In this odd quest to reshape and relaunch my life in a new direction, I knew that this academic year--2007-2008--was going to be the rough patch. My coursework was done except for qualifying in German and finishing an incomplete in research methodology which was going to require that I master the range of methods available to me for my dissertation research and complete a design and a draft proposal. I am happy to report those two objectives were accomplished at the end of the first semester. What remains for second semester is taking my three comprehensive exams and raising money to begin my dissertation research next year. These both are huge undertakings and monomaniacal focus is essential if I'm going to accomplish them so I can actually do the research in 2008-2009, write the dissertation in 2009-2010, and get the Ph.D. and a job in 2010.
My house also remains unsold so I am working both as a Teaching Fellow at BU and in OB Admitting at the Brigham most evenings in order to pay my bills. Together with my academic work, that is just about all the time there is. For the first time in my adult life, I have no time for community or church or politics. My social life is limited to an occasional coffee or brunch. There is, in other words, a huge cost to all this. I miss the wonderful life I had on Ashmont Hill and Trinity Church and often wonder if, on the other side of this current effort, I will ever find another place to be and communities of people to be with that compare with them. Emotionally, this year is a bit like mud season in Vermont.....it is very easy to get stuck in a bad place.
But what carries me forward is my passion for my work and those close to me who believe in me and it. Unlike other, younger graduate students, my work is not preparing me to do something, it IS that something. I want to understand what happened to liberal Protestantism in America. I want to understand what happened to the people who were, at least for a time, its standard-bearers. And more generally, I want to understand how ideologies shape individual action and vice versa. And even more generally than that, I want to understand how values work socially....and economically. This work is not unconnected from my long time work reflected in my blog at www.bostonmortgagemeltdown.org.
My conceit is that if I live long enough I might be able to add something of value to how these things are understood. But at 58, I know that living long enough is a big uncertainty. Yes, both my parents lived into their 90s, but that is no guarantee. So on the darker nights, I see clearly that I may be trading away years of my life that I might have spent with friends and in community, where I might have found a new soul mate and have had the joy of being part of a loving partnership again, where I might have spent time just being in the moment and soaking up the sun and the smell of the earth, where I might have learned to play the guitar or ski, for goals that I will not reach if my days are cut short. That is the risk. But day after day, I decide to take it.
This is New Year's Eve 2007. If, by New Year's Eve 2008 my exams and several months of interviewing are behind me, I think none of the rest of this will matter. The doing will be enough. To get to that place is my prayer.
