I haven't really been gone...

I realize it's 9 days since my last post, but I always knew I had not abandoned this.  Work was crazy when I went back, scrambling to complete a particular project that lasted several days and then I started the weekend with big dreams of writing and finishing a chapter of the dissertation.  That didn't exactly happen, but what did occur was my usual method of delving so heavily into the research that I felt almost afraid to put pen to paper, or in my case, fingers to keyboard.  As with most dissertations and writing projects, the more you research, the more you feel you need to research and aren't informed enough.  And of course, all of my ideas got turned upside down around Saturday afternoon when I discover an entirely new (and promising) angle for the chapter I'm writing.  The new angle, though, involved the abject, as theorized by Julia Kristeva in Powers of Horror.  Having never read much (ok, any) Kristeva and only glancing at her ideas here and there, reading about her theories through Judith Butler, I felt a little intimidated about incorporating the idea into my work.  But I just had a feeling that it *had* to be included.  Stress, stress, and more days of inactivity (aside from reading), and finally, I decided to reach out to my major professor from my M.A. program--who no longer teaches but is now an artist living in New England.  She's the most brilliant person I've ever known, and even she had never read much (ok, any) Kristeva.  But she's since looked Kristeva over, given me some good feedback, and I felt so encouraged by her words that I was up and still writing at 2am this morning.  Unfortunately, writing that late made me sluggish all day today and I didn't get much accomplished, but I'm sure the mental fires will burn some more this evening, and I'll write write write, but only around tonight's episode of Lost. :)