Sunday Scribblings: "Fortune Cookie"

"Slow and steady wins the race."

The Fortune: What is it about those words that makes me feel so slow and lumbering? I understand the motto's good intentions (and maybe even wish I could apply it to thesis writing)...but something about it makes my hair go limp and dark circles form under my eyes in a wave exhaustion. It's the sort of pithy saying that makes me feel like I've died from the inside out and turned into a dried-up husk of whatever I was before handing myself over to the notion of reaching the finish line.

Grad school: I'm sitting in a small, dark, windowless office at an old green oversized desk in a yellow glow of lamplight. I've been swallowed alive by adjectives, 3 times removed from the actual object and nowhere near where I should be. My arms grow heavy. There are papers and books and empty coffee cups in scattered piles all around me. My head hurts as I begin falling towards catatonic. Looks like, at this pace, it will be another long day. There is never an end in sight. I talk myself into going further...slow and steady...eeking out another sentence...another word...just one more thought. But, aiming for brilliance, I find myself settling for bug smears--defeated. I work until there is nearly nothing left of me, until I'm barely a nub of who I once was. For two years this is what it is, day after day after day after day. I remember it as a time when cold winter days and teaching were the only things that kept me breathing at all.

Presently: Somewhere along the lines, this piece of paper stuck between a shell of flour, water, sugar, and F.D. & C.Yellow #5 has caused me to make a decision: slow-and-steady-winners can go to hell. I'm fire or water, all or nothing, on or off. I burn brightly, but often burn myself out. I get annoyed by cardboard cut-outs of real people lacking all passion and personality. And I wonder: how is it that I've somehow managed to fill such a small, sweet cookie with contempt?

Is it legal to grab a new one? Attempt a fresh start.....


look for more fortunes here.