Deadlines

After several months of being unable to connect, my dissertation advisor and I finally sat down and talked shop over lunch. We opted for our regular lunch locale, the Jerusalem Restaurant. The Jerusalem Restaurant, located about 100 yards from my advisor's office, has some of the best Middle Eastern food on the planet. Over the course of a leisurely lunch, we talked about the Denver Nuggets, silent meditation, the communication ethics project on which he's working, and my dissertation. Toward the end of lunch, he looked me in the eye and started the following conversation.

Adv: So, when are thinking you'll be ready for your oral defense?
Me: Well, what do you think is realistic?
Adv: I think it would good for you defend before attending the NCA conference. The convention is the 2nd week of November . . . you'd need to defend around Halloween. Fitting for you topic, don't you think? ::chuckles at own joke::
Me: I'd love to be finished by then.
Adv: That means I need a complete draft in about a month.
Me: Hmmm . . . I'm guessing I have about 50 pages or so left to write. That's a little less than two pages a day. I think I can do that.
Adv: Good. It's time for you to finish up and move on to new work.

What does all this mean? It's crunch time. Finishing by the end of September would be ideal--teaching gets increasingly hectic as the semester progresses and that means less time to write, unfortunately.

When I got home from lunch, I tried to lay down and take my customary 30 min power nap. Instead of a good power nap, I had my recurring dream about struggling with an unknown foe. This is one of those dreams I unpacked several months ago. The struggle, particularly with the unknown foe, represents my fear of an uncertain future. The end of the dissertation process couldn't be seen, I didn't know if I'd have a teaching contract for the 2004-05 school year, etc. The dream from this afternoon had a bit of a twist from its usual form--I could see my attacker. He was a big fellow wearing a suit of power armor (too many years reading comic books, eh?). My guess is that the deadlines brought the end of the Ph.D. process into sharper focus--my dream followed suit. Now I'm struggling with a tangible foe, one that can be seen and confronted: time.