Hoping that Sleep is Overrated

I think I am beginning to understand why Professor Three said Sleep would be the commodity I would have to forego on my Journey to Dissertation. She told me this when I lamented that I have been having trouble finding large periods of time to spend in my research and subsequent writing.

She empathized with me, of course, because after all, Professor Three is not only actively teaching full time, she also is writing yet another book, is juggling umpteen lecturing engagements, and perhaps was even preparing for another summertime archeological dig at the time of our email exchange last spring. (This Professor Three is brilliant and multi-talented, did I mention that previously?) The point is, her response to my whining was that she "sleeps very little."

That didn't help.

It isn’t that I don’t want to give up Sleep in the short term so that I can achieve a longterm goal. Sleep is a good thing and through the years I have come to welcome it even when my eyelids have fought me so that I could continue watching the latest episode of The Sopranos or whatever my guilty TV pleasure of the moment may have been.

Sleep is becoming my nemesis. Like Lex Luther is to Superman. My tormenter, even. That might be the better word for it because any time that I begin to think I will be able to indulge in a full seven or eight hours of the blessed inactivity, The Brain tells me to fuggeddaboudit.

So maybe it is that Sleep and The Brain are in cohoots. Because they apparently are working together to keep me from getting too comfortable with the whole “rest” component of my life that is supposed to occur roughly between the hours of 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. on a daily basis (Give or take a random South Park episode. Hey, it can’t all be about intellectual stimulation. Sometimes we have to laugh at ridiculous, even crass, humor).

I have a theory. I think when a person is exploring a passion of theirs, or perhaps is just enjoying their creative pursuits (you pick), The Brain seeks the opportunity to continue that discussion of the imagination when you are deliberately trying to put it on a shelf. It lies in wait, letting you think you are winding down and packing it in for the evening. The Brain even lets you collaborate with his buddy, Sleep, and says, “OK, you two, get a room. I’m outta here.”

Then it lets you drift off. It lets you settle into a fairly solid state of silent, lovely non-motion of thought and body. Without warning, The Brain then will fire its first salvo: a salient point related to what you were contemplating earlier. Perhaps, it will be an exceptionally brilliant tidbit of an idea for a new piece of writing - a screenplay you are dabbling with, or that novel that is burning a hole in your frontal lobe to finish.

Whatever it is, it will be such a compelling, NECESSARY bit of information, that you will have to sit up, grab the nearest pencil and scrap of paper from the night table next to your bed, and deliberately scratch out the concept as specifically as possible because in your foggy state, your handwriting will be atrocious and you will need every detail to recall this fantastic NECESSARY item in the morning when you are actually awake. The salvos can even turn into a full-out assault wherein you will dutifully take the required sleepynote, return to your fetal position and begin to drift again when the next creative grenade explodes.

Sometimes The Brain doesn’t even let you get that far. Sometimes, The Brain will keep poking at you even when the rest of you is screaming, “Go to bed! Go to bed! Just PUH-LEEEEZE GO TO BED!” (Kindof like in the Dr. Suess story with the Who’s that Horton hears... “We are here, we are HERE, WE ARE HERE!” Like that.)

It’s happening to me right now. I want to retire for the night - I mean, it is well past midnight and the alarm clock will be applying electroshock therapy to my heart at approximately 4:45 a.m., and again at 4:50 a.m., and so on, thanks to the snooze alarm on my husband’s side of the bed.

Tonight, I cannot yet shut down The Brain. This is because I have made real progress in my proposal writing. Dare I say it? It may be a bit premature, but I think I have cleared enough of the cobwebs to have set down a new path for my research question. Heck, I’ll put it out there that, yes, I am confident that I have percolated long enough in Derailment Town and am ready to pull out and venture on to Proposal City.

To prove it, I’ll share with you the working title of my dissertation. I have written much more than just the title, of course, but I don’t want to appear overconfident.

The Evolution of the Grief Memoir: How New Communication Technologies are Changing the Way We Grieve and Share.

Shoot. Have I just put all of YOU to sleep?

(Bleeps) of Steel

I need to hit the fast-forward button here. While the “back story” is important, I need to be in the here-and-now this week, because this blog is meant to keep me on track in my research. And right now, my research is slapping me about the head, screaming at me like in that commercial where the therapist is a former drill sergeant who has not an ounce of sympathy for his weepy, troubled client. Yes, I am clearly hearing...

“JACKWAGON!”

“Namby-pamby!”

What he means is, “Get on with it already!”

