Frustrations

I am trying very hard to shift my concentration in writing here from my crushing fears for TB to my crushing frustrations and fears in writing my thesis. How's that going for me, you might ask?

Egad.

I am having so much trouble with this thesising thing. It is beyond difficult for me. Why should what is essentially four relatively small papers, all on the generally same theme, be so difficult? I am beginning to wish I were a biology major. Then I could write about the mating habits of flamingos, as a friend of mine is doing. Well, she's writing about something having to do with flamingos, anyway. I wanted something that would be important, something that would be timely, something that would matter.

Well, as they say, be careful what you wish for.

I finished chapter one, and turned it over to my peeps for reading. Turns out it wasn't as spectacular of a showing as I had hoped. As usual, I have a tendancy to try to write everything, rather than one thing. Can I have a hell yeah? How about an editor?

I know where TB gets his issues with perseverance. I have trouble with that too. I think I just want to be excellent at everything I do, and if I have to work harder than I think I *should* be working, then something clearly is wrong with me. And, of course, I give up. This is not something I can give up on, obviously, and I don't *want* to give up. I want to do it perfectly.

Maybe that's my constipation issue with the writing. In the past, I've sat down to write, and had little problem once I got started. And even with my first Chapter One, I felt like it was easy going once I actually got the pump primed. Now I've got Chapter One Again, and it wasn't such easy going, and I'm not really sure that it's any better.

Is it too late to change my major to mathmatics? Physics?

And, of course, the whole idea that this topic is so close to me is difficult. In referring to the media as a tool of the government, am I revealing my horrible bias? I fear that it might come through, just a teensy bit. Is that bad? Good? Indifferent?

I started my master's work by not thinking about my thesis. I was too frightened of it, too blown away at the thought that that was what was waiting for me at the end of the road, to really look at it straight on. I could take tiny peeks, from the corner of my eye, but could never really bring myself to look it straight in the eye, and meet it's gaze, because I knew it could stare me down. I spent quite a lot of nights, sitting with Hon crying and fretting and carrying on that I can't possibly do this! How can I ever even come up with an IDEA for a thesis, much less write one?

That's quite a few nights under the bridge, or something like that, and I don't cry about the process anymore. Maybe I'm too scared of it to cry about it. Maybe I'm beyond crying about it now. Doubtful. Very doubtful. I think that I'm just so paralyzed with fear about this, and about other things in my life, that I can't cry about them now. Maybe later.

One thing is for sure. Since I laid off the nightly news, things have been better for me as far as The Boy is concerned. But I had a minor set back in that arena, and much as the alcoholic falls off the sobriety wagon, I fell off my newsless life wagon. I found myself in the news gutter with Jim Leherer, Keith Olbermann and Arianna Huffington, and let's just say that a life of news sobriety is preferable to more days like the past few. I have found that, much as the alcoholic has to take one day at a time, and not take that first drink, I can't watch that first news roundup. It's just not a good idea for me. So that means that I get to miss most of the Scooter Libby trial. Probably just as well, because it will just piss me off.

So I am struggling with my thesis, struggling with my worry, and just struggling in general. And that frustrates me.

Since TB has said that his unit is being deployed, my sleep patterns and my dreams have changed dramatically. I've always been one to have those weird dreams where one minute, I'm naked in chemistry class, and another minute, I'm shopping for gilded lillys in New York. Since TB told me of his deployment, my dreams are linear, they have a plot, even if a loosely written and very Stanley Kubrich-ish one. This morning, TB was preparing to marry, and was wearing a dress uniform, and was talking to a brother (who he doesn't have) and joking around. They were discussing cars, and TB made a lunge for his brother he doesn't have, and in my dream, their comments and cutting up were so funny. His not-brother was dressed differently, and was a Marine, and I realized as I watched this film (because in my dream it was really a film, a film of the wedding rehersal, and it wasn't on a DVD or anything, but on one of those old film strips, think high school, where the film had to be threaded into the movie projector), I realized with a sinking horror, that now I have to worry about not just one, but two, and even worse, one of them is a Marine. But at the same time, I laughed in my dream, because they were cutting up, and having fun, and loving each other as siblings do. Gary asked me this morning when we got up if I had had a funny dream, because I was giggling.

If I were to indulge in any sort of dream interpretation (a skill I learned as a young teen, whilst my dear mum was in school for to become a counselor - I regularly ate my Corn Pops while listening to Mom and her roommate discuss their various dreams from the night before over their coffee) I would see this as my subconcious telling me to enjoy and love what I have - what I *can* appreciate and be achingly thankful for. I have only one son, I am not like the family at TB's graduation from Basic, who had four, all of them overseas, and two in Baghdad. Statistically, I am luckier than them. TB is a soldier, not a Marine - also referred to by some as "a bullet magnet" - what a horrible thought - and statistically speaking, he is better off than many. Finally, and most importantly, he is alive, happy, and I am enjoying every moment of being a part of his life. He is not off somewhere doing something that I have no idea about, as was the case this time last year. He is talking to me, regularly, and calling me with his joys and his worries. He is involving me in his life. This is new, and it is joyful to me.