Hello! Welcome to anyone seeing this and my face for the first time. Thank you to those who keep coming back to see me and my face over time. I’m grateful to have a community of people with whom I can share my vulnerabilities, failures, frustrations, hopes, aspirations, and successes!
The Experiment
Starting in January, I began dedicating my time exclusively to finishing my PhD and publishing my memoir. I quit my adjunct teaching job at a local state college and gave myself the gift of two years of dedication to my craft. I explained more in this post:
I started posting video updates in January. In case you need to catch up, here they are:
I launched this experiment with this video post from February:
Okay, so now that you’re caught up on what I’m doing and why, here are the updates!
Ph.D.
FRUSTRATIONS!
I wish I had better things to say, but I am a hot ball of frustration right now when it comes to my Ph.D. progress. I brought a hefty dose of evidence to the table to explain why I wrote a case study and why I wanted to finish this Research Tool (a required project for my portfolio) with a small, homogenous sample, and I was told no. I don’t think my advisors considered the evidence I presented for why this was a good idea, and that is deeply disappointing. I have 25 interviews and will be spending the rest of the year analyzing every one. So the project that was supposed to be done this month is now pushed way back. The faculty at my school don’t work during the summer, so they haven’t responded to my email asking whether finishing by May 2028 would still be feasible given this adjustment.
I want to believe they have my best interests at heart. They are the experts after all. But I also like to be heard and have my concerns considered. Oh well. Here we are. A decade ago, I would have been happy to have this problem.
Analysis takes about a week per interview (and that’s a VERY productive week). The handbook on Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis—which I wrote about here:
—says:
The analysis stage of an IPA study of three cases may take at least two months of full-time work.
So, four cases in four weeks is ambitious. But here I am. :(
The handbook also says, in reference to a full dissertation (which I’m not even doing yet):
We often think of a PhD as being made up of three self-contained but related studies. In that case it would be possible, for example, for the first study to be a single case study, the second to offer a detailed examination of three cases, and the third to examine a larger sample of eight participants from a different location.
I tried all month to advocate for myself. And I lost.
ONWARD!
On the other hand, a handful of friends graduated this month, some with their PhDs and others with their master’s. Another friend received their bachelor’s degree. As long and as boring as graduation ceremonies can be, I teared up multiple times as my friends were crowned doctors. As we celebrated them at the reception afterward, they warmly said encouraging things like, “In just a couple of years, that will be you walking across the stage!”
Yeah, man. I’m going to do my best to make that happen. But this project I’m doing, with the interviews I conducted last summer, means more to me than checking a box, which is why, despite the crazy amount of work I’ll need to put into it, I’m sticking with it. My advisor offered to let me use data from her lab and do a quick thematic analysis. I declined. I’d rather spend more time on something that means this much to me than any time on something I don’t care half as much about.
I’m still preparing for the Dublin trip and looking forward to presenting the findings I have so far.
Memoir
FRUSTRATIONS!
When my mother came to visit for Mother’s Day, she asked how many drafts of my memoir I had written. I opened up the folder on my computer and showed her the work that I’ve done over the past few years.
“This is overwhelming,” she said. I nodded.
I showed her how I track the query letters I’ve sent, the proposal drafts, and the notes from workshops, conferences, retreats, and residencies. I have spreadsheets for literary magazines I’ve submitted to (and want to submit to), character pseudonyms, and query tracking.
She also saw the audio tracks of the interviews I did with her for her story, the ones I did with my dad, and the folder I have for my brother’s story.
She saw the folder with the contract and notes from the developmental editor I worked with.
I have sent a total of 34 Queries. This is where they currently sit:
12 active rejections
12 probable passive rejections (aka ghosting)
10 pending (sent within the past 2 months)
I won’t stop querying agents until I’ve received (actively or passively) 100 rejections. So I suppose you could say I’m a third of the way there.
INSPIRATION
Just a couple of days ago, I finished reading Strangers, A Memoir of Marriage by Belle Burden. This book is really well written. I took notes all over the pages, using colored gel pens, then outlined the structure of her book in my journal.
I can do this! I thought.
After I outlined her book, I outlined my own, following the same structure. It’s not exactly the same, of course, but I noticed that she gave very little space to her childhood. She gave more space to the aftermath of the divorce and her transformation than she did to the marriage itself. Most of the divorce memoirs I’ve read lately do this. I wanted mine to be different. I wanted to focus more on the how I got here part. But the way she does it—minimally, with flashback scenes—keeps the pace and tension on every page.
Of course, Belle Burden has a lot more going for her, which no doubt contributed to her book getting published. In fact, she was approached about writing the book based on the reception to her Modern Love essay. So she had a deal before she’d even written the book.
Regardless, I’m inspired to rewrite my memoir with a similar structure because it works!
Vow of Poverty
I’m in a situation I haven’t been in since…2018, I think.
I’m going to have to carry a balance on my credit cards for a few months.
This might sound like a silly thing to say, but I’ve proudly avoided carrying a balance for a long time, and it feels good. Sure, I have plenty of student loan debt, but credit card debt? Nope, not this chicka. Not anymore. Well, until July. Because I’m about to run out of money and won’t get another loan disbursement until late August.
BUT, I figure this is better than pulling money from the retirement accounts I’m not actively contributing to.
I’ve considered, of course, taking a student job over the summer. Briefly, that is, before I remind myself why I’m doing this in the first place.
The screenshot above is from the income/spending graph on Rocket Money. The left columns are income; the right columns are spending. You can see how, in January, I received a chunk of money (the Grad PLUS loan payout for the Spring semester), then my last paycheck from the college in February (it’s weird, I taught from August to December, but got paid September through February). Then no more money coming in. You can also see how the spending columns get steadily shorter—which is good news! The exception is in March when I bought the tickets and booked the accommodations in Dublin.
All to say—I’m doing alright. :)
