:: Saturday, March 13, 2004 ::

recovering...

It's officially the first day of Spring Break and I'm sitting in a coffee house working. I'm afraid that this will be my daily activity throughout the break. Having spent the last month recovering from surgery, I have lots to catch up on, not to mention finishing the Incompletes that I got last Spring when Bill died.

Since coming to Purdue, I seem to have hit one bump after another and some of those bumps have been mountains. It's been such a struggle to keep things together; so I'm doing what I always do to deal with life problems--I'm working. I'm focusing on my teaching, which is my true love, and I'm trying to delve more deeply into my scholarship. My own work has really suffered the brunt of my personal difficulties. It's been difficult to concentrate and devote energy to both it and my teachingl; usually, my teaching takes precedent. It's still taking precedent, but I'm trying to use my scholarship to work through my problems. In the past when I've done this, I've written some of my best papers. I'm allowing my life to inform my scholarship and vice-versa, and to do this, I'm working on issues of trauma and cognition. This work is very close to me and will, I hope, help me to deal with some of the trauma in my life. So far, my teaching and my work have served only to help me push back my troubles so that I don't have to deal with them and maybe that's the best strategy for now. I just hope that I can stave them off long enough to finish my degree. Or maybe I'll be lucky enough to beable to deal with them in manageable pieces; although it never seems to play out that way. Back to work.

:: Cat 1:46 PM [+] ::
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