Actually, I’ve never gone fishing in my life. Ever. But I have been absent from this blog lately.
The biggest reason for my absence is that I’m actually writing up a storm right now on my thesis. Well, perhaps a line a day isn’t really a tempest of writing, but compared to what I was doing before it’s a deluge. Some days I write entire paragraphs, and on occasion whole pages. I’m so close to finishing my first chapter I can almost taste it. I even emailed what I had to my supervisor. Mind you, this is the first actual piece of research-related writing I’ve ever given her. Sure, she’s seen drafts, but now she’s gotten a glimpse of the real deal. I can actually now imagine a finished thesis as a concrete object instead of some fantastic vision, an El Dorado never to be reached. Frankly, it’s rather deflating to realize that the thing that intimidated me so much wasn’t so big in the first place. I’ll have to revise my schedule for the holidays, but my work from now on is reduced to nothing more than bare numbers: a couple of hours a day, so many days a week, the time accumulating until the work is done. No more existential crises from here on out.
Before, I could not imagine a time when I’d be done; now, such a thing seems more than possible: it seems a foregone conclusion. Because of my writing, I won’t be posting as much. I can only write so much in a day, after all. But I’ll still be coming back.