Thursday, August 04, 2005
I'm going to start work on the grant.
This is what I tell myself every night. I'm writing a proposal to go to Uganda this winter to study evangelical organizations involved in AIDS education. I started this way back last winter, but couldn't get everything together in time for the spring grant deadline. So, I'll be cobbling funds together this fall, but my going remains a big "if" depending on whether the school approves my proposal. Especially if I can't convince myself to even start working on it again.
The major problem is friend Fear and his buddies Self-Doubt & Inertia. Well, Inertia isn't a buddy so much as a tagalong. I wonder where this comes from, this fear which quite frankly impresses me with its persistence & scope. I'm aware that others experience it - some more than me, some less - but some people don't seem to feel it at all.
Is it something we pick up over a lifetime of small traumas? Or is it genetic, like ear hair? Or is is the tendency that's inherited, like alcoholism? Can we trace the fear over the generations? Do a pedigree with squares and circles (dark shading would distinguish those individuals with The Fear, of course.) Then I wonder if sometimes there's a reversion-to-wildtype (or is fear the wildtype?) and two fearful individuals bear a sunny, fear-free child. Or vice versa.
Of course, my own personal fear isn't so bad compared to the fear of dying of AIDS, the fear of being murdered by Janjawid militias, the fear of starving to death if the crops keep dying. However, thinking of these things does little to minimize my fear, but instead makes me want to go into the bathroom and beat my head against the bathtub wall just a little bit.
AHHHHHH so self-absorbed. It's OK, it is my blog. Let us all bask in me.
This is what I tell myself every night. I'm writing a proposal to go to Uganda this winter to study evangelical organizations involved in AIDS education. I started this way back last winter, but couldn't get everything together in time for the spring grant deadline. So, I'll be cobbling funds together this fall, but my going remains a big "if" depending on whether the school approves my proposal. Especially if I can't convince myself to even start working on it again.
The major problem is friend Fear and his buddies Self-Doubt & Inertia. Well, Inertia isn't a buddy so much as a tagalong. I wonder where this comes from, this fear which quite frankly impresses me with its persistence & scope. I'm aware that others experience it - some more than me, some less - but some people don't seem to feel it at all.
Is it something we pick up over a lifetime of small traumas? Or is it genetic, like ear hair? Or is is the tendency that's inherited, like alcoholism? Can we trace the fear over the generations? Do a pedigree with squares and circles (dark shading would distinguish those individuals with The Fear, of course.) Then I wonder if sometimes there's a reversion-to-wildtype (or is fear the wildtype?) and two fearful individuals bear a sunny, fear-free child. Or vice versa.
Of course, my own personal fear isn't so bad compared to the fear of dying of AIDS, the fear of being murdered by Janjawid militias, the fear of starving to death if the crops keep dying. However, thinking of these things does little to minimize my fear, but instead makes me want to go into the bathroom and beat my head against the bathtub wall just a little bit.
AHHHHHH so self-absorbed. It's OK, it is my blog. Let us all bask in me.
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