“I have measured out my life with coffee spoons”

In a previous post I had mentioned that I haven’t changed the desktop background on my laptop in over 6 years. Well, today I finally changed it.

My lovely friend Emily runs a feature on her blog each week called “Illustrating Democracy.” Every Thursday her readers post suggestions for a theme and she then posts her interpretation of that theme as an illustration. This week she posted an illustration to accompany T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” one of my favourite poems. And the illustration includes a coffee cup with a spoon in it to reflect my favourite line: “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.”

In two weeks I have to write my major field exam on 20th century British and Irish Literature. I’m a little nervous about it but I am doing alright. What I need is to constantly renew my motivation, to remind myself every day that I am doing this because I love the material, and to remember that it is so much more to me than just a hoop I have to jump through. And having J. Alfred Prufrock looking back at me every day is exactly what I need to accomplish that.