Tensegrity: Cultivating the Right Amount of Tension and Looseness

A colleague of mine in a writing group pointed out how they had been waiting to write a section of their dissertation and mention how they had all the sources they needed written down and that it should be a walk in the park. Then they remarked, "I look forward to finding out why it isn't."

I found this remark calming. It reminds me that my instinct around areas of challenge are to tense up, when the most successful I've been is to loosen up. Who was it who said something like, 'I'm really busy today. I'd better meditate twice as much."

What is the balance between the quality tenseness that is useful for getting something done and the level of looseness that is required in order to face obstacles without giving up? I've never thought about it until now, but there is a physical therapy office here called "Tensegrity." An apt name for working hard to learn how one's body can be used to perform more efficiently, creating more longevity and decreasing the likelihood of injuries. In the Tao of Jeet Kune Do, which I scanned quickly for this quote, Bruce Lee remarks:

"One of the greatest adjustments the novice athlete must make in competition is to overcome the natrual tendency to try too hard--to hurry, strain, press and try to blast the whole fight at once...[t]he body performs better when the athlete lets it go than when he tries to drive it."

Wishing you the best in cultivating balance.

Let's write.

How to turn an hour into fifteen minutes.

Less 15 minutes

My writing time has gone from an hour to forty-five minutes. There is always something going on: I'm late because I had to make lunch or eat breakfast and do the workout; the thingy didn't work; there was road construction. It doesn't really matter what it is. If you look at it from the outside and argued that there is a plan being carried out, but the goal isn’t to write, you might not be far from the truth.

15 fewer minutes

Then there is this blog. It calms me down to start writing about writing, even though in the world of writing dissertations, that does not count. By now we are at thirty minutes.

If I had a therapist, they would probably say, "Isn't that all part of it?" and "What would it feel like to tell yourself it's okay to blog a little to get started?"

And I would probably resist and dig in my heels and try to be even more productive by working harder.

Here's a complaint: Why can't I just work like everyone else does and get it over with? How come everyone else seems to just start the hour on time, make a goal, complete the goal, get a draft, and move on? And I'm talking about even in writing groups I join; I always feel like I'm the only one who starts flustered, distracted, totally ungrounded, disconnected, forgetting where I am starting, forgetting where I stored my last draft, finding 3 versions of the same paragraph I wrote six months ago, and so on.

15 fewer minutes

The next fifteen minutes is spent figuring out where I am in the writing. Hopefully I left myself a note, or perhaps what I wrote the last time is readable enough for me to figure it out. [Note: I love it when I muse on something and carry it out immediately during a writing session].

15 minutes of writing

This leaves me with fifteen minutes to frantically write and meet a goal of say... 250 words [Note: Today was 269, baby]. The quality of those words is always questionable, but that's what I can do. I wonder if, instead of feeling like a complete failure, I looked at it like this:

1. I could have not written anything.

2. This is just where I'm at. If I want to be somewhere else, I can do something else.

3. This is the math: it takes me an hour to write for fifteen minutes. I can write for more time as long as I stack it on top of that writing time, but if I don't change anything else, this is what I can expect.

4. It takes me forty-five minutes to get over comparing myself to others, feeling lost, feeling unproductive, feeling guilty for every moment this infernal dissertation has been hanging around my neck and the loss of connection and so on… until finally I can appreciate what this process is giving me.

5. Like this blog. I ejoy doing this immediately and don’t need a warmup, perhaps because I remember that I know how to put words on a page. I also like feeling more emotionally regulated.

6. There is a book called, Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day. Even though it's the smallest amount, I'm still doing a thing.

Let's write now...

How do I borrow succes from one place and put it in another?

As an Activator, I'm able to get moving on stuff. I may never finish anything, but I can definitely get things moving. And I'm pretty good at pattern recognition, though perhaps not always recognizing my own patterns.

This morning it struck me that I get into these modes of rigorous exercise and then continue to build and build on that exercise until my life is revolving around exercise classes, hikes, swimming, and health things like massages and acupuncture to the extent I can manage. Eventually, this starts to break down as Ruffles, sour cream and onion dip, and fried chicken take over and begin their own process of accretion. More and more I get tired of that, and more and more it is difficult and painful to get back in some semblance of shape as I age.

