Maggie left for TO this morning. Just enjoying the enhanced quiet. Enhanced because I know it won’t be interrupted.
Got an email from my colleague in the States asking about the paper on jokes and language. Told him I’m still working on it. I’ve made a few notes here and there but without a single unifying concept—a new name for disability—it’s useless.
Maybe I should take my own advice. Leave it alone. What would it do? What would it solve? Who would read it? There are so many doctrines out there that trying to choose wears us out. Maybe we should withhold our ideas and aim for simplicity.
I know I sound discouraged. I know I’ve worked for years on these ideas and that they’re valuable to me. But I’m stumped. Stifled. Paralyzed. My Pequod’s grounded. I don’t know how to raise its sails again.
Also, in a small but infuriating way, Maggie’s admonitions have burrowed into me. I constantly fight against her notion that I’m punishing myself by resisting a full course of treatment. And the idler I am, the more time I spend dwelling, and the more correct Maggie becomes.