting ways to illuminate seemingly tedious tasks, and trying to find relevant connections with a generation of students that are increasingly confusing to me.

A few days ago, a student asked me what I do at night when I go home from work. I pondered it, not even knowing how to answer. I'm exhausted every night by the time I get home, anywhere between 6 and 11pm, depending on my work schedule. My brain hurts, and my eyes are so tired sometimes I can't focus on our home computer screen or the words on a page of my thesis. My kitten is so lonely that each night when I return home he acts as if he hasn't seen me in weeks; he rubs on my ankles and cries while looking into my eyes until I pick him up and carry him around with me while I shut the blinds or look at the mail or talk to Kyle on the phone. Often, I need to do some sort of food prep, though we do our best to make all of our dinners for the week on Sundays. I unload the dishwasher and load it; sometimes there is laundry to switch, fold, or put away. I almost always lay on the couch with my loving kitten for at least 30 minutes, trying to work up the umph to dive into my thesis revisions, often slipping into a kind of coma of sleep. Mostly, I rest my brain, it seems.

After realizing that I pretty much do nothing when I get home from work, I began to wonder why? I used to play the piano (surely I didn't take lessons for 11 years for nothing), scrapbook, talk to friends who live faraway on the phone, or come up with funny stories to blog about. I used to go running or lift weights every day after work (and I loved it). I used to feel like there were so many hours between work and sleep, that I reveled in all that I could accomplish during that time.

Obviously, my feelings have changed as evidenced by my actions.

I don't have any good answers to the question of why.

I'm not that old, so I feel like that isn't a legitimate reason; I've never had much energy, so it's not like that fountain is ceasing to flow.


Part of me believes that my well of creativity is being tapped in such a way at work (and, most definitely, through school and this darn culminating project) that it's depleting me of all resources through which I could actually have a life. That makes me sad. While I do find my work greatly fulfilling, I am not one to be defined by my career. Yes, I fit many of the stereotypes for a librarian, but I'm a whole heck of a lot more than that, too; or at least I thought I was. I used to be.

I hadn't intended for this to be a Debbie Downer post, and I don't believe it has to be. It's remarkable to me to reflect on all that the last 8 years have brought my way; to consider where I sit today as compared to where I sat as a student intern 8 years ago. Everything is different, including me. I'm hoping to use my summer away from work this year to contemplate what that means--who am I? What do I want to be? And what steps can I begin to take that will inch me toward that goal?