completing the dissertation

 This weekend marks the first weekend in years that I haven't spent working on my dissertation in some capacity. It's been a strange experience to say the least. I've had so much of my identity wrapped up in dissertating, and for good reason: you hardly have time for anything else when you're writing. It does make for a hard transition, though. 

At the beginning of every semester, the writing program I work in has a teaching summit where we all get together and discuss our work, our strategies, and generally commiserate as teachers and scholars. This fall, I was catching up with our program director and I joked about precisely this phenomenon. When I finish the dissertation, what am I even going to do with all of that time? I figured I was for sure in for a meltdown unless I figured out something equally as time-consuming to fill the void. 

She just said "or, you know, you could just use the time to be human for a bit and not work on anything." 

Anyone who knows me knows that a suggestion like that will stop me in my tracks. She had a good point--maybe I don't need to be operating at 120% all the time. At the same time, I just don't quite operate that way. It's something I want to work on, but that's going to be quite the unlearning process. 

At the very least, I'm someone who needs some sort of creative output, no matter what. Most of my creative hobbies fell to the wayside this semester, between the dissertation, the teaching overload, my Papa being hospitalized twice, and a bout with Covid *right* in the middle of it all. Any free time I had was spent very passively. I mostly just watched a lot of movies, listened to a lot of music, read a lot of books, and gamed a bit. This was all very pleasurable and fulfilling, to be sure, but I wasn't *creating* anything. 

So my goal for these next few months is to really lean into my creative hobbies. I'm going to crochet more. I'm going to write more for pleasure, not for work. I'm going to do a lot of work on my Neocities page. 

And then, on top of this, I'm going to learn a lot about a new-ish hobby of mine: film photography! I have been shooting on a Kodak Ektar H35N for a couple of months, and while I love this one, I've decided to take the leap and get a better camera. The day I officially finished and submitted the defense copy of my dissertation, I treated myself to a used Minolta XG-1. It should get here tomorrow, and I'm super excited to get out there and get some rolls of film ready to send out to my favorite film lab. 

Oh, and then there's the issue of the defense. I still have to do that. In that sense, I haven't quite let my guard down yet. I think I'll feel the full weight of it once that ordeal is over, but for now, it does feel good to have the hardest part over.