Noticing how I start to feel better when I exercise, I begin thinking, "What else can I do?" and I add another thing. Or at least try to. I know this: movement throughout the day is key. However, after staying up late and waking up at ungodly hours of the morning to do a workout, I find myself too tired during the day to do more exercise. I can sit through the whole day and barely move. So I've decided to gamify the day--whatever I did the day before, my goal is to make that the new baseline, and my goal is either to meet or exceed it. If I walked for 1 mile on my treadmill desk and did 10 squats, I should do the same the next day and maybe to 20 squats. We'll see how that goes. [Note: only reading this over as I was about to post it reminded me I was doing this, so I guess it’s not going amazingly]

In contrast, with my writing, my goal has loosely been to "write for an hour a day Monday through Friday." I haven't been keeping that up, nor have I been ramping it up, though there are moments when I feel like I can do more. That comes from the notion that if I overdo the writing, I’ll burn myself out and stop for longer periods of time again.

I'm now thinking of ways I can both improve the overall time spent writing and improve the quality of the writing while I'm writing. That's where I'm at for now.

Starting over again at closer intervals

It’s another Wednesday, and I’ve joined a faculty writing group. I thought I’d take a moment to get settled as I’ve been skipping more writing sessions that I’ve been attending. More accurately, I’ve been skipping planning sessions at key moments, and missing those unplanned sessions.

The session lasts for three hours, though I haven’t figured out a way to create that much spaces so the max I’ve been able to justify has been half that. I can see how it would benefit me to have all that time, so I’m thinking in the background about how that could work. Nevertheless, the synthesis on the research is clear: writing in large blocks will not make up for regular and substantive contact with my writing over the week. These small, regular moments matter more than doing a big chunk at once, and for precisely the reason that everything feels like I’m starting all over. Again and again and again. And again.

That said, I think I created a metaphor about a table, with the legs representing various facets of one’s life: exercise, work, writing, family, and so on. When one increases, the other decreases. The most recent leg strengthening is my physical and mental health, which has been improving after a few months’ slump due to fried chicken, sour cream and onion dip, and whatever other misery. I’m now in a fervor of workout classes again, and I have a workout buddy for 3-4 days a week (I had another workout buddy for a total of 6 but lost them to a knee injury). This means I have to prepare even harder to make sure I have breakfast and lunch set up for the following day, and because I tend to cook the meals, dinner, too. I also changed my diet up; my A1C (blood sugar) was higher than I wanted, so exercise and diet have made it better than I can remember, which probably means my cholesterol levels are improving, too.

I’ve been journaling at work for about 10-15 minutes on what I need to get accomplished for the day, which yields a big list of things to do, and they are impossible to get done in the timeframe I’ve got, so I’m getting to work later because of the exercise, I’m then working later, and writing is getting pushed to the margins.

What’s working:

• People are contacting me to let me know about their writing schedules. This is a huge benefit of all the early organizing that I was beginning to feel futile about. It’s the feeling you might have if you saw someone fall and gave them a hand up, then later down the road, you fall, and they give you a hand up. I’m very grateful for that.

• Texting my adviser when I write, even at moments like these when it’s obvious my work is getting shaky. Keeping up this practice is slowly whittling away at guilt and shame that are ruinous to any writing attempt.

• Giving myself permission to use this moment just to write about writing. I should have been using this last hour to write; however, I needed time to nail down my writing schedule for this week, which meant confirming appointments, emailing with writing buddies, and getting things on the calendar. I also needed time to just take a breath and talk myself off the metaphorical ledge again. I’m pleased to say the distance between the ledge and the ground is becoming less and less as I continue to understand this more and more as a process of developing a solid writing habit.

Balancing when Crooked

Fifteen days to install a Microsoft update is a sign of a dying computer. It took some convincing, but I think my mom is finally coming around to the idea that her 2018 laptop isn’t going to make it much longer. The battery went out, so a careless bump will shut it off. It became overloaded and wouldn’t do anything, so she wiped it clean and is now accessing docs from the cloud. The thing is somehow still hustling along, albeit not well. It’s what she’s used to. New machines cost money, and they are a different kind of hassle.

