May 2022 — Letter to Readers

Dusty archives, dreams, and going your own way

Photo by Wesley Tingey on Unsplash

I haven’t talked a great deal about my past, here on Medium. For the most part, when I do talk about it, it is usually because the piece is personal and the past is relevant to the topic I am talking about.

Even then, most of what I share is episodic in nature — as the reader, you get a story. You don’t get the story. And that’s okay; we don’t need to share our histories with each other in order to connect. There’s plenty of joy (and trouble) in the present moment to serve as the foundation for meaningful author/reader communication. No need to dig.

But every now and again my history becomes important for what I want to talk about in the moment, which is where I am today.

Back in 2015 I started attending a doctoral program in California. I won’t share where — it’s not relevant. If you know, you know. But my story is very similar to the story of many doctoral candidates; I arrived and found myself plunged into an administrative, political, spiritual, and physical mess.

From the first day I was overloaded with work. The problem is that it wasn’t the work that was crushing; it only seemed that way. On closer examination the workload seemed rather mild, so it was clear that something else was going on. It took a while…