Courage (Ulysses) - my brush with the heroic

I just took a look at a project that I've been working on for years. I mean that literally. It's been years. I've shared the work in a bunch of different professional forums, but the ultimate goal is to get it out there a paper in a peer reviewed journal. I tried once with an earlier version of the project, but it was very quickly killed by the editorial board of the journal I selected. I was aiming high so it didn't come as a total surprise. I revised the paper and made it much better this time. I've gotten additional input, reworked the worded over and over again, obsessed over the figures, and whittled the paper down to the main point that I want to deliver. It's just been sitting in my computer for a year or so. I haven't had the courage to push it back into the gauntlet of peer review. I thought there was just enough hard work left that I couldn't find the time to do it. 

There isn't that much work left. I just read it and it's essentially finished. I took out one awkward section that overstates the conclusions of some data. The rest of it is solid. That one section that I edited has been the difficult transition for me over the course of this entire project. The data are clear. The primary interpretation is clear, it's that transition from describing data to interpreting data that has been hard. I need to say enough without making claims that go what the data can support. I think I'm there. Now it's time for the really hard part. Now it's time for the part that requires courage. 

Submitting a paper for peer review is scary. You're exposing yourself to a possible failure. Facing the possibility of failure requires courage. Picking up a book as imposing as Ulysses takes courage. Hard books are hard to pick up but much easier to put down. They can be very rewarding reading experiences, but they can also be dry, boring, and just plain unpleasant to read. Ulysses is not dry and boring. It's actually much more engaging and entertaining than I anticipated. It's just not an easy book to pick up at the end of the day. The Name of the Wind was easy to pick up as I was rounding into the cool down phase of my day. It was a fun romp before heading to bed. The thought of Ulysses makes me spend more time watching TV or doing something on my phone. Reading a few virtual pages of The Redbreast is an easier bite for me to chew even though that book is vastly inferior to Joyce. It's all plot and things happening and suspense. I don't need to spend time in Bloom's head. I just get to ride along with a story for twenty minutes or so. 

Choosing to take on Joyce has made another failure very likely. I've read 19 books this year. My goal was 30. At my current pace, it will take me the rest of the year to finish Ulysses. I will finish The Redbreast in the not too distant future. If I finish both of those books, I'm at 21. Finishing a book that I checked out of the library, To Have or To Be, would get me to 22 (I would still only have reduced my to be read pile by 20). I was being ambitious with 30. I knew that I had lots of less than quick reads on my shelf. I will be ok with 22 for the year if Ulysses is one of those 22 books. I've had that book for a long time. I've been putting if off until some time in the future. Just like running a marathon, I realized that some day needs to be today at some point. Making it through a book that has scared me off year after year is a bigger accomplishment than just reading some arbitrary number of books. Even if it means that Book Shelf Zero will be that much further into the future. I need to get through these scary books eventually. I might as well check one off now.