I might take that assault two ways:

(1) Get off the history story and look ahead. Life has turned out to be better than expected - you have a comfortable home, a beautiful family, a loving husband, gainful employment. To boil it down even more: there’s food on the table and a roof overhead. Don’t dwell on the past and, for God’s sake, don’t examine it.

Or (B), Stop procrastinating in your research clarification and finish your dang proposal. You know what you want to explore. Just clear the decks, focus, and get it done. Whatever this process is going to bring, let it come. There is a reason, and the path is leading you there.

I guess it’s both.

I have been trying to get my formal research proposal written since last spring, hoping to push my project ahead so I could graduate in December. Yes, I mean, this December. I even went so far as to draft the proposal, pitching it to my mentor and two readers so that I could get their unofficial buy-in and spend my summer furiously writing the first four chapters of dissertation.

Because the writing will be the easy part (I say naively). It’s the organizing that is the brutal obstacle.

So I pitched. There are three professors to a committee: one mentor and two readers who offer comments and counsel on this lonely road to hell, I mean dissertation. A holy triduum of expert academians hand-picked by me for their individual scholarly attributes that either are a match to my subject matter in some aspect or, besides that, understand where I am taking this topic, can “see” what I see, and are as excited about the possibilities as I am. In other words, they “get” me.

I consider myself to be very fortunate to have reached out to three tremendous professors to explain my vision, and with each one, I received affirmation. So when I sent out my draft proposal, I was riding that high.

One of the three offered suggestions for fleshing out some of the ideas. The second needed further clarification on my approach, but was enthusiastic to continue working on the project as it moves forward.

I reached out to the third committee member. That’s when I got derailed.

My third committee member practically picked apart my proposal line by line, questioning my focus and assailing my narrative writing style as non-scholarly. I had been warned before I started this PhD program that my journalism style would be difficult to transcend. Somehow I had adjusted and adapted for each paper during the coursework portion of the program. Perhaps I had digressed in this pivotal paper-writing moment of proposaling.

(I love it when I can make up words like proposaling and “convo” (see Blog post #3). Blogging is freedom. Dissertation writing is not. I’m clear on the difference.)

I’m thinking I let the story run away with me, forgetting that this particular writing assignment is meant for academia and not the general masses. (I don’t know about you, but other than PhD candidates trying to find their own way, I don’t know anyone who has read someone else’s dissertation for their own personal enjoyment or enlightenment.) In my mind, I am already on to the writing of “The Story of Joyce,” penning the explanations and the anecdotes in the manner that I will eventually be employing when I am writing for the masses.

Besides, I am probably being far too strong in my description of Professor Three’s comments. Honestly, she was absolutely right. I needed to sharpen my focus and rework the proposal. Still, it wasn’t an easy pill to swallow. I had to do what every writer hates to do. I had to chuck it. Crinkle up that proposal like some bad idea and do over.

I hate do overs in writing. In my writing, I always want to think I got it right the first time. Every word is perfect; it is my reader that doesn’t get it.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I didn’t try to save my first shot at the proposal. I kept returning to that document, searching it for ways to inject the suggested “fixes” that would salvage the beginning of my project and move it forward. No matter how much rewriting I did, I could not see clearly past the previous path. I had to muddy up the footprints and put down fresh ones.

I knew in this case I must defer to the experts. My committee members are accomplished, successful, extremely smart individuals. I would be a fool to reject their comments. They have done this before; I have not. And that is a good lesson for all of us. It is hard to get a less-than-perfect review in life. If you get a do-over, take it. That’s part of the learning experience. That is growth.

So what if it means I am slogging along as the new semester approaches with my proposal in pieces. It’s a minor detour, right?

Angel on my Shoulder

When words fail, often a photograph can provide the perfect message.

I’m starting this blog entry with a couple of photos, to tee up the explanation of the message. I promise I will keep it light. I really don’t want readers of Walking Distance to think they are in for a downer every time they check in on my progress as I make my way to Dissertation Land.

So here I am, in Blog Nation, dragging you into my deep investigation of the ticking time bomb that is my research odyssey. Some of you have been candid enough to let me know that my vocabulary is already driving you crazy. (Sorry. Would it help if I offered you a copy of Webster’s latest edition? I would, except, clearly, I am still using it.)

All I can say is, deal with it. Or don’t. I’m going with the flow, so the least you can do is let me flow it my way. Besides, think of all the people you will impress at parties when you start injecting words into your conversations like, what was it, “onerous”?

Try it. “Sorry, boss, but I cannot do even one more task because the work load is simply too onerous.” There. You just said that your boss is working you too hard. Now go pick up the Want Ads and start looking for a new job.

