Attempting to Shut Off My Brain

Today was a very productive “writing” day, although no formal “writing” happened.  I realized that in order to go forward with the chapter that I’m working on I needed to go backward and think about and face the book-as-a-whole.  I’ve been avoiding facing “the book-as-a-whole.”

My first book, which emerged out of my dissertation, was a much “tighter” project, even though the shape of it in some ways looks similar to the shape of this one.  Ultimately, I had a very narrow scope for what I was trying to achieve, and so I knew where I was going pretty much from the very beginning.  Yes, there were “discoveries” throughout the process – threads that I pulled together – but ultimately, in composing each chapter, I was mapping a particular theory onto a particular literary text in order to arrive at an interpretation of what was, really, a very limited thing.  And so it wasn’t, actually, scary to look at the project as One Big Thing.  I knew what I would find when I did that.

With this book project, my process has been less deliberate and a hell of a lot messier.  Now, part of this has to do with the fact that I now understand, in a way that I did not in writing my dissertation/book what a “book” really is.  I’ve read a lot more critical books from beginning to end, for one thing, and I also have been through the process of bringing my own book to publication.  Another part of why this process has been different is because other than when I first began, during my sabbatical, I’ve had to squeeze the book into my other professional obligations piecemeal: I haven’t had the luxury of time that I had during graduate school, and I haven’t had the luxury of the kind of single-minded focus that one has during one’s graduate training.  Let me note, I’m not at all complaining about this: I think it makes my ideas richer, in some ways, that I’m not so imbedded in my original field of specialization, and I think that working in this way is actually allowing me to do more interesting work (at least I have hope that this is the case) than I did in my dissertation/book.

But because I’m trying to work on the “first” chapter, I sort of need to know where I’m going to end up in the “last” chapter, if I’m writing the book I want to write, which I don’t want merely to be a a loose collection of disparate chapters around a general idea, but really a work of theoretically oriented criticism that hangs together as a cohesive and coherent whole.

And because the project has been evolving since I first pitched the topic (having done no work on the topic prior to said pitching) in my application for sabbatical in 2009, I needed to reckon with the fact that what I’ve been writing, and the ideas that I’m most interested in throughout what I’ve been writing, don’t really match what I initially had set out to do.  I mean, there is a relationship – this isn’t a completely different book – but it’s not the book I’d initially thought I would write, and probably nobody but me could see clearly how the book I’m apparently writing has emerged from the idea that I originally had.

But so anyway, I faced that particular scary task, and I was able to a) write a paragraph in which I was able to articulate the three linked objectives of the book-as-a-whole, b) articulate – again in writing – the major theoretical apparatuses that I’m engaging in order to flesh out those objectives (and this was tricky as the theories I’m engaging wouldn’t necessarily seem like obvious choices to bring together), c) discover that I’m going to jettison one particular set of ideas, which are super-interesting to somebody, but which don’t actually fit with the objectives that I outlined that I am trying to accomplish, d) finally confront the thing that I’ve known for about two years and have been willfully ignoring: I can’t do what I’m trying to do without Motherfucking Heidegger.

And then I spent about 5 hours reading Heidegger.  Which is why I need to shut off my brain.  (Confession: I actually really dig Martin.  But it is totally possible to dig a Theory/Philosophy Boyfriend and to be afraid of him at the same time, and also to find him overwhelming once you decide you’re going to date him.  See my past relationships with Immanuel, Michel, Judith….  Oh god, and SLAVOJ!  I mean, seriously.)

But so anyway, I need to stop reading and I need to stop thinking.  And yes, I even need not to write anything else down, because frankly, I need to get another 5 or so hours in tomorrow and the next day and every weekday possible from now until the end of summer, and I can’t afford to burn myself out because I can’t shut off my brain and then lose two weeks to those shenanigans.  It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

In other, somewhat related news: the first chapter focuses primarily on a text on which I wrote my first ever published article.  It seems that, 1) this first chapter is about the exact same topic as that first ever published article, and 2) I now violently disagree with the general premise and interpretation that guide my first ever published article.  Awkward.

Also: am I only ever going to be interested in like the same three things, in general?  I mean, the literary texts change, the theories change, but at the end of the day, it seems that I keep coming back to the exact same questions, with only minor variations.

