The Quest for Imperfection
Okay, let's be honest, I haven't been very good at the whole blogging thing. I started off pretty good, but then things happened. The PhD thing became really stressful (FYI, teaching an upper-level class while taking 2 PhD seminars is a recipe for insanity). At the same time, I dealt with sickness and death of people that I love. Note that I said that I dealt with it, not that I dealt with it well... which absolutely did not happen. It was a confusing time, I did not find much comfort in the knowledge of certain beliefs that I hold dear, which was not what I was expecting, to say the least. I was sad and lonely and confused, and I did not feel like blogging.
Fast forward several months. I am still a PhD student, an experience that I find more stressful with each passing day ("How is your dissertation coming?" along with its many variants has officially been added to the list of banned questions - seriously - please don't ask.) I am having some trouble keeping on track with meeting my goals (academic, social, physical, spiritual... and everything else.) So, I have thought a lot about it and concluded that I need an extra source of accountability. What better way to induce accountability than making myself accountable to y'all - I mean, the way I understand it, posting this to the internet is literally the same thing as telling the world. However, I will not be posting links to facebook, because I'm fine if random strangers stumble upon my accountability experiment (and obviously my tiny handful of followers will receive notice), but I don't necessarily want anyone who passes for a "friend" nowadays to be all up in my business. Is that wrong? If so, oh well.
So, here's the deal: I am trying to both make healthier choices (which we all know is universal code for losing weight) and do all that is necessary to get the heck out of dodge (aka this particular institution of higher learning) within the next year. In an effort to further my progress on both fronts, I will periodically be reporting to y'all on the status of things. And so begins the great accountability experiment. We'll see how it goes. I will provide further details on the specifics of my plans in a later post.
Just FYI, there is a reason I titled this blog post "The Quest for Imperfection" - as a (hopefully) wise man keeps telling me, this is a marathon, not a sprint. I fully expect to have a few stumbles along the way. Because I'm still me, I draw inspiration from random and funny places. Note the picture below, which yes, is a shot of my TV screen.

 
See? Trisha Yearwood gives tips like the above on "Trisha's Southern Kitchen" (love, btw) - and she has her own TV show (among loads of other successes)! So, bumps in the road are to be expected, instead of trying to "pervent" stress, I hope I can learn to laugh, dust myself off, and keep going!