Your post reminds me too of some of the anusara yoga philosophy I’ve been learning over the past few weeks in my yoga immersion. How dissatisfaction, fear, anger, boredom are all dust on the heart. But in order to clean the dust off our heart, we have to move closer to the dust. If we push away the dust, we also push away our heart, because the dust is *on* our heart.

Another anusara yoga philosophy idea is that our nature is intrinsically good, but we are so free, we can choose to be out of alignment. So we have to practice realigning over and over so we can experience the *joy* of being in good alignment. Kind of sounds like practicing the skill of joy!

I guess you could say that practicing joy sounds cheesy, but why do we think it isn’t cheesy to practice dissatisfaction or frustration? My experience is that the larger the project, the more we are forced to confront our own strengths and weaknesses and hopes and fears. And to confront our own practice of dissatisfaction or frustration. The more need there is for us to mobilize the absolute best in us to bring it out into the world. And the greater the potential is for transformation. Even when feel like you’ve been grinding it out for-eh-vah.

Basically, I think it’s really awesome that you are using your thesis to examine your own work habits on the deepest level.