It’s useful, this vocabulary stuff. Really. You’ll enjoy picking up all the new words.

If not, let me steer the convo back to the subject at hand. (See? Keeping it light, shooting off on tangents... this is how a dissertation is written.)

When I finished my last blog entry, I promised to reveal the source of my inspiration in identifying what in God’s name I am doing in Grad School at this point in my life. Why am I pursuing another diploma that may never be anything more than a personal accomplishment that adds another line to my resume but doesn’t jettison me to the heights of wealth, success, status, or whatever other “goal” might be the eventual desired fruit of my labor?

I’ll let you in on the probably not-so-secret “secret” about how I came to figure out what I am supposed to be researching and offering up to the world.

Inspiration, thy name is Joyce.

Anyone who knows me, knows that I had a beautiful younger sister who also was my closest friend and confidante up until the summer of 1984. For now, I won’t delve into details about why I use the past tense. Mostly because I have never gotten comfortable with speaking of Joyce in the past tense. Perhaps that is because for me, she will never be “the sister I had” but rather will always be my sister Joyce.

And this is the weirdest thing. Those last four sentences, that one chunky paragraph, is actually the crux of my dissertation topic.

[Sorry:

crux

noun

with whom Henry will be living is the crux of the situation: nub, heart, essence, central point, main point, core, center, nucleus, kernel; informal bottom line.] You get the idea.

This is what I am researching. This is the driving theme, the undercurrent, the simplistic explanation, of the nagging question that compels me to beat my head against a proverbial (but not yet literal) brick wall to write a dissertation.

I have been trying to write about Joyce for the better part of the last 25 years. Not consistently, of course, because what kind of idiot must I be that I have been unable to pen the story of the one person in my life to whom I was closest, and not be able to get it done in 25 years. I mean, I’ve had 25 years, for crying out loud.

It sounds so cliche but I’ll say it anyway: Joyce was “one of a kind” as an individual, and one of a kind in the relationship we had together. I mean irreplaceable.

We all know at least one person who fits that description in our lives. We cannot live without them, or so we think. (Sadly, I am proof that we can, but it is not easy, or acceptable to have to do so.)

Joyce has always been an easy “topic” for me, for most of my life. As a teenager, I was always referring to her in conversations with others, because she was the person with whom I spent most of my time. After she died, I would mention Joyce often, out of habit more than anything else, but also, of course, because I missed her. Something would inevitably remind me of her, and I just had to share the reference or the memory. She was a huge part of me, so to leave her out of the conversation would just be wrong.

But “The Story of Joyce” (by the way, not even the working title for the book I have yet to finish) has been developing in fits and starts for a quarter of a century. All I can say is, I have not been able to finish writing it for reasons that I am only now beginning to understand, thanks to my journey to dissertation. What’s bugging me, even moreso, however, is the “why.” Why am I driven to write about Joyce and what happened to her? Why does any writer feel the need to write about their lost loved one when doing so might mean revisiting potentially painful memories?

This is the question. This is what I need to know.

Authors do it all the time, pen these “grief memoirs” as I have begun to refer to them. And, as I have found in conducting the literature review for my dissertation, many authors do it exceptionally well.

I have found beautiful examples of memoirs but perhaps one of the most moving, for me, has been Paula, written by Isabel Allende. This memoir about Allende’s struggle to deal with the yearlong illness and coma of her 28-year-old daughter, Paula, opened up to readers an amazing story of Allende’s life growing up in Chile. As the cousin of Salvadore Allende, the assassinated Chilean President, Allende grew up in a dictatorship country where political unrest and a military coup were the backdrop to her early years.

Allende didn’t set out to write an amazing memoir. But as she painfully kept vigil, watching her beautiful daughter cling to life for that long year, Allende hoped that through her storytelling -- yes, her use of “story” -- she could will Paula back to life, and that one day, Paula would read the journal of stories she had written during those long hospital visits.

It takes guts to be a writer, but it takes [bleeps] of steel to be a memoir writer when your subject is a loved one who has died. That said, to do this remarkably well is the mark of a gifted writer. But it also is a gift, as in the kind of present that is given to someone to acknowledge a special occasion or milestone. What I am finding in my research is that this kind of “giving” brings healing, gathers “community,” and connects us in a very real and essential way as human beings trying to figure out what this life is all about.

Give this some thought, and in an upcoming blog, I’ll clue you in on some of the ways we all have been sharing our sorrows in creative word and expression. You may be surprised to find that you yourself have done it too. Writing about those we have lost is like tethering yourself to their spirit. Sometimes, we don’t even realize we’ve opened the line of communication.

