The Journey

I'm in the middle of writing my Master's thesis on the music of nomadic cultures. Today's been a hard day because after months of work, I've realized that I took a wrong turn somewhere and am heading the wrong direction from where my subject was originally supposed to take me. That means I've spent hundreds of hours reading and reviewing articles that will have little influence on my writing. And what really makes my brain shut down is that I have a major deadline THIS Friday. So, I'll be honest, I've spent a lot of time sleeping today. Much like your computer does when it doesn't want to do what you've asked of it.

When I finally mustered the courage to return to my desk, I found a little book about Ethnography ("writing about cultures") that gave me some encouragement. I had to share this with you because it so obviously reminded me not only where I'm at in my writing, but where we're all at in life. So, I'm going to give a few quotes and insert the obvious…. I open the book and the first thing it talks about is that ethnography [LIFE] is like a journey with many paths. The book claims its purpose to be "to enable other researchers [SOJOURNERS] to enjoy their journeys and to reach their destinations." Two sentences later it says, "Ironically, reaching a destination in ethnography [LIFE] often means taking false paths, coming up against dead ends or detours, and sometimes losing the way altogether."

Hmmm…that sounds familiar. What encourages me about these little statements is not that they give me some revolutionary idea, but they remind me that it's going to be okay.

With that, I'll take a deep breath, hit reboot on my brain, and return to work. …And the journey.