path of less resistance.

on wednesday, i met with the dissertation advisor, aka the nicest and coolest woman alive. or at least alive and working in my department. she never ceases to amaze me with how much she gets done and how easy it seems for her to do so.  and how chill she is with my own process.

she's obviously been doing this a while, for which i am exceedingly grateful.

i was a bit worried, going into the meeting, that she would somehow need/want/demand me to completely tear apart the chapter i had just given her (The LAST One) and revise it, thus taking me from light at the end of the tunnel quickly back into the murky abyss that was the darkness. 

she did not.  not even close.

instead, she thought that i could get a complete draft together in something like two weeks. after telling her i was teaching six classes, we quickly came to the common agreement that such an idea fell clearly within the auspices of CRAZYTALK and moved on to discuss the timeline for graduating in august.

me likey much more.

although i am beginning to wonder why all of the major life events lately have to occur in the first weekend of august.  i will graduate the day before my first anniversary.

no cruise or something fun for me.

boo.

but i was surprised, honestly, by how easy the meeting was, by how little resistance i encountered. several weeks ago, i was sure that i would encounter resistance from my director for my choices regarding my career--that adjuncting would somehow not be enough for her, that she wouldn't be down with my reality, which is that if i don't finish this now, i will likely not finish because life is going to happen and seriously cramp my style.

she didn't.  didn't even come up, really, although she did sort of push me to consider keeping my foot in the door of the tenure-track job search by publishing articles and giving papers at conferences. it's something worth considering, especially the conference thing, but i don't really see it happening much.

i am happy with what i am doing, and i expressed that to her.  i don't think she believed me.

when she heard that i was teaching six classes plus working on the dissertation, she uttered an epithet that i won't repeat (since i love and respect the name she took in vain). 

for a moment, i realized "hey. maybe that is quite a bit." but somehow, on the slippery slope of real life, i manage to keep adding things to my pile and muddling through.

it gives me hope that maybe i'll be able to handle life and all its curveballs since i'm getting good and trained right now. 

lately, all of the things that have been worrying me, logistically, about Future Life have sort of...been working themselves out.  it makes me pleased. it makes me happy. it makes me worry much less about what is to come. 

once i figure things out, even just in my head, it's all a bit less scary. 

it also makes me feel quite clearly that good things are headed our way.  for the path to become so much more clear, for things to seem so much more doable, it almost always means one thing.

change.

and, for once, i'm not that worried about it. come what may, i will love it.  i'm looking forward to working for it.