On that same table where I imagine she is writing all her memoirs and histories of our families, my grandmother had an old, black and white TV with a flimsy green plexiglass filter my grandfather had rigged to avoid eye irritation from the screen. One day, the antenna fell off, and she called me to sort out getting a new TV. We got it, brought it back, turned it on, and her first comment was something like, “It doesn’t get channel 2. That’s the only thing I watch.” Back in the box. She told me later she went to the hardware store and got a nut and bolt for 30 cents. Problem solved.

A toaster oven not a foot away opened and shut with a paper clip for decades after the handle fell off.

And so on.

Things fall apart, bit by bit, and we get used to them in their funky state. At one point, that thing that is now tarnished and misshapen was the new shiny thing that would solve all our problems.

And yet, somehow that thing now groaning under the weight of our expectations must perform into perpetuity as it did when it was new.

From the outside looking in, it’s easier to diagnose what needs to happen because the outsider isn’t carrying the emotional memory of what it took to get that thing or get to that place. It’s also easy to see the thing that needs to change as symbolic of all the interconnected dysfunction. From the insider’s view, whatever we are holding onto makes sense as an interconnected system that simply needs a new battery, a cloud system, or a new handle. Maybe even some patient support from a family member or friend.

I’m writing about this because I have been sitting in a chair for two days working. I’m still behind, but I’m managing somehow. I got my hour of writing done, which mostly ended up being me copying and pasting a bunch of text out of my zero draft writing machine and into a document. 1,773 words. I couldn’t believe it. After 30 hours and over a month, this is all I have to show for it?

That said, I was a little of proud of myself, and after having put all these words there, I realized I am getting to that place where I am working on one continuous piece of writing, bit by excruciating, but sometimes exhilarating bit. I am following a plan, sort of.

What I realized:

• First, even though I got my hour in today and yesterday to reset my streak (2/2!), I might still be in a writing free fall. However, I may have built enough netting around me to pad the fall and get back up again.

• Second, I am trying to balance while crooked. I’m still getting the writing done, but I’ve all but stopped exercising. Eventually, my lower back will start to hurt and cause other related issues. My blood sugar and blood pressure will rise. I’m working longer and longer hours, staying up late, getting up earlier. I’m getting the writing done, but at a cost. Eventually, I’ll need to either replace a part of that lost exercise and build it back up again, or throw it all out and start over again with an aggressive 3-hour a day workout plan, which creates disruptions.

What I already knew and am remembering again:

• The ability to rationalize bad decision making at night is a serious problem, especially under stress. I’ve got twelve applications to read by tomorrow at 9am. It’s now 11:11 p.m. How is that supposed to happen? The one thing I am certain of:

What’s working:

• Staying up late and trying to catch up doesn’t work. Get sleep, try again tomorrow.

What’s not working:

• I tried to get up at 5:45 a.m. to go on a hike with my daughter, but we both slept through it. I need a workout accountability buddy, or several.

What Spiders Taught me About Broken Streaks

I woke up this morning, heart pounding after dreaming that I had dropped an airpod between some stairs, and when I peered underneath them, a mass of spiders engulfed the dusty undercarriage of the old wooden steps. I kept trying to shoo the spiders away, and they continued to return, me convincing myself my interventions would offer me just the right moment to grab the errant headphone. Them, returning as often and as regular as the swing of a slow metronome. We played this game until my mind realized it was futile, and that’s what woke me up.

I will wake up by nightmare or alarm. To wake up naturally, I need good sleep and a gentle alarm that will buzz me somewhere between around 5:30 a.m. To wake up by nightmare, I need only go to bed late and have a lot on my mind. It doesn’t matter what alarm I have going. I’ll sleep through the alarm I set for 4 a.m. and be sure to have some horrific nightmare.

As I lay there, I realized that I’m not going to make up the two hours of writing I missed last week, the first interruption in 27 or 28 planned days. I have a pile of work for my job that I need to think through, so there is a huge pressure to sit here while my family gets ready for the day to just work and work and work and work.

Even though I lay there with a feeling of dread and that all my plans were crashing down at once, I realized that I was in a familiar place with a very familiar feeling. And somehow, after a reasonable moment had passed, I slowed my breathing and began to slow down my perseverating. “What options do I have?” I thought. “Are things really as horrible as they seem?”

