on gettin it done

Coming back to Ithaca and really (really!) trying to launch this last leg of my Phd, I am looking in every nook and cranny for a little inspiration/motivation. So, I just changed my desktop wall paper from a beautiful scene of the Peruvian mountains to a picture of this chair. Now, while I am currently partial to orange and am a sucker for good design, I would never say the chair comes anywhere close to the beautify of the landscape it replaced. The chair represents something else - just getting it done.

You see I found this chair over 4 years ago in a resale shop in Chicago - back when my trailer rennovation was still just a dream. The Crate & Barrel chair was in great condition and a crazy lot less than CB price. However it was covered in a rather unforunate washed out pastel patterned fabric with a couple of fairly obvious stains. Being the perfectionist idealist wanna-be crafty hipster type that I often am, all I could see was a fantastic DIY opportunity. I bought the chair and stuck it in the uhaul trailer for our eastward journey.

Well, of course I over estimated / over idealized things a bit. My mother and I did an incredible amount of work on the house in a very short 2 week period. We found the snazzy orange fabric before classes started. I was more confident thatn ever that the finished product was going to look great in my living room. But, alas, the DIY reupholestery project never really got off the ground. Sometime in my first semester of year one, I got a how-to video out of the public library and managed to remove two panels of fabric from the back and side of the chair. After that, the lightly soiled, naked-backed chair spent 3.5 years sitting in the corner of my Ithaca bedroom. More than once the thought of sending it to a professional upholesterer crossed my mind - but I always pushed it aside as too expensive and not as personally gratifying/skills building as the DIY route.

When I moved back into my trailer about a month ago, there was the chair sitting in the corner. I found myself staring at it as I laid in bed trying to get to sleep or when i got up in the morning. It bothered me....a lot. As I looked ahead to a crazy year spent finishing the single biggest project I've ever undertaken, I couldn't stand to have this monument to unfulfilled idealist intentions being in the same room where I was going to dream/ have nightmares about moving on from my Phd. So a week ago, I did it - I picked up the phone book, found the name of an upholsterer, made a call or two - and the next thing I knew a lovely mother of three with a relatively economically-priced home-based reupholstery business drove by in her blue minivan and whisked the chair away. Yesterday, it came back,looking exactly as I hoped it would 4+ years ago when I stood in that second-hand store in the Windy City.

It got done. I didn't do it myself. Rather I finally recognized that I really needed some help and that sometimes help is more than worth the money/death of ideals/humility/not getting to be known as the DIY-cool kid that it costs. There is a pretty obvious life lesson here for a procrastinating perfectionist idealist as she prepares to finish her PhD. In the days and months (but God willing NOT years!) ahead I am going to have to re-evaluate the motives behind my plans and intentions. I am going to have to ask for a lot of help from a lot of people with skills in my areas of need (FYI-I am including the americano-making baristas at Gimmee Coffee and Mandible Cafe in this category). I am going to have to pay some costs that I'd rather not pay.... but all with the hope that the final product will be timely, relevant, of excellent quality.... and testimony to the value of fostering and sustaining community (It takes a village, right?).

On that note, better stop telling long-winded stories, and better start getting it done on my data analysis plan. I don't think there are too many consulting disseratation writers out there - at least none who I could afford on my graduate stipend. Ideal or not, the actual writing of a PhD dissertation is a definite DIY project.