Shuffling on my dissertation proposal

I don't know why it's been so hard for me to get my feet together and move forward on this thing, but it has.  Maybe I'm motivated by fear, laziness, some deeply rooted anxiety, discontent with my life... But it's the first step to getting out of here.

Usually am not a fan of Hemingway, but this is exactly what is going on with me right now.  From http://www.positivityblog.com/index.php/2008/06/13/ernest-hemingways-top-9-words-of-wisdom/

Also - a side note - I don't really agree with the blogger's interpretation of everything here... 

3. Keep your eyes on where you are going.

“Never mistake motion for action.”

It’s very easy to get lost in busy work. You may spend much time in your in-box or filing and organizing things. But at the end of the day or week, what have you accomplished? 

Just because you’re moving doesn’t mean that you are moving in the direction you really want to go. To do that you have to do the things that you know are really important and in alignment with your goals. And not getting lost in busy work.

So, improve your effectiveness and productivity. But, more importantly, never lose your view of your big picture. And take the action and do the things you need to do to get yourself where you want to go.

[CH note: I've been using Ashu's work as an excuse and distraction away from what I really need to do.  It's time to get on that, make more time.  Get on a normalized sleep schedule, throw myself into my work and making myself the best person I can be.]

4. Just do.

“The shortest answer is doing the thing.”

How do you get things done? You take action and do them. You may need to do some planning, but don’t get lost in that stage or in over thinking things. Planning or thinking won’t get you any results in real-life if you don’t take action too.

So take action and just try something. Maybe you’ll succeed. Maybe you’ll fail, but if you do then failure can always teach you a bunch of things. The worst thing is not failure, it’s to just sit on your hands and do nothing.

Developing a just do it habit – where you learn to do what you know you want to do despite how you feel or what your thoughts are telling you at the moment – can be difficult. But it’s rewarding not only because you’ll get actual results and – sooner or later – success. It also builds real confidence in yourself, in your capabilities and in your own personal power to achieve what you want in life.

[CH: Stop talking, just do your shit.]

5. Do. Fail. Learn. Do.

“The first draft of anything is shit”

So you have to keep your eyes on where you are going and do the right things to get yourself there. However, you will not always get what you want on your first try. No worries though, if you have the right attitude. 

What attitude is that? The attitude of the much younger you. The kid who learned to walk and ride a bike. A younger you that doesn’t put so much value into a failure. But instead just gets up after falling down, learns a lesson or two from what happened and then tries again. And again. 

By cultivating that way of thinking about failure – instead of the more usual, more grown up one where you may think that the world will come to an end just because you failed – you can over time achieve some pretty awesome things.

You can read more about how failure can be redefined and be of great help to you in 4 Reasons Why Failure is Pretty Awesome.

[CH note: And first product of your shit is going to be shit.]

9. Don’t judge.

“The writer’s job is not to judge, but to seek to understand.”

I think this is not just a great piece of advice for writers but for anyone really. Seeking to understand rather than judging is hard but is something that can help you and the people around you a great deal. And this also goes back to the first tip, the one about listening. To be a good listener you must have the intent to understand the other person rather than judging him/her.

Instead of going into interactions or just life with a bunch of judgements that you apply on everything and everyone try acceptance. This is not easy if you are used to making judgements about everything. And the thing is, by making a judgement you can often strengthen you ego. You get a small ego boost and you feel good for a while. But just like with caffeine this wears off pretty quickly and you soon need to judge again to feel good.

Accepting may not feel so appealing or “normal” but I have found that when I just accept things I feel a relief and stillness inside. You just feel good. I’m still working on this though.

Accepting someone’s opinion doesn’t mean that you surrender and let them “win”. Nor does it mean that you need to just sit back and cannot take any action. You can accept and still take action to change something if that is what you’d like to do. Accepting just means that you let that person think and feels as s/he likes without judging it. When you just accept and let your judgements rest it’s easier to really understand each other and connect. 

[CH note: don't realy like this interpretation - not knowing the context with which this was written, I think Hemingway is telling us not to form impressions and judgments informed by our framework for understanding, but to watch and be receptive to a reality we are unfamiliar with.  You're a researcher, your job is to watch, be observant, and try to understand what is going on with the world and/or data.]

Can women have it all? Should we be telling them they can?

So many articles I've been reading about how tough it is to be a woman - to find the perfect partner, to excel the most covetous of professional positions.

Sheryl Sandberg, Harvard Alumnus and MBA and CEO of Facebook's TED talk:

1. "Believe in yourself and negotiate for yourself. Own your own success."
2. "Make your partner a real partner", as in share the division of labor.  (Duh.)
3. "Don't leave before you leave", don't back out of the professional world because you have a child, don't slacken your career aspirations in anticipation for being a mother.

A response to L. H. Santhanam's recommended article:

Gosh, I just recently read another article that talked about how women really couldn't have it all.  It was written by a high level political committee member who realized that it was impossible to sustain an insane (by normal people standards, but typical for her position) working schedule and balance family life.  She left her position, even though some people thought she was crazy to do so.