To feel better, I could get on the elliptical machine. I could get on the treadmill. I could go for a walk. 15 minutes would be better than nothing, and I could slow walk myself into life. I did end up getting on the treadmill and walking while working.

What I’m realizing:

• I realized I could have, during those two days I missed, written for 15 minutes, just like my mini-workout plan and still have not lost as much as I did by skipping my writing altogether.

• When things get complicated, progress doesn’t necessarily feel optimal.

• When I am planning on traveling, I need a better plan.

• I need exercise accountability people in my life. Now.

What’s working:

• Even though I set an unreastic wakeup time, I did go to bed instead of trying to pull an all-nighter to “catch up.” Good job, Nanosh.

• At 5 p.m., I’ll text my adviser. In the before times, it might have taken about six weeks for me to reply to a check-in email, and perhaps another two or three before I got started writing again. I am looking at a turnaround time from this lapse of four days, and I’m coming back on my own.

What I’m trying:

• Being where I am. It’s not working all that well, but I saw a video somewhere, and a person said something like, “I am where my feet are.” Essentially, he meant wherever we are, we should be present and focus, not trying to be somewhere else. I am doing a horrible job at this, but I’m recognizing that if I’m not present, it means I’ve got too much on my plate.

The Zero Draft - What even is that?

I’m in my ninth year trying to finish a dissertation. This is unlike the other blog I started and abandoned. That one was meandering, this one has purpose. My purpose is to give myself a little pep talk because my ADHD shows up periodically as avoidance, shame, and despair. I also feel like disclosing so that other people with ADHD can feel empowered to be themselves and maybe finish their dissertations, too!

It’s 5:30 a.m. On the one hand, I’m getting up early to make up for the hour I missed yesterday. On the other hand, I’m waking up because I went to bed early, and this is actually my preference.

Sitting here, I realize two things: first, waking up early has never historically been my preference. I’m surprised that I’m feeling fine about it. I used to detest being up at this hour and have always felt like I was a night owl. Second, I forgot what the second realization was because I spent so long with that first part.

When I opened of my many digital spaces to start this, I saw this that I’d quoted from a recent training on writing:

Binge writers spend 90% of their time doing the least fun stuff (drafting from square one)

Steady writers spend 90% of their time doing the fun stuff (revision)

I’m not sure if I was having fun this morning. I spent 595 words realizing I don’t have ready answers to the questions I’m trying to answer, and a few of those going back through sources that are helping me answer a different question.

I’m providing a copy of the writing I created this morning because I realized that what I call a “zero draft” and what others call a zero draft might be something different. I’m writing, in part, to chain my mind down to focus, so there is a lot of unreadable nonsense that looks more like stream of consciousness. The other thing that makes this unreadable is that I’m drafting on a Freewrite Traveler, which encourages typing words and avoiding the temptation of editing as I go.

I then take that mess and highlight what I feel is important and try to move from that point. I have never seen any writing from anyone else at this stage, and I’m wondering, “Am I the only one?” The rare times people have shared writing with me, they look nothing like this (I also don’t typically share this, either). I feel like I’m starting 50 yards back from the starting line with an obstacle course of my own mind in the way before I can even arrive at what others call a zero draft. See below for what I mean.

What’s working/still working:

• I am 21 for 21! Does that make 4 weeks of writing in a row? I’m starting on week 5.

What stopped working:

• I haven’t been getting enough exercise, though I have been spending almost all available free time working in the yard, which is nice.

What’s concerning:

• I texted my adviser last night to say I was starting my writing session, but I had to pivot and skip it. Even though I made up for it early this morning, that’s the first time I haven’t followed through.

What’s not working:

• Sending those updates. This Thursday I’m going to meet with someone and ask their advice about this. Or do I need advice or just to schedule time to do it?

What I realized:

• Keeping key sources nearby for re-reading is a good idea, especially if I haven’t looked at them for a while.

What I tried today:

• Getting to bed early and getting up early.

Where I need to go:

• I need to figure out how to prioritize writing early in the day. I know someone who always says, “Done before 1.” That is, get things you really prioritize done before 1 p.m. It doesn’t need to happen every day, but what I definitely need to avoid is having my writing hour slip into the time when I need to be present wth my family.

• I can join a writing group but need a few minutes to figure out my calendar.

