the new year

It has been a considerable while since I posted. A year has passed. For the sake of continuity, I feel compelled to catch up, to review the past year for my non-existant readers. I can’t just jump back in with no explanation. I am too committed to the narrative form to be comfortable with that kind of a jostled switch. And so, here are some musings about the last year.

A new year is upon us; 2009 has slipped out. A new decade has begun. The collective mood in early January seemed to be relief and delight. Evidentially, 2009 was a big year for many, full of change and discomfort. The year was a rush for me as an individual. I began this blog to help me write through two major events happening in 2009: my wedding and my qualifying exams. Strangely, I never posted during the whole of the year, although there was much to post on. I was too pressed and distracted to write. It was a year punctuated by extraordinary events. Some of them wonderful like the wedding and passing the exams. Others less expected and more dismal: the deaths of loved ones; a mugging; sexual harassment at school. But we made it through the year.

In the (albeit brief) six months since I took my exams and we got married, I must say, the marriage is going much more smoothly than the dissertation work. Marriage is great; I recommend it highly. We had all this pressure and stress in the run-up to the wedding. There were so many details to sort out and so many little decisions to make; we were driving each other crazy. But since then, we’ve been able to giddily enjoy being together and begin to build our life together. Granted, we lived together before the wedding, so it isn’t quite as if we were starting from new. But, the wedding changed us. We are more committed, more solid in the plans that we make. More excited about what the future might bring and what the present holds.

I’ve been surprised to find myself such an advocate of marriage. It is an institution about which I had many misgivings prior to the wedding. Now that I’m here, though, I’m like a new convert, ready to sing its praises to anyone who will listen.

The world of my academic life is much bleaker. My committee expressed deep concerns about my dissertation project during the exams. This sent me into a tail-spin of self-doubt and confusion for much of the next several months. I still have no clear idea what the dissertation will be written on. I haven’t applied for the funding that I should have. I feel lost.

Caught in this tangle of confused ideas, I am about to embark on my fieldwork. I leave for Cairo in two days. I am packing up my things, getting ready to go and embark on this new phase of the degree. I will be there to do research for the dissertation.

Sadly, my beloved husband will not be joining me there. He’ll visit, but he can’t move there with me. So, we’ll be playing the long-distance game. Obviously a masochist, since my marriage is happy, I’ve chosen this time to leave and move to a different continent, to a city where I know almost no one, and where I don’t speak the language particularly well.

My intention is to write about this crazy adventure. To pick up where I left off and use this space to think. About the books I’m reading, the things I’m seeing, my life and that of those around me.

- Pen