Blocker Building

(This is Stop #9 in the Texas A&M Building Writing Tour, my attempt to motivate myself on my dissertation by writing in every campus building before I graduate.)  

This week’s writing session in Blocker was all about accountability. Last week, I confessed to my writing group that I’d been in rather a rut with my writing and research. I had been so focused on getting my proposal and IRB documents approved, that I didn’t know what to do with myself after those were done. I’ve been piddling around, working a little on one thing, then a little on another, with no plan whatsoever. My writing streak now stands at 205 days, but half of my recent sessions have been completely useless. 

So, when a new friend from my writing group offered his services as an accountability partner, how could I refuse? Refusal would prove that I like whining about being completely unproductive, but am unwilling to do anything about it. 

So, we scheduled a meeting, showed up, and talked through my overwhelming pile of articles/projects/tasks. We decided a reasonable goal would be to write at least 2 hours per day, alternating days between my systematic review article and my mixed methods research study. He suggested taking weekends off, but I told him I was too immature and untrustworthy for that—taking a weekend off would derail me completely.

On Monday, I am supposed to email him my writing log, and tell him I completed several short but important dissertation-related tasks. If I don’t do them, or if I fail to write, I must confess. When I think of an accountability partner, I think of “tough love”—someone who is willing to chew me out and tell me to get my act together. However, I suspect that’s just what I will not get from Charles—if I don’t follow through on my writing commitments, he will probably say, “good job”, ask politely what happened, and trust that my own sense of shame will kick in and get me back on track. 

After our planning session, we wrote for 39 minutes in the first floor computer lab. For my photo, I considered the drink table by the entrance. (Drinks are not allowed, so everyone leaves them on a table, and picks them up when they leave. I put a green sticky note on my bottle, so I wouldn’t accidentally grab the wrong one. Apparently no one else worried about this, as I saw no other marked bottles). 

But no, I couldn’t waste my one photograph on a drink table. I had to photograph the lab itself, with my accountability partner Charles included for no extra charge. 

For the record, the Blocker building was the impetus behind my original building-writing goal, which was to finish my dissertation before A&M finished any new buildings. If you discover you are unlikely to reach a goal, it is always wise to forget the original goal, well before you fail to reach it, and replace it with a more reasonable goal…exactly what I’ve done.