Today’s Zero Draft

Ithink I'm most happy writing early - nobodyto bother me. That i think more than anything is the key - and I need to take a look at my calednar and figure out which writing session is best. ok let's go:

The Lawrence Tract was a grasroots, collectively purchased, privately develop, intentionally desegregated neighborhood designed as an experiment to provide homes for middle-class white, Asian, and African American families in equal proportion. I'm not sure how to transition from here to talking about the equal proportion thing,but say I'm here now:

In their landmark study, Eunice and George Grier discuss the different ways privately developed interracial housing projects (endeavors) developed their housing projects and they showed that there is a differnce btween ... should not be texting and breaking my concentration ... what do they say abouthte ratios? theys ay that l... this incluing them was somthing about how I needed to introdcue this chapter. So... introduc this section just on ratios. Mk. Totally lost my train of thought. Maybe gow ith yesterdayss' questions: Was this ratio typical? For the area, I know it wasn't. Though I'm seeing in Grier there are a lot more examples of this 1/3 thing. It is *not* the magic third, but a 1/3 binary black and white (2/3). Starts to feel stilted as I just decided I would publish this sectiono fo my writing. Gonna do it anywy. Is a stream of conscience the same thing as a zero draft?

I am not clear on the answer to these questions:

Was this ratio typical?
Why did they decide on this ratio?
Was the LT secretive or open about it?
How is cooperative defined in Grier, and does the LT define itself as a cooperative? Even if theyh don't, can I do that?

The quota, per Grier, feels undemocratic. There is evidence for this in the LT also.
Frisone article - Milgram aism for 2/3 white, 1/3 black ("no less than 55% white, and preferebly 67% white")
Reading Frisone makes me realize i need to re-read this again & keep it close.

Going back to Strowger, which is also enlightening. I found this: "Mr. Eichler, who has direct knowledge of the functioning of the tract, has in the last six months broadened his policy so that members of all races my now buy in Eichler Tracts. One can only speculate as to what the influences of the Lawrence Tract have been..."

Going to put a pin in this. Key falling off of my Freewrite ... do not need this righ tnow.

The other thing i had from thsi text is on the ratios: "Supporters fo the Fair Play Council felt that if a small tract of land could be obtained which could be set up as a "demonstration" of rqacially integrated housing with a "division of backgrounds" which sould [sic] favor all races evenly that this would not only provide good housing ...."

Doesn't say much. Thinkiing about going back to newspapers & digging through rest of sources. it hink this is a central problem witht he writing & zero drafting is trying to do the reseach at the same time i'm doing the writing.

Need to pull all drafting and mine it for a place i can keep moving from - it's the leading paragraph that has grassroots, colledtive, privatley developed, intentionally desegregated/interracial etc.

So far I've encountered nothing on what is considered nothing on why Latino residents were not considered, so in a way Eichler's "open occupancy" follows a much more tepid plan would have included other identities, in theory.

Writing my way into realizing what I need to do next.

I’m in my ninth year trying to finish a dissertation. This is unlike the other blog I started and abandoned. That one was meandering, this one has purpose. My purpose is to give myself a little pep talk because my ADHD shows up periodically as avoidance, shame, and despair. I also feel like disclosing so that other people with ADHD can feel empowered to be themselves and maybe finish their dissertations, too!

Last week I wrote 2,646 words, down from 4,116 the week before. I had planned to write more than the previous week, but I didn’t have a particularly accurate tracking method. However, I resurrected a spreadsheet I’d started last year and started putting my word counts in there.

The other reason I wrote less was that I moved every single session at least once, sometimes twice. I also wasn’t that “into” it. I felt distracted, and the thing I’d assigned myself was boring (summarizing paragraphs/chunks of writing, so that I can move paragraphs around and figure out where each of them belongs).

I’m not sure that total word count is a measure of quality or focus, just like having a six pack is not necessarily a measure of total strength. I’ve never had a six pack or completed a dissertation. Let’s see what happens quicker.

What’s working/still working:

• I went to an all-day meditation practice on Sunday.

• Thinking about how I’m going to feel if I don’t write (bad)

• Texting my adviser at the beginning of every writing session (and knowing we are both going to be wondering what happened if I miss a day).

• Staying at work until I finish my writing.

• Numbering paragraphs on writing I did already and briefly summarizing it so that I can more easily see where each paragraph/idea needs to go/whether they fit together or not.

