He leaves me rattling: the difference between can’t and won’t. He asks me specifically, why not this, why not finish your dissertation? I volunteer the connection to my father, my propensity to abandon things I’ve started. He circles back again: can’t or won’t? He tells me of how he too didn’t finish his dissertation at first but found something that pushed him on, an approach, a field, but he finished and was outraged when he was questioned during his orals. He points out it might never be too late. And I find it difficult to wrap my mind around it, it’s been well over seven years, the field has changed. Besides I am this now, their lives depend on me being this now. He leaves me with can’t or won’t, sounds to me like you’re just bored.