Finally: it might be another year before I’m ready to actually send this book manuscript out for review.  I think admitting that is important to the process, sort of like it was important to my dissertation process to have my adviser tell me off when I wanted to jump the gun and defend 9 months before I was actually ready to do so.  At least now I can tell myself off?  But man, it sucks not to be as close to done as I want to be.

Whew!  Ok, I feel better now.  I’m going to go have a glass (or three) of wine.

An Epiphany in the Shower about My Writing Process

So the semester is done, I am back to my Happy Place of Summertime Happiness, and all is well.  Of course, this also means that I am committed to getting back to the Writing Place of Summertime Writing, which is, in a word, exhausting.  And scary.  And maybe not quite so simple as “oh, I’ve got all this time!  Of course I shall meet my goals!”

But so I had an epiphany in the shower today.  (See title of post.)  There are many things about myself as a writer, and as a person who is able to motivate herself to write, that are great.  I am content to draft and to revise.  I outline.  I am good about editing to others’ specifications in order to get a piece out for publication.  In other words, I’m not especially a perfectionist, and I’m pretty content to put the “good” (or “good enough”) before the “perfect” (as if such a thing exists!).  I don’t labor over sentences, nor do I hold tight to sentences, or paragraphs, or even whole pieces of writing, as if they are brilliant jewels to be honored and cherished.

But what I discovered this morning, mid-shampoo, was that in spite of all of these admirable writer-qualities, I do have a problem, and it’s a problem that’s really reared its ugly head since the advent of The Dude.  The problem is that while I’m very good at all of the above, I’m not very good at keeping going even in the midst of… complications.

Here is what I do.  I come up with a plan for writing, a schedule for accomplishing things.  (This is good.)  I make deadlines for myself, and then I make a set of “real” deadlines as a back-up.  (This is also good.)  But what I also do is I try to hold myself to working from beginning to end – ish.  It’s not that I always work in a totally linear way, I don’t, but whatever the “big chunk” is – a conference paper, a chapter, an article – well, I can’t really move on from it to another piece, or into revision of it, unless I feel like it has a beginning, middle, and an end.  Or I don’t.  So the result is this, it seems: I am that person who is constantly revising her schedule when shit doesn’t get done.  And then I feel overwhelmed by the revised schedule and then I don’t write at all.  And then I have to revise the schedule again.  This hasn’t happened to me for some time, but it is the writer that I am.

Long story short: I had a schedule for getting a chapter of the book done by April (this was a third or fourth round revised schedule, let’s note).  That didn’t happen.  So rather than move on to the next thing on the “Master Schedule,” I was all, “well, I can’t do anything until I get that done!  I’ll just make an even stricter schedule for myself in order to do things in a linear-ish way!”  Needless to say, I just didn’t make any progress for the past couple of months.  (And then, as I confessed to you all, I directly blamed this on The Dude, though that wasn’t fair.)

If we put this in Freshmen Comp terms, I am the student who can’t write the paper because she didn’t already write the introduction.  And it’s worth noting, I was that Freshmen Comp student, so I shouldn’t be surprised that I’m in this predicament right now.

Except I am surprised.  Because historically, when I’ve run into this problem since those long ago days of Freshmen Comp, I’ve assumed the problem wasn’t “me” but rather that it was whatever the complication was.

So, for example, once upon a time, during the one time in my life when I have described myself as having writer’s block, while I was writing my dissertation, I really thought it was “writer’s block” – that I was “blocked” by some mystical force, and that suddenly the “block” lifted by an equally mystical force.  Except that wasn’t really what happened.

What really was going on (as my epiphany revealed) was that I was preoccupied with my personal life (not in the way I am now, which is happily, but still, preoccupied, if unhappily).  And how I got out of that was by moving 600 miles away from my preoccupation, and then, voila!  I could write!  I never changed my writing process: I just changed my circumstances.  And that is what I’ve always done since, when I felt like I wasn’t writing: changed my circumstances.  Which works great if you want to be alone, if that’s what you prefer.  But it seems those things aren’t what I want, what I prefer.  But I need to find a way to write in spite of those personal desires, if I’m going to be a full and whole and happy person.  So.

