3 o'clock in the morning

I started this blog (of which I am the only reader) because so many of my friends have complained that they hardly know me since I started graduate school in 1999. I did not plan to take 8 years off from friendships, but I have been driven to complete my PhD. It's as if I had to do this work in order to finish becoming myself, as crazy as that sounds. Now I'm using this blog to complete the process, return to the writer self that most of my friends loved so much. I also have not spent 8 years on the PhD. I've earned one masters degree in nursing to become an ARNP, and have almost completed a second masters degree in health informatics.

Here are some common things about me. One of my best teachers ever told me that this every-day-ness is what makes us real.

At 2:52 I was awakened by the puppy scratching my back as she stretched in her sleep. I was immediately fully awake, no chance of drifting back to sleep. My sleep is erratic as a general rule, but recently much more so. Sleeping pills make me drunk for a couple of days after I take them, without the fun of having a drink with friends. I don't take those unless I'm very sleep deprived, cranky and paranoid.

Since I have much work to do on my dissertation, paper submissions to conferences & journals, and keeping up on clinical reading, I've decided to make insomnia work for me. Earlier this week, I got up and reviewed genre analysis. I reviewed Swales, 1990, and some very recent articles to make sure I haven't gone out of date since I last reviewed genre theory. I think this review and re-review is part of what has slowed me down. Another drag on my progress is this inner notion that I have to "feel" like a "Doctah" before I want to become one. This is prolly making me go in circles. I found I'm still pretty much up to date, but saw how to use the genre analysis vocabulary more effectively.

This morning, I'm revising a paper for submission to the ITHC2007. I was in Korea for NI2006 to present the first paper based on my research last spring. It was exciting and very frightening. I loved it. I learned to love "brown rice tea," and I still drink it though it's hard to find the Korean style here. I drink an organic Japanese Genmaicha from Choice Organic Teas. To my shame it is not fair trade.

A second paper based on my research was accepted as a poster (not a full paper) for MedInfo2007. AMIA2007 took a pass on both the first and second papers. International reviewers seem to understand my work and appreciate it more than American informatics venues. My adviser tells me that I'm free to submit the full paper again to another conference, even if I present the poster at MedInfo. MedInfo is in Australia this year, followed by ITHC. I've always dreamed of going to Australia, so this trip will be one of those "trips of a lifetime." I hope. I've ordered lots of books of all kinds on Australia both as purchases from Amazon and from the library.

I'd never dreamed of going to Paris, and it's now my favorite city on the planet. If I ever have a chance to live there, I'm going to do it. However, I went to Paris with great trepidation, expecting the French to hate me because I am a dirty American. Somehow, I loved the city the minute I got off the plane at Charles de Gaulle airport. Since I've been thinking about the dreamtime and the outback for most of my life, I hope I love it as much as France. I cried the day I read that the last dreamtime shaman had no apprentice. I worried the world would stop when he died.