Thesis-ing...

I don't think anyone can deny that in the process of writing something of any serious length - a 50 page thesis, for instance - things can get tiresome. Some interest and enthusiasm lost, some vim lacking and vigor misplaced. At least temporarily.


Ok, ok, I'll be honest: since submitting the second third of my thesis nearly a month ago, I've barely touched it. In fact, I doubt I've even opened the documents since early March (she admits semi-apologetically). Now I face the next 15 page deadline, due Friday but necessarily submitted early thanks to plans for a long weekend in DC. Needed to do this: return of the interest, enthusiasm, and misplaced vim and vigor.


...aaaand success. Reading over a vague outline I'd created some time ago and attempting to remind myself of where I left off, I was, more significantly, reminded of where I'd begun. The inspiration. Examining a selection of works by Jhumpa Lahiri, what I have now at hand is a postcolonial-rooted look at identity and multiculturalism... but what it began with was a story from a small country in West Africa and the question of identity there. And with the story of close friends hailing from South Asia, now making their home on the East Cost. And with the story of another close friend who traveled from Cuba to El Salvador and Nicaragua to Moldova to Canada in search of safety and political asylum, and now also finds himself on the American East Coast. And with the story of still others, finding their roots anywhere from a Native American reservation in Nebraska to the Kurdistan of northern Iran. Each brought new ideas to the fore in the question of culture and identity, and each now serves as a face and story that form the driving force of this growing Word document in front of me.


I'm not the kind of person who can write for the sake of writing. I never kept a journal (which aptitude tests in early school days seemed to find critical in determining your future with the written word), and I tend to hold the general belief that I ought to have something relatively worth saying before I actually trouble myself and others with the verbosity that often ensues. I want a purpose. Raise questions, attempt to answer them, discover new ones, learn, enlighten, entertain, record something that deserves recording, recognize someone who deserves to be recognized. Something to make it worthwhile.


With that, though, must recommence with the thesis-ing, rediscovered inspiration and encouragement in tow.