The Need to Walk

What motivates a 40-something-year-old woman to chase a PhD at a time in her life when she has a demanding fulltime job that is regularly uprooting her to far parts of the globe; a fairly new marriage that she just wants to enjoy; and all the usual pulls of life: elderly parents and in-laws, young children, an old house that needs a makeover, good friends and relatives that need help finishing off a bottle of wine or a six pack of Corona? Not to mention a garden that needs tending?

The easy answer: an employer who pays full tuition and offers a bonus of company stock shares upon degree completion.

The deeper answer? I needed to “walk.” Intellectually, professionally, and spiritually. I needed more than the daily grind of a corporate communications job to stimulate my creativity and intellectual growth.

For a couple of years before starting my job at a company that offers a generous employee tuition program, I had been considering going back to school part time. I had taught as an adjunct professor and enjoyed it, but I learned that most universities require candidates for full-time professor positions to have a doctorate. If I ever wanted to consider a second career down the road, I would have to get that additional sheepskin. If there’s one thing about me, I like options. Life is boring without them.

Of course, it is not as simple as that.

I began to research schools to figure out what I could possibly be interested in enough to sacrifice a huge chunk of my life for. Truth be told, when I started my program, I had no idea it would be so painful. On the flip side, I also had no idea that it would be so amazing. One thing was certain: it would not come easy.

With a Journalism bachelor’s and master’s degree, my options were limited for PhD programs. Most schools seemed to require a master’s in the same subject as the PhD program you are seeking to enter. My journalism papers have been good to me, but they were not going to get me into a Literature or English doctoral program.

Most schools also required full-time residency, and as my circumstances did not allow this option, many schools had to be ruled out. I had to find a program within reasonable driving distance or online.

At the suggestion of a professor at the University of Rhode Island, I found Salve Regina University. It has a Humanities PhD program that offers “rolling enrollment,” meaning I could apply and begin classes immediately -- even before my formal application had been accepted. The study of the humanities includes Literature, Philosophy, Art, and Religion. It would teach me the meaning of words like zeitgeist and clearing. I saw it as something akin to a liberal arts major, but taking it to a whole new level.

Sold! I began classes in the fall of 2006, taking two classes per semester and the required summer classes to stay on track to finish my coursework in three years.

The odometer on my Jeep Liberty started getting jacked. My coffee consumption tripled. I was driving to Newport, Rhode Island, sometimes back to back during the work week for my 6 p.m. classes. For three years.

On school nights, I would start my workday before 8 a.m., get on the road to Salve in late afternoon and return home sometime after 11 p.m. The coursework was intense: read a textbook per week, write a paper on it and be prepared to engage in vibrant discussion to demonstrate that you had read, digested and dissected the material. It was insane. This was work.

Did I mention this went on for three years?

But really, you don’t need to know all this. What I’m getting at is the fact that while a PhD was my apparent objective -- even a means to a possible end should I decide to explore a teaching career one day -- it became the vehicle for my awakening.

As I embraced my doctoral program with all its grueling assignments and even more grueling “deep thinking,” I was mining the coal that will eventually become a diamond. I was unknowingly collecting and identifying the themes and concerns of my life. Reading the works of Michel Foucault, Joseph Campbell, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, I was gravitating toward the truth. My truths. My questions. The very essence of who I am, the career I have nurtured, and the passions I have developed.

My PhD director had consistently advised our class that our dissertation topics should be something that we are passionate about so that we would be motivated to see the work through to its glorious end. By the time I started the Capstone class, I had been wracking my brain to “find” my topic. I was panicked, really, to figure out the next phase of my degree work so that I could graduate, stop being a student, and finally get on with LIFE.

I forced myself to examine media-related questions, thinking I was meant to “come full circle” and return to my journalism career roots through the doctoral research. What will I care enough about to spend -- or rather, continue to spend -- time researching during my “after work” hours that already have so many other activities clamoring for a piece of the action?

“Look for the common themes,” the Great Professor said, “and then start pulling at the threads.”

Well, I started to pull, and what started to come into fuzzy focus blew me away.

When we meet again, I’ll share with you the source of my great inspiration, and how I found my research calling.

For now, let me leave you with this: Sometimes when we think we know what we want and are on a course to get it, we realize that it wasn’t what we wanted at all. It was the experience of exploring that goal that we needed to unearth the “real” need inside.

How many of us can think of an example of that happening in our lives? (And don’t name your favorite Disney movie here...) I bet quite a few.

This is a great gift. You can thank whomever you like for it -- God, Buddha, the Universe -- but do acknowledge your greater power for this blessing in your life. For me, I am sure that God had something to do with it, but he also had the help of the angel on my shoulder.

