Help! I've got a puzzler. I'm writing about a painting made in 1959 that has the title "Steinläuse." So I thought, huh, what're those? and I went to the internet, which never fails me. I found out that they're not real bugs (duh, I suppose I might have guessed), but something that Loriot invented in 1976. This according to the Wikipedia. Now the problem, you may notice, is that my painting predates the Loriot sketch by more than 15 years. So was the Steinlaus already a joke, like the Jackalope, that Loriot just elaborated on? Any ideas about where I might get some kind of a reference for it?
One more note on the personal statement. I've learned you have to stifle the fear that you sound too much like Bart:
Bart has entered the terrible two's. He bangs a spoon on a pan while wearing a pot on his head.
Bart: I am so great! I am so great! Everybody loves me, I am so great!
Who ever would have thought that the "personal statement" might actually help me define myself? I just caught myself thinking, "I've said I do X, what if they don't want someone who does X? Maybe if they don't want that kind of person it's not the best place for me." Huh.
Why do we get so attached to certain phrases? In my most recent personal statement I see things that I wrote in 1999 resurfacing, and it's like pulling teeth to convince myself that they might not be the best way of expressing things anymore.
Strategy: a "remnant" document. Just paste in everything you've removed and there it is, for posterity, in case you find that the finished product actually DOES need that one particular word choice or expression you brutally removed. (That's never happened, tellingly. This just goes to show it's ok to Let Go.)
Some self-reflection: today I learned a lesson that I've already learned several times (it never sticks). Don't re-read secondary sources until you're done hashing out a draft and know, at least temporarily, where everything goes and what you think it means. Every time I have a look at things I read near the beginning of the writing process, the occasional flashes of recognition or even inspiration I feel are completely overshadowed by an oppressive feeling that This Has All Been Done Before.
My intellectual mind knows that it hasn't, but my emotional mind is VERY susceptible to doubt, even, at times, to despair. When I am fully immersed in what I do, this doesn't happen. I understand that I'll need to go back over everything to make sure I'm not repeating something someone else established previously, to be sure to give credit where it's due, etc. At the same time, ignoring everything else is sometimes a great help...it allows me to proceed on the assumption that I am doing the right thing, a new thing.
[The other thing I’ve got to remember is that The Book will always read differently/better than The Dissertation. I have to stop comparing my project to things that other people have made which are in much more finished stages, having much more research and thought behind them.]
Since I haven't added any kind of 'about me' type of description to this page yet, I thought I'd explain the name of the blog. hem is my nickname from somewhere around the 6th grade. It's just my initials, but somehow it stuck. Only a few people call me by it anymore, but somehow I'm amazed that I have any nickname at all (as a kid, nicknames seemed so cool to me).
In German, "Hemmungen" (as the subtitle states) are inhibitions. Seemed like a good combination of ideas, since often my mode of operation is one of struggling over one intellectual inhibition after another. Not so inhibited in other behaviors, just in...well...thinking.
Earlier this year I resolved to write a bit every day, since this is apparently the secret to finishing the dissertation. Does blogging count as writing? Wait! That's not really what I mean--I mean, does it (anything) count if it's not specifically thematically related to my research?
Should I be pleased with myself or even just relieved if I can at least write an entry a day? Does that count? Some part of me thinks that the main thing is to develop some self-discipline, and that the form it takes is fairly inconsequential.
So long as I just write.