I think it may be running in the cold morning air that's doing that to my throat. Karina suggested trying to breathe through my nose instead, and that does seem to keep my throat from burning. However, I can't seem to get enough air that way, and my heart starts racing, and I start getting dizzy. So I switched to mostly breathing through my mouth again, and sure enough, my throat started to burn. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. I'll just have to work on getting in more air through my nose. Maybe I could get my nostrils enlarged...
It felt harder today, of course. Second day is ALWAYS worse than the first. Muscles hurt, you're not as pumped up with new-minted resolutions, etc. Third day is generally even worse, and then, if I remember correctly, it does start to get better. At this point, my biggest problem is that it feels like I'm a wuss, I've always been a wuss, and I'll always be a wuss. I think I'm never going to feel any better than this. I'll never be a size 6 again. I'll never be able to run up three flights of stairs. I'll never look okay naked. I'll always be a big tub of lard...
Okay okay -- I don't really believe any of that...but I thought you should hear what the little voices in my head are whispering sometimes.
If I let myself think about it, I'd probably hear similar voices about this Ph.D. (You all did catch the update yesterday, yes? I got in!) A part of me is jumping up and down for joy (not literally -- still catching my breath from running). This feels really right...it feels like exactly the correct thing to do for the next stage in my writing/teaching/etc. I really like the professors I've met so far, and my soon-to-be-colleagues in the program. I think I could learn a lot here. And for all its sometimes startling provinciality, Utah is very very beautiful. A good place to write.
But here are the little voices:
- You were wait-listed. You don't really belong here. You're not as
good as a real student. Everyone knows. They'll laugh at you behind your
back.
- You write smut. People know you write smut. Who's going to take you
seriously?
- You're as good as you're ever going to get. It's good enough to get
you published -- just live with it. You will never be great.
- Some of the people at Mills hated you. It'll happen again here.
- You aren't going to be able to hack the hard-core academic stuff. Oh,
you did fine when you were AUDITING Kathryn's class -- but what the heck
does that mean? You didn't even write a paper. So you bullshit well in
class -- big deal. You didn't even read Kathryn's own essay because it
was TOO HARD and you told yourself you were too busy.
- So you need a prop to keep you writing now? You need classes? Yeah, maybe you do, you pansy-ass. When was the last time you wrote a story without some outside force shoving you to do it? Last October -- that's bull -- you needed to write something for AE. Try again. Last summer. Yeah, that's right. Almost a YEAR ago. Yeah, go hide in an academic program. Then you won't have to admit that all your talk of being a working writer is just nonsense. That you read books to keep from writing. That you write journal entries to keep from writing. That you do class prep to keep from writing. That you scrub your kitchen floor to keep from writing...
I'm gonna go make tea and then write an editorial. :-)