Huh.

I had a bit of a thought last night.

I'm not going to go into all the really crappiness that was last week. Let's just say that I found out for the first time in my academic career that when all of my professors told me I could write... they lied. When people told me that I had a shot at finishing this degree... they lied. So I spent last week with the head of the department telling me how disappointing I was and how much he didn't expect me to finish. To my face. Repeatedly. Craptastic Week.

(and yes, that was not going into the details...)

But here was my thought last night. I really have a hard time (possibly I'm completely unable) to do things purely for myself. I kind of thought that I was going to school for myself, but now that it has been made clear to me (and why the heck didn't anyone tell me sooner?) that my papers are the kind that professors don't like to read, it's really hard to motivate myself to do them. Doing the readings so I can participate in class is still okay, no one's yet told me I can't speak, but trying to write knowing that it's painful for others to read is difficult.

Perhaps in that way this blog is the most for-me thing that I do, not really expecting anyone to read, just writing... but at the same time, there's a lot that I don't write about because it's a public forum and people don't need to be reading that, and on the flip side, sometimes I put information out there because I feel like maybe someone else might be in the same situation.

Even with knitting- a lot of it I do to keep myself sane by distracting my mind from things and keeping my hands busy, but on the other hand, I can't stay interested if I'm knitting something for me. The last pair of socks I did and the current pair of sock I'm doing are for me because I'm still trying to get used to sock yarn which is thinner and lighter than the yarn I've used before. I wouldn't want to give anybody anything that was terrible.

Don't get me wrong, a lot of things that I do have selfish purposes along with good ones- Soldiers' Angels helps me at least as much as it helps the soldiers I write to, for example- but I don't know how to do something purely for me.

This is the problem that I'm running into with my thesis, which is the impetus for this whole pathetic line of thought. Because it has been made abundantly clear to me that a. I'm not cut out for this type of work (constructive criticism works much better for me than insults and humiliation), b. I'm not expected to succeed and c. getting me to succeed is going to take a lot of work on the part of other people other than me, and it won't be enjoyable for them. So now I have to make the decision that I want to write a Master's Thesis because I want to. Because I want the degree. And it's really hard.