What I realized today was I needed to try to do this a new way.  I can’t just shut down my personal life when my writing life isn’t going according to plan, even though, frankly, doing that is easier.  And I can’t just shut down writing when I’ve got a personal life, because NO.  (I know, you all think I’m an idiot, because, WOW, isn’t this so obvious?)

So my experiment for the summer is this: I’m going to do as much work as I can according to my pre-ordained summer schedule, but I will not revise the schedule.  So, for example, let’s say that I don’t get as far as I wanted on the chapter on which I’d wanted to have a complete draft done by Saturday (SATURDAY!  Of Memorial Day Weekend when I’ve got a boyfriend who works a regular job and for whom this is a three-day weekend! A fact you’d think I would have considered when I made this schedule, but no, I only consider my own weirdo schedule in which long weekends don’t matter!).  I move on regardless of how far I’ve gotten.  I move on to the next item on the agenda, even if I didn’t complete the earlier agenda item.

Will this work?  Who knows.  But the theory is that more will get done this way than by me constantly revising the schedule.  And at the very least I’ll have more complete bits and pieces on the book than I’ve got now, at summer’s beginning, even if none of them are actually complete.

The thing is, I can’t just keep waiting for perfect conditions for scholarship.  Particularly when those perfect conditions depend on being without a personal life.  Maybe it’s not about fitting a personal life in so much as adapting to a personal life, if that makes sense.  No, this might not work.  But what I’ve been doing?  Totally not working either.

Also, I really need to accomplish things because what with my non-academic Dude, I feel incredibly guilty about the freedom that I have during the Happy Place of Summertime Happiness.  I need to use that freedom to do awesome things, and not just to be an asshole academic who relaxes, ya know?  (Even if I do still intend to do my reading at the pool.)

In Which the Queerest Identity These Days Might Be Spinster

I’m a single, child-free (child-less?) lady in her late 30s.  I’m straight, and (but?) my work concerns gender and sexuality, amongst other things, but my general theoretical approach to my scholarship relates to issues surrounding those indexes of identity.  I like babies and kids (all of them, really, I’m a baby and kid person) but I don’t have one and haven’t had one.  I like the idea of a husband, but I’ve never had one of those either. Indeed, I am a 21st century spinster.

For the first time in a long time I’m in a serious relationship, which really is grand, and I’ve not written kids off, though, let’s be real: I’m an old lady and that might not be in the cards for me.  (I am not interested in reproductive medical-technological intervention, and I don’t actually think I’m interested in adoption either, so my point here is maybe, but who knows – I’m leaving this shit up to fate, because my life is not empty or missing something without a baby or kid. I’m not saying that people who take advantage of reproductive technologies or who pursue adoption have any problems – I’m just saying I don’t think that those are my things – at least not right now.  My ambition has never been to be a mom, or to be a wife, though I think I might be great at both. But if those were my ambitions, I’d probably have gotten around to one or both of them by now.)

It took me aback this weekend when somebody wished me “Happy Mother’s Day” when I was leaving the sushi restaurant at which I’d had a good amount of Japanese beer with no kids in attendance. Sure, I’m of an age when a lot of women are mothers, but DUDE.  I’m not a mother.  Why would anybody assume I am one?

It also takes me aback that all around me people are getting engaged and getting wed.  Not because I’m not happy for people – I AM.  But EVERYBODY?  I mean, I used at least to be able to count on my gay friends not to be on the marriage parade.  No more!  Indeed, everybody is getting hitched.  EVERYBODY.   Except me, apparently.  And I’m now people (gay, straight, whatever) regard me with suspicion because that’s not tops on my list of priorities. (Note: I’m not saying that gay marriage should be illegal or that it’s a bad idea.  Marriage is great if people want it! I’m just saying that I miss the good old days when my gay friends were not *compelled* to be married, as us straight folks are and have historically been, as if that is the only way to make things official.  Why can’t one be an adult human being without a spouse?)

Seriously: why does anybody need to put a ring on it?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4m1EFMoRFvY

And yes, I get that marriage comes with legal and social benefits – I’m not stupid, and this is why I get the whole gay marriage thing – why I get the marriage thing in general.  I just wish that I didn’t feel so pressured into that particular institution at this particular moment.  Maybe it’s FINE that I’m a single woman who doesn’t have a child and who isn’t DESPERATE to be married or DESPERATE to have a kid.  Maybe I’m FINE, even without a spouse or a fucking kid.  Dammit.

