Status report.

I know someone with a strong fear of coercion. It has to do with her relationship with her father growing up in which she felt unable to counter his demands. As a result, anything that resembles an imperative, is resisted--even something like "Have fun!" What I'm wondering is if I am similar with my hatred of constraints, even those voluntarily taken on to achieve some end I desire.

Faced with the actual constraint, what I feel is sad like a victim, a fear of being unable to successfully comply no matter how hard I try, and a resulting failure that confirms something horrible about myself that previously I just suspected.

I just finished grading a pile of exams which brought up similar feelings. I had no choice but to do so and yet the (predominantly low) grades I was giving weren't objectively fair no matter how hard I'd try, and perhaps the whole educational enterprise in which I'm engaged is at best futile and at worst harmful (though someone else might be inflicting worse harm were I to quit.) Luckily, the effort involved doesn't also make me feel incompetent, so unlike writing, I am assured of making it through each semester.

It feels much better (stronger, less victim-like) to rebel and I am thus taking next semester off. How much better it will also feel, I imagine, to stop all this writing foolishness, but I seem to always end up returning to it eventually. It feels like the only thing of real value I could do, despite the contrary feeling that nothing of that nature has any ultimate value, and the subsequent conclusion that I have no value. I suppose a more rational conclusion is that I am unable to tell what does and does not have value and it makes just as much sense to believe that refusing to write has value.

In the end, my dilemma is whether navigating the primarily unpleasant feelings this writing project evokes is an exercise in masochism or a journey toward some kind of achievement. And only by taking the time and making the effort could I possibly reach an answer.