Starting Line

It's official. Not only have I begun researching my dissertation in earnest, but I have entered the blogosphere. At the same time.

To do either of those at any given time is a daunting task. The pressure of needing “fresh copy” posted to a blog regularly in order to keep my many readers satiated; the scholarly demands of a research topic that offers a diploma as its ultimate reward, but not before you have given up most of your free time outside of your full-time job for a minimum of four years. Yes, either of these pursuits is onerous. So to do them simultaneously with the intent to expose my research explorations before they are ripe is possibly one of the nuttiest ideas I have ever had.

My husband and perhaps a handful of psychiatrists might suggest that I am avoiding the real work because I am afraid of success. I just chalk it up to the creative process. You cannot bottle up the ideas that fly at you willy-nilly. Some ideas simply will not wait. So you juggle. And in this case, I know that is exactly what I must do. Neither of these two efforts can sit on a back burner while the other gets cooking. So I thought, I may as well give in. The pull is just too strong not to.

And here’s why (pay attention, because this will be one of my recurring ideas): it's all connected. Maybe I should just flag that right now as my own personal tag line: It’s all connected.

Hmm. I kindof like that.

But seriously, the blogging, the research, the tangential ideas shooting out from this unidentified energy source inside my brain ... it's all bubbling up because it cannot remain beneath the surface any longer. The time has come.

It isn't as though I am tackling a pretty topic in my quest for a PhD. I've decided that my dissertation will delve into a painful subject that has universal but also very personal relevance. Yet, I know it is my destiny, if I can mangle a Darth Vader quote.

I cannot escape it.

Actually, I didn't “decide” anything. My topic was one of those "meant to be" experiences, but I am getting way ahead of things. Let me introduce myself and tell you what I'm doing out here in Blog Nation. There will be time to explain the “great epiphany of dissertation topic identification” in a subsequent blog.

I was born and raised in Seymour, Connecticut, a small, former mill town, home of the Wildcats, the old Strand Theater and the annual Pumpkin Festival. I grew up with five brothers and a sister, all of whom pretty much were the guarantee that I would grow into a competitive, sensitive female who enjoys sports but doesn't excel at them, loves books, and can cook sufficiently to feed an army (or at least a 9-member family, give or take a random dinner guest or two).

I dreamed about all the places I wanted to visit, but didn't venture much outside of Seymour except in my imagination. There, I was an undercover cop, a champion ice skater, a popular singer. I also hung out a lot with Starsky & Hutch.

Wait, that wasn’t real?

Of course, my imaginary meanderings became legitimate stories when I started my career in journalism. For 15 years, I peeked behind the curtain of a variety of jobs and situations, dug deep for the “real story,” and scratched for those “telling details” that good writers hang their hats on. It was a fun job, demanding and consuming, but rewarding in more ways than I ever imagined.

Then I made a career move. I wanted to know what else I could do with my communications skills that would give me the freedom of weekends and evenings off. (Note: this, I have come to learn, is a matter of personal choice and priority. Don’t blame it on the job.) I also decided that third-floor apartment living was not going to cut it anymore. It may have been on grocery day, after lugging eight plastic grocery bags of food up three flights of stairs. A bigger paycheck and a more “9-to-5” work schedule was in order. I went to the dark side.

(Again with the Star Wars reference. Sorry, but I literally heard that remark when I resigned from my newspaper job to take a public relations job.)

Since that first move out of newspapers, I have taken my “boot camp” training into a variety of communications roles. No matter the job, I have remained a student of life, interested in the stories of the people I met. Their stories are what made them unique and interesting.

This blog is called "Walking distance." It is a metaphor, of course, for the long road I am traveling to my doctorate. But it is a much more complex metaphor (as you will learn is something of a pattern with me - to have complexity and multiple layers in the things I do). I don’t want to give away the store in the first post, so for now, suffice to say that the meanings emanating from this blog will often fit into the idea of its simple title. The primary journey I am embarking on to Dissertation Land will be represented in small portion compared to the greater experience that lies ahead. But one step at a time.

If the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step (thank you, Lao-tzu), then this journey that begins with a formal research project in grad school is a fitting starting line for my blogathon. I can tell you that the road ahead already has offered some mind-boggling revelations, and I will share with you what I am learning that goes beyond research. It’s a remarkable life lesson.

Check in on me now and then, if you would, or follow me on Twitter (http://twitter.com/MareHeffernan) to see where I’m at. None of us walks alone. Either way, I welcome your company on the journey.