And yes,The Dude and I are in love and we have discussed being in a permanent-ish situation, so this isn’t about me not wanting a committed relationship!  And yes, we might get married, in spite of all of our (both of our) reservations! I just really resent the idea that people seem to think there is only one way for us to be authentic!  Or for us to be real!  I mean, seriously?

Seriously.

 

 

Love Means Always Having to Say You’re Sorry for Being a Lunatic at the End of the Semester

Never fear: things with The Dude are good – great even.

But what happens to me at the end of a semester is that I become a giant conflagration of stress and pissed-off-ness.  And that extends out to the people I love, because, you know, I love them, so that means I like to treat them badly when I’m overwhelmed and stressed out.  I think my mom said it best, when I talked to her this weekend:

Poor Dude!  Normally you lose it on me at this time of year, and I’ve learned to leave you alone as much as possible!  Now and at the start of the school year!  (You might want to warn him about that ahead of time.)  But now he gets it and I don’t!  This is fabulous!

Seriously, though perhaps this quote is not totally verbatim, what with the fact that she used his real name and wouldn’t have said “fabulous.”

Now, to be fair, my freaking out was provoked by comments like the following:

1. “Is all of this really that important?”
2. “But you’re going to be on vacation in two weeks: can’t you just suck it up?”
3. “You’re totally overreacting.”

Those are totally direct quotes. So perhaps he deserved a tiny bit of what he got.  I mean, vacation!  SERIOUSLY?  The next thing you know he’ll be accusing me of working only 12 hours a week!  You’ll be happy to know that after the “vacation” comment I listed off the litany of things I need to accomplish this summer, as well as blamed him for me being behind on my book project.  And I cried like a baby.  Because I’m cool like that.

That said, what’s different about this relationship as opposed to other relationships (and, objectively, I have a list of them that have gone the way of the dodo at this point in the academic calendar, and as I informed The Dude on Saturday, probably I should provide him with their contact information so he can understand just how much I’m not being as much of a lunatic as I have been known to be) is that I do actually care enough about him not to want to do this to him.  And I did apologize.  Because, really?  He deserved an apology.

But so anyway, we talked it through, and we are fine.  Better than fine, really. (No I don’t believe in the wasting of time/ But I don’t believe that I’m wasting mine)

He certainly has seen me at my worst now, and he hasn’t abandoned ship, so this is a good thing.  He did suggest, however, that at this time of year I should procure marijuana and smoke it daily in order to chill out.  I retorted that maybe a person who is in such a competitive career didn’t get there by waking and baking.  He then suggested more alcohol. We laughed.

So, one final down and the grades for that course are mostly tabulated.  By tomorrow afternoon, I should be all done with two classes – ready to post grades.  And tomorrow night The Dude and I are supposed to go to a Sporting Event, which I hope does happen, but may not because his dad had surgery today and I think that he may have to cancel, depending.  (This is also why I’m an asshole: yes, the end of the semester sucks, but it probably does suck more for your dad to be having a major surgery, and maybe I should have thought about that coming up and respected the significance of that before I lost my shit.  Or at least acknowledged it while I was losing my shit.)

And then I have finals for my other two classes on Thursday, and I’ll grade like a maniac between Thursday and Friday, and then graduation is Saturday, and then I will be FREE!  Yes, that’s just free to do other kinds of work, but it’s still FREEDOM!  And then I can be my Best Summertime Self, which is really my best self of all.  Which of course is why it’s very good that The Dude and I met in November, as if he met me during my Best Summertime Self Time and then he got the bullshit I dish out during the academic year?  No WAY would he put up with it.  No, my Best Summertime Self is really the reward for what I’m like 9-10 months out of the year.  Even for me, really, and not just for gentleman callers.

But until I become my Best Summertime Self, this is the song that I have been listening to on repeat.  And perhaps it suggests both my mood and my inability to be giving and nice and all the things that I wish I could be, and will be in just a couple of weeks.

