coldhearted scientist وداد

One of my great frustrations in life is with people who tell me I am being “perfectionistic” if I find any flaws in any work I do. I could not disagree more because I do not believe Leonardo da Vinci just had his work spring out of his head spontaneously. You have to keep zigzagging up. There are areas of life in which I do in fact “try too hard” but research and writing are not those areas.

These are the topics I was thinking about last night and do not have time to write about now, but may during the break:

1. My dissertation, which was not well researched; I should write a 250 word essay on what my actual interest was with that project, without looking at it or anyone else’s work, but from memory; I am interested in this as a writing exercise that I will not allow to start from a bulleted list but will insist upon composing in lucid prose from the start, which is how I always write the things I finish.

2. The fact that while I was writing that tome without fully researching it I was actually conducting research on something else, the topic on which I had actual, burning curiosity and on which I also felt competent to work, the things I just felt I had to discover and say and put to rest before I settled in to work for decades in the drier and more abstract realm where that dissertation lay.

3. The fact that it was inevitable that those two projects should come into conflict with each other, in terms of time and dedication of effort, and that I would be unable to stick to what I knew was true — that I had to work on project #2 before I worked on project #1 — because of the psychological problems I have, which are listed above.

4. Given how dangerous I apparently believe everything to be, I had to freeze, and what I vislumbré last night was that this was not just a psychological problem, but that there was some sort of intellectual incompatibility between the two that it would still be of interest to bridge.

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I seriously think the best practical way out of that entire mess was the one I wanted to take, the path into the social sciences and practical activity, my other life, my real life, because arts and humanities are only skills for me. But I wanted a trade and I took one.  I never felt it was real because I did not “do it all myself,” and I felt like a traitor because I insisted on doing well.

It is a question of allowing oneself to use the intellect one has, where one is, as opposed to invest one’s energy in hampering it for safety reasons, while attempting to theorize and then inhabit a work space in which one would not be mistrusted or have to suffer recriminations for having done one’s degrees.

It is nothing short of amazing how light and strong and stable one can feel without carrying as much guilt and fear. Perversely I feel that by suffering for being who I am, I pay the debt I owe for the sin of having been research oriented. This felt like walking around with a heavy pack, outdoors with high heels in swampy ground. Indoors one had proper shoes and floorboards but there were entities in the corners with clubs to crack your skull, and there were trap doors in the floor that kept opening and were never in the same place.

It is not a question of project or of field or interest or passion but of having some kind of solid ground. It is important to be allowed to actually place first what needs to be placed first. Project and field and interest and passion matter far less although it has often seemed to me that if I were to move fields I could simply let my wounds heal rather than spend so much time draining them.

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I suppose I should not count on never having to drain those wounds again but I am so tired of them. I would like to discuss my actual research problems as such. This is what I would have done before Reeducation, which includes the excessive application of academic advice.

Axé.