If you’ve read the tags, you figured it out already, congrats. This thesis represents six years of sweat, tears, and blood (especially if you count the accident downtime).
I had the choice of whether to embargo my thesis, and I chose not to. This was a decision that I made after much hemming and hawing, but I decided that I value open access more than I do tenure, since I’m not even invested in going that way anyway. Also, these ideas are free. By all means, cite me, but I’m not too worried about someone reading this document and thinking “by gum, I shall steal this” because you will have to do WAY too much work to try to make it original. Trust me, if the ideas in here were easily liftable, I’d have had a much tighter elevator pitch for other scholars / a much simpler time answering friends and family when they ask innocently about my thesis topic. That way lies madness, which is why I generally have avoided the topic.
Perhaps there is a book in here, and I have considered that possibility. I think, as a grad student, I told people that I thought there would be a book in there, and agreed with professors who encouraged me that way, because it was easier to do so and I have a congenital defect where I desperately want to please everyone in authority, especially in face-to-face situations.
But for the past while, I have also been considering the fact that I am very, very tired. Almost constantly. This also makes me irritable and very bad at interacting with other humans — or, it takes a lot of energy for me to be good at it.* Maybe I’ll write a book later; for now I’m content to cite myself in conference presentations and just let it be while I try to figure out how many spoons I need to get me through a given day.
*pretty much everyone is rusty at in-person interaction due to COVID lockdowns, and you better believe I’m taking full advantage