In Which Students Are Awesome, Colleagues Are Terrible, and the End of the Semester is the Worst

My students:

• My freshmen have written excellent papers, and have spent the last week revising and revamping and caring about all the things.
• 3/4 of my Gen Ed students turned their final assignments in early, because of a confusing situation with the dates on the Course Schedule that Is Our Bible. Normal gen ed students would have given themselves a pass – especially since the *day* on the course schedule was right, and I confirmed it in class.  But my awesome students – no, they didn’t take the pass.  I love that class.
• The Survey students.  So unbelievable.  Even though it’s the survey.
• My upper-level seminar: students are writing on 6 of the 7 books I’ve assigned.  Which is astonishing to me, especially since only 3 have a large critical conversation to support research papers by undergrads.  And the ideas?  So original and so interesting!  For serious!

Colleagues are terrible:

• The battles in academia re so fierce because the stakes are so low.
• I can’t even talk about it.  Just – NO!

The End of the Semester is the Worst:

• Do I really need to explain this?
• Apparently one does need to explain it to one’s boyfriend who isn’t an academic, but for serious?  It’s just terrible.  TERRIBLE.

The short version is this: I love my students, the colleague situation is not cool, and the end of the semester is hardcore terrible.  Expect to see me around these parts in a few weeks, when all this is over.

Knitting to the Rescue!

I am a person, historically, who has great difficulty with 1) not getting all riled up when contentious items are discussed in a meeting and 2) not speaking my mind about those contentious issues.  This has been a problem for me throughout my career – beginning in graduate school (seriously), continuing through my pre-tenure years (though I worked really, really hard – sometimes even successfully – to control my impulses during that time), and coming into full flower in my years since earning tenure.

But in the past year or two, I’ve realized that the only person I’m hurting by giving into those impulses to get Riled Up and to Speak My Mind is myself.  See, it turns out that my righteous indignation and impassioned speeches have not tended, most of the time, to make a real difference in things that are stupid.  And when they have made a difference, I’ve often had to pay for the difference that was made in the form of bearing the brunt of various kinds of blame, more work, and less job satisfaction.  So, I’ve been trying to mold myself into a “new, serene me.”

Today, I think that I reached a new milestone in my quest for serenity.  See, I knew that a particular discussion item on an agenda promised to be tense – that the discussion might even become shouty.  So I brought my most complicated lace project that I’m knitting to this meeting.  Oh happy day!  The meeting was tense, and some people did get a little exercised.  But not me!  I was focused on yarning over and slip-slip-knits and kitting two and three together!  Purling purling purling on the even rows! I listened, and I had opinions about what was said, but my hands were busy.  I made one comment – and it was productive.  Otherwise, I kept my head down, stitching away.  (Note: I wonder if in a less egalitarian time historically if this is how women used their handcrafts – to allow them not to lose their minds at things that pissed them off.)

Now, nothing was decided as a result of that discussion, and nothing was accomplished either.  By staying out of it for the most part, I didn’t shirk any responsibility, nor did I just check out of the discussion – I was very engaged in listening.  What I did accomplish, though, was keeping my head cool and getting through 6 rows of my pattern.  And further: I was not the most angry person in that meeting!

Will anything actually happen with this contentious issue?  Maybe something will, but not before next academic year, if at all, and if it really comes up for something more than discussion, like in the form of a voting item, that will be my moment to sound off.  But for now?  I am so happy that I didn’t get provoked.

 

A Weird Week, More Than Anything Else

1. April sucks for professors.  It’s the most stressful, most fucked-up time.  This April is no exception.
2. All the stuff in Boston: it’s very weird having called a place home and having all those horrible things happen after one has left.  It’s also weird experiencing that weirdness with all the other people you knew then who don’t live there now, because you’ve all moved on.  Except for the friends of yours who didn’t.  Weird.  Also, watching “local” Boston news from my home Not-In-Boston was especially weird.  Mainly because even newscasters age.
3. I kinda picked a fight with The Dude, except for we didn’t bother fighting.  I expressed my problem (albeit passive-aggressively), and he got pissed off at me, but then we just had a conversation and it was fine.  Because you know what?  We’re really good at talking to each other.  That’s worth writing about because I don’t think I’ve ever had that before.
4. That said, I kinda picked the fight because he “we”ed me into a family thing of his for tomorrow, and he didn’t ask me, and then I felt all “being a girlfriend freaking sucks” and “who does he think he is” and whatever.  Also, what has he done for me lately?  But we talked and he got it. He respected my problem.  Maybe he’s awesome.  Probably.
5. I can’t wait until April is over.