Welcome to the month of July and welcome back to Digging Deeper with Emma! This blog has been dormant for almost 7 Years. But even before that, this blog had many lives. When I was in my last years of High School, I used this blog to process my past and begin to articulate who I was and what I wanted to do. After that, I started my first year of college and things became so busy that my posts faded out. I revived the blog a second time just after I had changed my major to English literature and discovered my passion for literary analysis. This led to several posts about things I noticed in the books I was reading at the time and even a few cases of sharing poems that I had written. Now that I am a 27-year-old Ph.D. student, I want to revive this blog once again. I wish I could say that I was thinking about this blog over the past few years. But to be honest, it slipped to the back of my mind in the midst of my efforts to graduate from college, write my thesis, complete my master's degree, and then write my M.A. thesis (Lots of college and theses, essentially). Earlier this spring, I realized a few things about writing that I had not considered before now:
1. Informal journaling is a great way to open up my mind and get some ideas down
This past spring, I needed to write a proposal for my Ph.D. While I have enjoyed the research and exploration, attempting to put together a solid pitch for my ideas was much more difficult than I expected. In some cases, I lost faith in my writing ability altogether. I worried that I just could not write anymore. But writing out my thoughts in my Bible journal and freewriting ideas for my project helped remind me that I am still quite capable of piecing ideas together and that writing ideas down without worrying about things like formality could help me to develop my writing skills and start to get my dissertation ideas down on paper. Even writing about something completely separate from my research is still writing and is still helpful for me and potentially interesting for others.
2. I still need a place to express my creativity and process my thoughts
While my blog has changed throughout the years I have kept it, one thing that has remained the same is the fact that I enjoy writing and creating something new. I wish, at times that I had an idea for the great American novel, but at least for the time being, characters and scenes do not come to mind and the themes I want to address are often best discussed by looking at the way it shows up in existing media. While I may still write that novel someday, right now the best way for me to express my creativity is to forge new arguments and insights and I am eager to continue doing that.
3. Things are busy now, but they will always be busy
I also realized that I need to make time for the things that are important to me. Every semester I have had since college started has been harder and busier than the one before it. I thought the semester where I took 4 graduate classes at once would be the busiest I ever got (I don't recommend taking 4 classes at once, especially if you enjoy sleeping every night) but the next semester when I was researching my M.A. Thesis, taking a class, teaching a high school class, and TA-ing two subgroups in a larger lecture class, I definitely still felt quite busy. In my Ph.D. program, coursework was a busy time for me, but Comprehensive exams offered their own challenges, and writing my proposal posed even more challenges. Now that I am writing my dissertation, I am certainly busy, but I think it is important for me to foster habits that will help me to write this book-long scholarly project. I have learned that you will always be busy, but if something is important for you, you can make space for it if you want it to happen. I have realized as the Spring has gone on that I genuinely want this blog to happen and I am happy to start!
With all this said, I am so excited to welcome you back to my blog! While the older versions of this blog were a bit random in their content, I thought this blog would work even better if I introduced 3 reoccurring series and a standard schedule for them:
1. Monday Musings
This series will be the most random in its selection but will generally focus on recent things I have learned in my life or general thoughts on specific academic topics
2. Well-Read Wednesdays
On this day, I will discuss the things I have noticed in the books that I have read and specific discussions about what makes these texts interesting. In a way, these will function as a review, but I generally would like to focus on the books I consider moving or transformative instead of a more negative focus on bad books.
3. Filmday Fridays
For this series, I intend to discuss different books and movie series that I appreciate for different reasons or that I have thoughts I would like to share. I am starting with a longer series analyzing the Simpsons on a Season-by-Season basis, but I have many other potential post ideas that I would like to explore after that as well.
I am so excited to get started with this blog and I will see you tomorrow for the first Filmday Friday!
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