Finis

Last week I cleaned out the library study carrel with its dim north-facing window overlooking an uninspired set of campus buildings and returned the key to the professor who had kindly loaned it to me for more years than he probably expected. I guess I should shutter this little blog-space too, but I'm reluctant to because I don't want it to foretell a life outside the "writing room"; that is, a life without writing. I hope that I can continue to include writing in my life, just in a less angsty way. Unfortunately, this dissertation started to feel like it wasn't part of my real life, that it was something I needed to get through in order to start my real life. And then it started to feel like a dead end. It didn't help that I had decided that being an English professor wasn't the best fit for me for a multitude of reasons. Was it all for nothing, then? "You'll always be a PhD," someone I barely knew told me once, of her own non-academic trajectory. "No one can take that away from you."

So in hopes of a more integrated life, from now on I'll add content—writing-related or otherwise—at my everything-except-the-dissertation blog, Flossie at Home. There will be other writing rooms, I hope—but just with more of a view than this one.