O! I am fortune's fool...

Whilst running at the gym this afternoon, right about mile 3 and Rob Zombie on the iPod, I experienced that glorious moment when my cluttered brain releases its hold on the superfluous junk lying around and everything seems clear.  I do all of my best thinking in the shower and at the gym; if I could spend more time in these two places, I could probably solve all the world's ills.  

I have been writing so much lately, and sadly, not much of what I'm supposed to be writing.  Andrew told me over lunch a few weeks ago that he was thinking of embarking on writing a novel and I asked him, "shouldn't you be writing a dissertation?" to which he responded with horror and scorn at my goody-two-shoes stance.  "Fuck the dissertation," he said and while I laughed, part my obsessive brain began to worry that he wouldn't get his dissertation written.  Furthermore, if Andrew, the single most devoted student I know is shunning his devoted study for loftier pursuits, then what hope is there for me?  Surely my sheer need to be first, best, and most organized freakshow in my department precludes any shirking of responsibility on my part, but who knows.  As I approach my own dissertation work, and with the recent political drama associated with it, I too have succumbed to fiction writing.  Sitting at my computer last night, I suddenly got the urge to write something and I did - many pages that, upon re-reading, are quite good and sound like the opening of an interesting story.  This just goes to show what I was trying to tell my students on Friday about writing: a writer will do just about anything to avoid writing, and this is precisely why hard deadlines and threats of physical harm are necessary to get writers to write in the first place.  

Speaking of students, my DU class is working on revenge tragedy, and specifically Renaissance revenge tragedy.  It goes without saying that they neither share my passion for it, nor understand my obsession with murder, incest, and dismemberment.  Mostly I like to talk about these things so that they'll squirm and look vaguely uncomfortable - because, after all, that is the role of literature, is it not?  To make us uncomfortable?  Part of what I want them to realize is the notion of the Wheel of Fortune and that Lady Fortuna is blind and spins that wheel at her whim.  Most of them are too young to feel the cold sting of gross misfortune or to understand that life is not fair (despite their often indulgent expressions of entitlement), but I too have succumbed to this lately.  What I realized at the gym this afternoon is that I've been whining about things that just don't matter.  I honestly don't care about this dissertation anymore; it's another hoop I have to jump through and I'm just going to do it; I have no doubt whatsoever that I'm a good professor who cares about her students, that I'll be exactly the kind of scholar I want to be despite what pretentious fucks say about my work, and more than any of this, I love what I do and the only reason I'm putting myself through any of it is so I can keep doing it for the rest of my life.  Ha.  Weeks and weeks of grousing and rage, and all I really needed was a great run.