Boots up the backside

I haven't blogged in a couple of days; and I wasn't too keen to start another post, but I'm determined to keep this thing going even if it's only for me, both to chart my thoughts and also to practise my writing. I've also got a couple of posts up my sleeve which I really want to get down, but holding back on those seems to keep me writing some others in the meantime. I've been feeling pretty down, and when that happens I find myself turning in on myself, which then makes those original emotions worse because I feel cut off and lonesome. There are things going on at home which churn up my heart, and my head. And this time of year, July and August, are always going to be difficult because it was when Mummy was at her most ill.

I went to see my tutor on Tuesday, the first time since I had my funding, so it was nice to see him and to chat about the larger future, rather than simply the next couple of months. He never seems to be flustered, and I cannot imagine him getting into a flap over anything; that is a trait that I certainly admire, and which is about as far off my own personality as one can be. He also has a canny way of picking up one's own anxieties and suggesting ways to manage them. Neither me nor my work has been at its best for the last couple of months. Although I'm sure that that manifests itself in many aspects of my life, in this meeting it was clear that I had been floundering rather in the space of dissertation planning - my tutor gently reminded me that 20,000 words can be filled in a not altogether difficult manner, and saying things to myself about 'having' to include certain plays, or worrying that I don't have enough knowledge of the social and civic history of 1590s London, is the surefire way of going mad.

The name of the game here is focus. I mustn't put pressure on myself to answer every question possible, and I must be careful in the asking of those questions because they can be framed in such a way that the answers that follow are ones which utilise my own, perhaps inadequate, but nonetheless existing literary skills. I don't need to run headlong into the complexities of London history, and give myself the mammoth task of trying to explain which instances of urban violence, social instability, or population explosion might be seen in the historical framework of some of Shakespeare's plays. Rather, I can approach the plays, and see how they reveal and interpret concepts of the city; ask how as a playwright Shakespeare transformed urban settings into theatrical settings and vice versa; and ask how those settings were constructed for specific kinds of social interaction (with apologies to Jean E. Howard). Start with the plays! How sensible.

Anyway, I feel a lot better today having had a good sleep - which does always help although it seems too obvious - plus P and I had an afternoon of watching The West Wing and that always makes me feel much more confident in taking on the world! Rather cheesy, but the episode where Jed Bartlett's secretary dies, and he rails at God in the Cathedral, and the tropical storm is blowing its way over the White House - that episode in all its American schmaltziness gave me a good boot up the backside, so here I am, and here I go off to have a bloody good look at those plays---