maybe letting go is the easy part?

i've had a great couple of days - legs are good; mind is good. i'm getting over this cold, getting lots of sleep, and drinking more water than fat tire for a change. but as the beginning of the semester approaches, and my inbox fills with things to do, i'm finding myself a bit - shall we say - overwhelmed.

it's funny because i've been re-reading 'zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance' for the first time in almost 15 years and i just read a passage where our narrator, a teacher of rhetoric (!), is talking about writer's block. to be blocked, he tells us, is not to be without ideas, without thinking; rather, it comes when we're thinking too much - seeing too much - in short, when we're overwhelmed.

i know, for instance, that i need to get to work on this dissertation, but my usual strategy of plowing ahead come hell or high water doesn't seem to be working this time around. i can't seem to push through this one by sheer force of will - the way i've accomplished almost everything in the last ten years.

i'm learning - in running - that i can't force myself through some things - or, rather, that i can, but that it might be a better idea to sit back, let go, do the work, show up, and let the magic happen. but i don't know how to do that with this whole "ph.d." thing. pushing through, imposing my will, has worked pretty well until now, but now that it doesn't, there doesn't seem to be a way to sit back, show up, do the work, and make the magic happen. there isn't a nice, clear, well-researched bob glover plan i can follow for sixteen weeks to get where i want to be. instead, there's just a whole host of people waiting for me to do the work and wondering why i haven't, or why the work i have done doesn't look the way it's supposed to.

which, of course, gets me to that fear - that deepest of fears - that i'm not good at this kind of work. and that it's not good for me. that i feel too much, care too much, am too involved to attempt to write an ethnographic study of something i care about, love too much, am too deeply involved in. and that scares the crap out of me. is that why i'm hemming and hawwing? is that why i can't get started? is that why i'm overwhelmed? maybe so.

and, in fact, that's the same thing that kept me from running for all those years. maybe they are the same. maybe i just need to show up, do the work, and let the magic happen. but, for now, i'm simply overwhelmed.