The Body and the Mind

I have been fielding a lot of questions since the big announcement. Most of which center around due dates and my favorite "were you planning this" (which is one of my favorite because people try and ask that one in all sorts of euphemistic ways. My all time favorite being, "and was this an aim of yours in life?"

But a few of those questions have been about how my dissertation studies are going and how I plan to keep them going during this time.

Of course, the easy answer to that question is, 'well, it's kind of my job, so yeah, it'll keep going' and the long answer to that question in three words is 'i don't know'.

Obviously having a child will affect my writing and my reading habits. I know that there are some members of my family who believe that I really will try and read my baby to sleep with Plato's Republic or John Dewey's Art as Experience (although personally, the one philosopher that always puts me right to sleep is Kant) and I'm sure that there will be some nights where the dear little one is rocked to sleep while I read him or her some awesome feminist article. But I'm also sure that those perennial favorites "good night moon" and "brown bear, brown bear" will make it in there as well.

And obviously a hungry baby will not allow me to say, "Well, just hold on, I have one little paragraph to write and then we can have dinner!"

But I think that the disruption will actually be something much deeper. For the past few weeks I have noticed a deep empty feeling about my writing but not in a way that signifies writer's block or frustration. Rather, it's a feeling that I am busy gathering rather than being able to give right now. I'm in a taking sort of mode. It doesn't feel greedy or selfish but more in a way that I feel open to new ideas and new possibilities.

Which, for a writer can be a wonderful thing. Disruption is horrific in the writing process but if it a disruption that allows one to be inspired or to re-imagine or to re-organize within then sometimes those disruptions can push one's writing to new heights...almost dizzying ones.

I think about how some of my best papers were written really towards the end of the semester...almost at the brink of being 'too late'. But this is because a really good class is about taking in, growing, receiving, becoming something new...which means you are often not ready to write until you are filled to bursting (although that is not to EXCUSE any of my student's from procrastinating!!!)

So, I'm under no delusions that this life change will affect my life and hence my writing and reading life. But I'm also hopeful, that my body and my mind are not disconnected but are intimately and importantly connected. So that when I do write (in between puking and napping) , that which I write, will be something that my body and the body that is growing within me understand.