• Getting some exercise. At least once a day. Today it was riding my bike to work and back and taking a Barre class.

• Planning exercise and writing hours for the following week on Saturday or Sunday.

What stopped working:

• Sending consistent weekly writing updates to my adviser. I sent one the first week, but not the second. The difference was that the first week I set aside time to write the update. If I leave the last writing session of the week, there’s little chance I’m going to return to it. I’m wondering if I can kill two birds with one stone by sending her this blog. It feels a bit long. Can’t hurt but to try. And I’m writing this reflection *before* my writing session.

• 8:30 a.m. writing sessions. This would be an amazing hour for writing sessions, but it’s not realistic for my lifestyle.

What’s not working:

• Still don’t yet have a handle on how to get one chapter done. [In retrospect, I’m thinking that a chapter, like a lecture, should answer an essential question. I think I’ve got a couple of ideas now].

What I realized:

• I realized I need a writing group and writing buddies. It’s complicated and exhausting to do the organizing, so I’m knocking on doors to see if I can get into an existing writing circle.

• I got a cool list of books designed to help academics write that I can listen to on my way to and from work.

• I’ve got another trove of writing I need to look at to see if there’s anything good in there.

• I can ask for help. This blog post helped me realized I needed it.

• As I read over some of these sentences, they are so dense, they feel more like paragraphs.

What I tried today:

• I updated my spreadsheet with my word count for the past two weeks.

• I went to bed early last night and woke up at 4:30 a.m. and meditated from 5-6 a.m. I’m going to try that again tonight.

Where I need to go:

• Finish one chapter.

• We have a writing coach at UO. Maybe I need to schedule a meeting.

• Make a list of all the support I actually have and things I can do when I am getting stuck.

Talking myself off a ledge

I’m in my ninth year trying to finish a dissertation. This is unlike the other blog I started and abandoned. That one was meandering, this one has purpose. My purpose is to give myself a little pep talk because my ADHD shows up periodically as avoidance, shame, and despair. I also feel like disclosing so that other people with ADHD can feel empowered to be themselves and maybe finish their dissertations, too!

This is not about suicide or a physical ledge. It’s about getting unstuck when stuck in writing. The ledge is a metaphorical ledge of writing despair.

I wrote 707 words today, none of them inspired, most of them fought for. Very few of those words will end up being anything except the stirring of ideas.

They say to leave a breadcrumb trail in our writing. How will I continue what I’m working on tomorrow? What if I don’t know what I’m going to write about? What if I can’t figure out where I’m going?

Yesterday, I took a paragraph that I’d written before and realized it was too dense, so I wrote a new paragraph based off of one sentence. I thought this was a great idea to keep moving forward. I tried to leave some breadcrumbs from there, but I couldn’t figure out where I should go. Do I explain the significance of what I just said? What makes the most sense as far as building a narrative that will be comprehensible to someone reading this. Ultimately, I want the thing to be readable. I realized I was starting to spin out and that what I’m doing might be more like revising and not writing what I need to write: a continuous piece of writing that goes from start to finish.

Waves and waves of self doubt creeping up on me while I question my ability to ever get this done. This is what happens when I get to a point in the writing where I’m stuck. I can still feel those waves crash about, and I can conjure them even as I write this.

I realized it’s been so long since I’ve been in coursework that I don’t have a really good idea about what I’m actually producing. What should a dissertation look like? What does a chapter have in it?

I asked Claude what it thought about getting unstuck, and it gave me a few ideas. While I was panicking, I took on the idea of taking what I’d written and just quickly describing each paragraph. I felt huge resistance to doing that, but

What’s working right now:

• Daily writing sessions (7/7).

• Texting my adviser when I begin my writing session.

• Making sure I do not leave work before I complete my writing session.

What’s not working:

• I skipped a morning workout and scrolled.

• I canceled a mid-day workout because I don’t feel like being sweaty.

What I realized:

• I don’t really know what a dissertation is supposed to look like.

• I don’t really know or remember what a chapter is supposed to look like.

• I don’t really know what it means to write “one continuous piece of writing from start to finish.”

What I tried today:

• Briefly looked at dissertations on suburban history; realizing in my off writing time, I should take a look at the genre to get a feel for it.

