monday bullets of anxiety

• It-changed-my-life books -- I’m still looking. What I find disappointing is that I really did think I enjoyed what I read. Still enjoy, I mean. Sometime last semester, however, I now see that I was gradually drifting farther from what I enjoyed the most, which I can’t, at present, fully understand. Sure, I wrote seminar papers that were of interest to me, but finding works that I loved were so few. What, how, and why that changed suddenly occurred is a loss. On the one hand, I thought that I just wasn’t “excited” about the discussions in class, nothing that really knocked me down. On the other hand -- maybe on a positive note – is that maybe I’m just outgrowing old interests and developing new ones?
• In the midst of writing a paper last semester, I actually did hear my voice, my opinion and felt comfortable about laying it out in the open.
• In the course of reading and writing papers, I’ve noticed a lot of dated material, dated arguments I’ve used. Sure, at first I got an introduction to theoretical schools of thought and performed “readings,” but now feel so largely uninspired.
• I felt incredibly displaced today when I was in a room full of Early Modern/Renaissance students. That is to say sometimes I’m inclined to construct a “grad student template,” self-disciplined students who are extremely focused about their ideas and choices (I call them born grad students -- strike that, I mean students who have always known they wanted to be professors). This template that I compare myself to obviously questions my own academic identity (of lack thereof). So now I am unmistakenly loopy.
• Must pick primary text to work on!