This subject has also come to my attention many times before - if not as a concerned woman interested in working in international development, but also as a graduate student.  A few months ago, I listened to the Dean of Graduate Studies at UNC talk about what it took to make tenure at a public university.  Though his speech was mostly un-useful because his privilege discredited his message, he really alienated his female audience when they asked him about work-family life balance.  Of course, he got to where he is now because his wife stayed at home and took care of the children while he was taking on more and more responsibility in the work place.  And, of course, he really did not do enough to acknowledge this, only saying that "You should do what's expected of you", "There are no tricks to getting tenure in academia", and that he made smart choices that inevitably brought him closer to a high-level administrative position within the university.  Suffice to say, several of my fellow female graduate students left his talk dissatisfied. 

My own thoughts on this are that women are achieving more than they have in the past, in terms of educational attainment and attaining high paying jobs.  In this respect, I don't believe women underachieve next to their male counterparts.  But admittedly, if we use elite positions like management in businesses or the head of state as a benchmark, there's a way to go.  I wholeheartedly agree there is a glass ceiling for women - whether of their own doing or of systematic disadvantage.  The incentives just aren't balanced for women, as they tend not to give up their family for their career.  And there's nothing wrong with that!  I think for all women who listen to Sheryl Sandberg, they need to understand that ambition and career promulgating comes at a cost - spending time with family.  When Sandberg urges future generations of women to break traditional gender role expectations, she does mention that women should make their partners fulfill their end of domestic duties.  But, if both people are career-minded, the household begins to look differently - it's one that outsources its child care and domestic duties, i.e., you're going to need a lot of hired help, at least until the child is old enough to be semi-independent.  Child care is expensive!  And not everyone can afford to do that.  I don't think it's realistic to diminish the sacrifice (and ultimately, reward) that comes with deciding to have a family, and I'm not sure we should be fooling women into thinking that they can have it all if they just work their asses off.

Keeping a relationship together over the long haul

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lydia-netzer/marriage-secrets_b_1459770.html?ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false#sb=3293498,b=facebook

Edit: 6/17.  This is what I must strive for:

"But there is a third kind of marriage. The third kind of marriage is not perfect, not even close. But a decision has been made, and two people have decided to love each other to the limit, and to sacrifice the most important thing of all—themselves. In these marriages, losing becomes a way of life, a competition to see who can listen to, care for, serve, forgive, and accept the other the most. The marriage becomes a competition to see who can change in ways that are most healing to the other, to see who can give of themselves in ways that most increase the dignity and strength of the other.  These marriages form people who can be small and humble and merciful and loving and peaceful.

And they are revolutionary, in the purest sense of the word.

Because we live in a culture in which losing is the enemy (except in Chicago, where Cubs fans have made it a way of life). We wake up to news stories about domestic disputes gone wrong. Really wrong.  We go to workplaces where everyone is battling for the boss’s favor and the next promotion, or we stay at home where the battle for the Legos is just as fierce. Nightly, we watch the talking heads on the cable news networks, trying to win the battle of ideas, although sometimes they seem quite willing to settle for winning the battle of decibels. We fight to have the best stuff, in the best name brands, and when we finally look at each other at the end of the day, we fight, because we are trained to do nothing else. And, usually, we have been trained well. In the worst of cases, we grew up fighting for our very survival, both physically and emotionally. But even in the best of situations, we found ourselves trying to win the competition for our parents’ attention and approval, for our peers’ acceptance, and for the validating stamp of a world with one message: win. And, so, cultivating a marriage in which losing is the mutual norm becomes a radically counter-cultural act. To sit in the marital therapy room is to foment a rebellion.

...

In marriage, losing is letting go of the need to fix everything for your partner, listening to their darkest parts with a heart ache rather than a solution. It’s being even more present in the painful moments than in the good times. It’s finding ways to be humble and open, even when everything in you says that you’re right and they are wrong. It’s doing what is right and good for your spouse, even when big things need to be sacrificed, like a job, or a relationship, or an ego. It is forgiveness, quickly and voluntarily. It is eliminating anything from your life, even the things you love, if they are keeping you from attending, caring, and serving. It is seeking peace by accepting the healthy but crazy-making things about your partner because, you remember, those were the things you fell in love with in the first place. It is knowing that your spouse will never fully understand you, will never truly love you unconditionally—because they are a broken creature, too—and loving them to the end anyway." 

From http://drkellyflanagan.com/2012/03/02/marriage-is-for-losers/

Edit 6/18: The beauty of fortitude and patience in honoring a marriage for a lifetime:
http://www.wimp.com/missinghusband/ 

Things I love

This makes me giddy and giggly at the same time.  Must day leverage enough social debt over time to get John on board.

 

Totally obsessed with Penguin Cam for the last few months.  Blubbery, waddling, awkward-winged creatures.  May they keep up with this endeavor forever.

Edit: 4/9.  Oceans are freaking awesome. And so is xkcd.