08 Nov On Moving Away

When my partner was accepted to Oxford University’s Geography Department, i was ecstatic. I had visions of hanging out at the Bodleian Library or the Radcliffe Camera. I thought i might bury myself in the David Nicholls Memorial Collection in Regent’s Park College (Jason’s assigned college).

Instead, i have been desperately seeking a home for Monkey, my 14 year old, indiscriminately peeing, ornery, smelly, dirty, cranky cat (found!) and struggling to settle into a home. I’ve had four addresses this year. And i’ve spent two months of the last 10 traveling or living away from one of those four addresses. I’m not complaining. By the end of this year, i will have traveled to or lived in seven amazing cities. I love to travel.

But it has made writing my dissertation next to impossible.

I’m already a week late with Chapter One, and am just starting to get a grapple on what i’ll be writing. Don’t be fooled – i’ve been working furiously. It turns out that i took over 500 pages of notes in five weeks at the National Archives – all of which need to be coded – which i insist on doing by hand with highlighters and pens and archaic little indexing systems. I also took 2000+ pages of scans and have downloaded another 500 pages of scans from the University of Wisconsin’s Foreign Relations of the United States series scans. These were the things i couldn’t get to at NARA and NARA II. Thank goodness they’re online!

But it’s amazing how long it takes to settle into simple things like, “Where do i buy toilet paper in a pinch?” or “Where do i find stamps and mail that letter of recommendation for my student?” or, or, or… In DC (my second to last address), that wasn’t such a big deal. Five weeks in an apartment that is rented mostly to researchers and interns is properly equipped with the things that are needed and only a few blocks from Target. But i find my self asking, “Is Sainsbury’s the UK’s Walmart?” and “Can i shop there in good conscience?”

You wouldn’t think these things could possibly take up so much energy and time, but they do, weirdly.

Or maybe i’m doing what all academics do and finding excuses not to work…  procrastinate. procrastinate. procrastinate.