This week, I gave my advisor the preliminary draft of my dissertation proposal. My first paint-by-number project is also nearly finished. I’ve been working on these two activities in parallel as what I’m thinking of as complementary practices based on some advice I heard from Dr. Karen Kelsky. So much is unspecified in the world of academia and research — it makes us free to inquire, but also subject to tremendous precarity. We are building the tightrope while walking on it. It’s pleasant and calming to do something creative and visibly productive within articulated constraints.

How is it? A few blank areas yet, a bit too thin here and there so I know I’ll need to go over it again, with an overall composition that’s not quite as compelling as one would hope. Not yet, anyway. But I’m satisfied. Pleased. It’s blobby in spots, but I like it that way. I refuse to be a perfectionist. Good. Also good enough so far. That’s how the proposal is — but yanno, I feel the same way about the painting.