The Goldilocks Paradox
It’s a strange time, isn’t it. That sentence could mean anything: the world seems to get crazier with each passing day, scale it down and January is a weird and tough month for a lot of people, and so many people we know seem to be going through a hard time too.
At the moment I constantly feel caught between extremes. Many of them I want to write about, but also, I don’t.
You see the problem.
I’ve watched so many people write about things that are very personal to them (in such honest and engaging ways) and become trapped by it. At some point, when it’s done and after the inevitable (though often short lived) catharsis that comes with the emotional letting of writing or whatever it may be, we stop and see we’re caught in a Perspex box of our own making with a crowd we’ve invited along to stare and pass judgement.
To paraphrase Whitman, we contain multitudes, and to commit particular experiences or periods of time to the forever of the internet feels like chiselling the now of us into stone, with the risk we might have to carry it on our backs for all time. And yet, these times and feelings are important and valid, aren’t they, and so instead I scream them into the void (mostly: ranting to The Man) and decide against becoming a spectator sport.
Becoming chronically ill with resulting mobility issues has been, well, let’s say challenging. There have been many obstacles to navigate. Obviously this was the perfect time to be starting a PhD(!) My now-supervisor and I had worked together for a couple of years to shape a proposal into something that could get funding. I don’t know if many people know how a PhD works (I certainly didn’t) but unless you can get it fully funded, there are fees to pay and you’d have to balance it with working, of course. This puts it out of the reach of so many people and naturally means that studentships (funding that pays your university fees and pays a (low) wage), are very competitive. Long story short, a lot of hard work and a bit of luck later and I’m now somehow in my fourth month of a three and a half year(ish) degree.
Having this opportunity keeps me fiercely determined. On the many hard days, it’s the thing that keeps me going.
How do you eat an elephant?
I’ve forgotten how to enjoy a lot of things. I’ve spent swathes of time mired in self-pity and sadness. While it’s not something I’d recommend, I’m okay with it. I contain multitudes after all, and some of those include being a whiny, gloomy cow. Getting an unlucky roll of the dice is shit, and we should be allowed to say that without some wanting us to become some kind of object lesson.
What doesn’t sit well with me though, is that my grief is contagious. Misery seeps from me like a thick fog and dulls the sights and sounds of those around me. To allow that to continue unchecked would be greatly unfair, and so I drag myself from the kitchen of my pity party now and again and try to avoid looking at bigger picture, the unknown future, the giant, spot lit WHAT IF.
I find the joy in reading and discovery for my PhD, in a recent acknowledgment of my work (more on that another time), in getting lost in The Witcher 3 for hours, in the (too) small improvements from a year ago to now. When everything seems too big, too much, all-encompassing and overwhelming, I refuse to think beyond the hour, the day, the week. There are only small steps, and for now, that’s enough.
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
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