• Briefly summarizing paragraphs that I’d written; it helped me realize some framing for an argument that was helpful, and it also showed me how disconnected the paragraphs felt from one another and why they weren’t flowing. Even though I felt resistant to doing it because I hate looking at my writing so much, I did it anyway and don’t regret it.

Where I need to go:

• I need to get clear on where I’m going in my writing, so that I have a place to begin from and a place to end on. This is going to take a minute just to organize chunks of writing and documents spread out here and there. I feel like this would make the biggest difference.

• Get on my little desk treadmill. If it’s not going to be sweaty mat pilates, it needs to be something.

Do. Or do not. There is no try.

I’m in my ninth year trying to finish a dissertation. This is unlike the other blog I started and abandoned. That one was meandering, this one has purpose. My purpose is to give myself a little pep talk because my ADHD shows up periodically as avoidance, shame, and despair. I also feel like disclosing so that other people with ADHD can feel empowered to be themselves and maybe finish their dissertations, too!

I recently had occasion to review my CliftonStrengths, and since I paid for all 34, I looked at the bottom 34th, and it reads:

DISCIPLINE

For those of you who aren’t familiar with CliftonStrengths, it doesn’t mean discipline is my greatest weakness. It means that discipline requires the most energy from me of all the other 33 strengths. For contrast, my top ten strengths are those that give me energy at the end of the day rather than taking it away.

So what about other strengths that might contribute to a completed dissertation? Like achiever, (#33) consistency, (#30) deliberative, (#32) responsibility, (#28) or focus? (#24) It looks like it’s gonna take a significant energy lift to get this thing done.

That’s when I got the idea for this blog. This is unlike the other blog I started and abandoned. That one was meandering, this one has purpose. My purpose is to give myself a little pep talk because my ADHD shows up periodically as avoidance, shame, and despair. I also feel like disclosing so that other people with ADHD can feel empowered to be themselves and maybe finish their dissertations, too!

Since we have AI now, I thought I’d outsource my thinking and get a sense of what Claude thought; What are the top ten CliftonStrengths for completing a history dissertation? Then I asked it what the chances are of someone completing a dissertation based on my CliftonStrengths profile.

74%

Not bad! And I have 3 of the top ten in my top ten. Check it out!

1. Learner (#20)

2. Analytical (#9)

3. Input (#10)

4. Intellection (#18)

5. Discipline (#34)

6. Focus (#24)

7. Achiever (#33)

8. Responsibility (#28)

9. Context (#15)

10. Communication (#7)

Unfortunately, “Discipline and Achiever — the two strengths most responsible for actually finishing — are ranked last and second-to-last.”

However, it still gave me a 74% chance of completing based on the profile alone. Then I added that I have a full-time job, a family, and that I started nine years ago. New calculation?

42%

I have struggled my whole life at things that seemed like they came easy to others, so staring at numbers like these, while vaguely depressing, are nothing new for me. Over time and continuous struggle, I have had to cultivate a self-renewing font of hope and optimism; without it, I would have long ago given up.

When I applied to Stanford, a colleague of mine wrote this, and it is as true then as it is now:

“While he may not be the most highly qualified candidate out of all of the applicants on file, he has the drive and motivation emblematic of Angela Lee Duckworth’s argument about the power of grit. His willingness to take academic and personal risks and his innate curiosity and creativity will make him a welcome addition to any program for which he is qualified.”

This evening, I managed to type out 250 words or so of a paragraph I liked after a long day of work. Day six of six planned writing days. It’s cause for celebration.

I also know that after this many years, my belief that I will be able to continue writing steadily on day seven, then day 8, and day 100, are going to be stiffly challenged. I won’t know what happened. I’ll stop texting my adviser, I’ll stop planning at the beginning of the week, I’ll stop exercising, I’ll start to feel more and more depressed, and I’ll start ducking emails. At least, that’s the pattern. If I could grant any wish, it would be to look back on this paragraph in triumph of beating these odds.

Belief is among my top ten CliftonStrengths, and according to Claude, it can be leveraged as a substitute for the drive to achieve. I have found a topic with purpose, so there is no reason to quit. I may fail, but I will never quit. And in the words of my colleague and friend, I will never “accept the status quo.”

Stay tuned…