paisleypiper's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- dirt roads and ladies shoes I�m out of steam until the end of the semester. Being in graduate school and working at a university means that everything is intense until the day that grades are due. And then everyone packs up and goes away [and the fun begins]. So I probably won�t have much time to write until December 20. It is not so horribly far away�. I�m just hanging in there until then. I always feel like I am a slave to �until� or �someday.� Always looking for that time when life will ease up a bit � and it always just over the next hill. So often my jobs are full of things that stress me out � like giving long presentations or persuading others to act on some set of concepts I pedal. Until I figure out how not to have these sorts of jobs, my life will continue to be a series of times where I tell myself, several times a day, �hang in there.� Today it occurred to me that leaders often don�t have followers. They go cut some big trail for everyone else, wade into their passion, turn around and no one is behind them�. Then the underbrush takes over and someone with far less skill finds the first trail and merely opens it up again, thereby gaining the glory of the discovery. So I told Quinn today that it is all right to go to new places and discover that no one is behind is you. And it may even be preferable. I wouldn�t necessarily know because I keep shying away from success, heading up to the big and messy midwestern forest and turning back to the road. Forgive me if I sound pessimistic. I have been reading Milton�s suppressed portion The History of Britain called The Digression. It is dreary � history is a series of patterns of failures that people live again and again and never achieve a state of liberty. It is problematic, but parts of it intrigue and allude me � a sensation I enjoy, except when I have a paper due. Here is a wonderful family story. My great-grandfather and great-grandmother were famously in love and had a wonderful partnership. My great-grandmother decided to accompany her husband to the wrestling match 10 miles away in the next town. Being an elite European woman of vast wealth and privilege, she had no solid work shoes or boots appropriate for the rugged midwestern life in which she found herself. She walked 10 miles in her ladylike shoes with her husband to the match. And on the way home, after complaining of how much her feet hurt, her husband changed shoes with her. She wore his boots home and he wore her ladylike shoes, marching home proudly along the dirt road. 9:25 p.m. - 2002-12-09 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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