Blogging Blues (Again)

Disclaimer: This is a disgruntled post about how I'm feeling regarding the fact that recent posts got no comments at all (except for my SIL's, thanks sis) in conjunction with my grouchy feelings about the dissertation and academia. If you're reading it, chances are you don't "deserve" to read it (it's like those teachers who reprimand the class when those who needed to be reprimanded aren't even there -- I don't know if this ever happened to you, but it happened to me a lot when I was in grade school and even high school).
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Was it the weekend? Or is it just that nobody's reading this anymore? I don't ever check the stats, only look at the weekly email from my free sitemeter, but they don't mean much now since there are feed readers now, and most of those hits are from random search engine results anyway...

Perhaps the absence of comments indicates that you're just tired about dissertation-themed posts, but the recent post didn't even mention the dissertation!! It's pathetic, but sometimes I wait on the wings before posting again because I'm hoping that if I leave the older post up for a few more days, more people will comment. I know I blog for myself and not for others, and besides, my life is pretty uninteresting as it is and that I won't ever be of any real consequence in the blogosphere.

To make matters worse, now that I'm finishing the dissertation and getting this useless Ph.D. I'll loose an important part of my identity as a "blogging graduate student/ABD mama" and I will just be an unemployed, former academic mother. Yeah, it doesn't really matter that I'm not even included there (although I'm wondering if there are any other grad student mamas from other countries represented there -- see? I'm already trying to make my "minority" status count for something, how embarrassing. I bet there aren't, but who really cares about my experience if I cannot write well? That's the real reason why one is not selected for publication, not any concerns of representing a group or not).

Tomorrow is the deadline for that CC post and I don't think I'm applying to it after all... why bother? I won't be selected. I know I should send it, but just the thought of writing a cover letter when I'm not even done with the LONG OVERDUE DISSERTATION CHAPTER (one of the reasons I didn't work on the application last week was that my husband wanted me to finish the dissertation first and then work on the application -- haha, I didn't do either thing!).

I hate to be wallowing in self-pity. I am really a happy, fortunate person and I KNOW THAT. I have the most adorable sons in the world, I have a fabulous dissertation that I have confidence will be published in Brazil, and maybe someday I'll be able to work enough to attain good writing (although I have so many issues with this subject that I cannot even begin talking about it). Perhaps I will even have a decent, fulfilling job someday... It is hard to be in this in-between situation, though. Swimming against the current -- see, what a ridiculous cliché?

I've been thinking lately that I can be a proficient bilingual, that I can be a smart, even bright person, a good English speaker, but I'm a hopeless writer because of this very bilinguality. I have read a lot, but not enough... Sometimes ridiculously old and weak clichés sound interesting to me because I wasn't BORN into this language... in moments like these I feel like I want to go back to Brazil. I have this feeling that there I could be a good academic, I might even be able to write there... but no, I don't really want to go back.

OK, I'll end here. I know I'll feel better soon about some of the things I wrote. About others, there's no real way out, they'll remain there. Together with the other rejection letters. Thankfully, mine not as plentiful as my dear friend Articulate Dad's. I truly admire him and I hope he can succeed. One of these days I want to reflect upon some of the brilliant things he's written about giving up on academia. You can begin with this letter, and also check out his thoughts on Unemployment.

P.S. Oh yeah, and I'm so sick of my own inability to give any really original contributions, not even to my blog, that I removed my photo of the fern from the masthead and left the old blogger template image.

SOMEDAY, someday I'll be able to reinvent myself, the blog, my incipient writing, my non-existent work career. I know that someday it'll happen, but someday is not now. And now I have to work. work hard.

I need a good cry, but I don't really want to cry, I kind of like feeling angry like this, as long as it feels like justifiable anger. Hopefully it will help me keep writing and working. It generally does.