Hullabaloo

My masters thesis is about solitude, well, solitude and theology. At times I wonder what I was thinking. At other times I get little lightbulb moments and scribble them down on scraps of paper I'll never find again. In addition to this I am doing epic discernment and transition sorts of things in preparation for Getting a Job next year and dipping into my three small but ever-present jobs. So mostly my brain is quite fluffy by the end of each day and hence my blogging is less common.
I will, however, share today's minor epiphany: so I'm reading feminist theology about how we should all be more relational because as women we know, don't we sisters, that we're essentially relational and really can't be proper humans without constant company. This strikes me as odd since surely a goal for women is to have a sense of self - yes, in order to be in community, but still. And it's a little ironic, if the above is true, that pretty much all the mothers and wives I know would give their right arm for a little solitude. So I have to find a way to make these points while using words like ontological and hypostasis. Wish me well.
As well as reading theological tomes, I'm reading around the topic online and in memoir and literature (in as much as I have time for). This evening I'm dipping into the aptly titled Alone by Richard E. Byrd, published in 1938. Kindle tells me I'm 3% into the book. (Can I just say, I intensely dislike reading books on electronic devices, it's just that sometimes when they're $3 I do occasionally cave in. I'm not sure why I'm defending myself, but at least I'm doing it in a tiny font.)
It appears to be a sort of into-the-woods-to-live-deliberately sort of book, except that in this case the woods are a science station in Antarctica. He writes:
We are caught up in the winds that blow every which way and in the hullabaloo the thinking man is driven to ponder where he is being blown and to long desperately for some quiet place where he can reason undisturbed and take inventory.
and
It has always taken me longer than the average person to think things out.
Me too, Richard, me too.