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Friday guest blog--Åsa--Hallelujah
November 22, 2019
dylans13

Friday guest blog--Åsa--Hallelujah

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I'm on my way back home after a work trip in and around Rome. We wrapped up yesterday afternoon and the jolly fellas heading to London, the Spaniard and the man residing in Paris, promptly hopped on their flights and were home last night. When you live in northern Sweden, Europe is a lot further away than when you live right smack in the middle of it.

Anyways, I was pondering ideas for this week’s Teddy post. I always am, more or less. The process goes like this: I start out early week with airy and vague thoughts and ideas, then I narrow it down, throw it all out, get desperate. Ask Dylan if he can’t post something instead. Realize it’s Friday, write something. Think I’ll write something better and more sustainability related next week. Repeat. I have been given good tips and ideas on what to write about, but I never have time to do the research. So I have to go with what’s already in my head and fingers.

What’s in my head right now is that Dylan successfully defended his dissertation yesterday. In the eleventh hour, for sure. During this Italy trip we’ve been given an agenda every day, with times and topics (much like any agenda) but the scheduled times have had very little correlation with the actual time of these events. It felt like South America all over again, where I always felt like if you asked for a time, they’d give you one, just cause that’s what you asked for. But no one ever intended to do anything at that specific time.

- What time are we meeting this afternoon?
- I don’t know, sometime after lunch. Maybe.
- Yeah but what time?
- How about…. 2 o’clock?
- Great, see you then!
- See you, bye!

I’m happy because I have a time to plan my day around and they are happy because they managed to give me what I wanted, a number, and now I’m quiet. Needless to say, we don’t meet at 2 o’clock.

On Wednesday, our agenda called for lunch at noon. It was after 1:30 when we headed for the restaurant. There had been plenty of coffee and treats so nobody was starving and none of the Italians seemed at all aware of the time. Whereas the Swede and the Englishmen couldn’t help ourselves, almost compulsively, to point it out. But in the end, we were served a delicious meal and all was good.

(You’re waiting for the connection? here it comes)
Dylan’s dissertation process has been something like that. An Italian agenda with a deadline like the horizon on a cloudy day. You know it’s there but you can’t see it. Until finally, only a few months ago, the clouds were swept away and the horizon suddenly five feet in front of him. But he did it. I am proud of him and I am proud of myself. If his dissertation was a book to be published and actually red by people the first page would read

To my wife, for not losing her shit.

He messaged me after the defense yesterday, and then he sent me a video (of himself saying good morning to the kids, for me to forward to my mom since she doesn’t have messenger). I woke up at 2 am and saw the message and that there was an attached video, and fell back asleep and dreamed that I watched the video and it was of Dylan in a white robe singing in front of a gospel choir praising Jesus that he had finally finished his dissertation. So maybe I am losing it a little bit.

But I will leave you with the image of Dylan singing gospel in a white robe. Hopefully that puts a smile on your face.

Have a great weekend.