the kind of woman I’d want my daughter to be

I changed the header on the blog to a more ‘season appropriate’ one [from September 2008 in Yekaterinburg, because here in California the summer is in full force] and then looked for more beautiful shots of Russian fall on my computer – that’s when I realized that fall very soon turns into winter where I used to live… thus, I have more pictures of glittering snow than of pretty colored leaves. The photograph above was taken on October 15^th 2005 in Tara, Siberia – the best day of my life. Still when it was that day, I knew it was not be unprecented in its splendor for several years to come. It was one of the days when I visisted a small provincial college some seven hours north of Omsk and the students I met there have stayed with me ever since. If I were to follow my dream to its utter-most edge, I would go teach at such a tiny university out in the middle of nowhere.

Someone googles my name every day [I know this because sometimes they click on links to my blog and then I see it in the statistics of visitors]. Sometimes I google my own name and sometimes this leads me to new – or old – information about myself. Today I googled my name in Russian and stumbled upon a recently published number of a literary journal in Yekaterinburg which features an excerpt from my novel in Russian [oh the horror! and the shame!] as well as an interview they did with me during the summer of 2009. When we did the interview, I was informed that the journal was going through some financial difficulties and that they didn’t know when the next number was going to come out – little did I know at the time that I would be reading the finished product from California in September 2011! The interview [in Russian] starts on page 12 of the online version of the latest number.

Sometimes being a graduate student is difficult as you constantly face doubts as to what it is you’re doing with your life and wonder if you should really be doing something entirely else with these years of youth at your disposal. This past week has been a challenging one in terms of the enormous stress I suffered when I was reproached for my latest [as of yet only scheduled to be published] article on Shalamov. In those moments, it is normal to feel frustrated and disappointed and like you should just go and hide under some rock for the next couple of years. It is okay to lament: “What am I doing with my life?” It is also perfectly fine to blame oneself for things not turning out the way they were ‘supposed’ to. At the end of the day – and at the end of a stressful week – it is normal to realize that one doesn’t always have great ideas and that one is allowed not to know exactly what the topic of one’s dissertation should be X years from now and that one piece of extremely harsh criticism doesn’t equal you packing your bags and leaving your chosen field of study. Naturally, I would prefer it if everything went exactly according to ‘the plan’ [though at this point is occurs to me that I’m not sure if I have a plan at all but perhaps just some miscellaneous goals and chaotic dreams] and if everyone around me loved me and always did the wave for each word I utter – but this is not a very productive approach to living. What would be the point of waking up in the morning if you already knew how the day was going to turn out? If everything was miraculously accomplished – including yourself? I’d rather take the occasional blows for not only do they make you stronger, they also constitute the contrastive background for happy times and successful achievements. Sometimes you have to loose touch with the ‘greater scheme’ of things and instead take pleasure in the nice little day to day details. Like when I went swimming with Boy-C this afternoon [it is our Friday tradition to head to Hearst Gym once work is done] and we ended up swimming next to each other in a lane all of our own, gossiping and laughing while getting a work-out. Or when Critical Companion and I watched the season premier of The Big Bang Theory tonight and laughed until our stomachs hurt while she ate icecream and I sipped a glass of red wine. When she came home from Russia this summer, she announced that she’d watched a couple of episodes on the plane and recognized herself in Sheldon. “Oh no,” was my reaction, “that makes me Leonard!” Our Penny hasn’t yet moved into our building but I guess it is just a matter of time. Another pleasant thing that happened today was that I took some time away from studying and spent it in insightful conversation with two other graduate students on my floor. That is another wonderful thing about being at a large American institution of higher education: your personal graduate student existence may be testing and trying and so difficult sometimes that you just want to go home and hide under the covers for a few hours but at least you’re not alone. At least we always have each other.

Tomorrow [September 24^th 2011] my next article – if the plans of my editor are anything one might trust – will be published in Göteborgs-Posten. That is good news but it also means that this month is nearing its end and I will have to write another text next weekend to be published in October…