I fell off of posting these and was just keeping them on my computer. Better to post, another small source of accountability.
Entry 110, Tuesday Took my kids to the kids ninja warrior gym this morning. Good time but late start. Have to cut out early too for another family thing. Summer is hard so far. Responsibilities abound and time is scant. Onto primary source work for chapter 4. Entry 111, Wednesday Started the day way behind on teaching-related reading, worked to rectify that. Have been tense, tired, distracted all day. Now it’s late in the day and I’m finally on to my stuff. Summer thus far is a disappointment, an active source of new frustration. Going to read some case files for a while then go to the damn gym, can’t believe it’s this far into the summer and I’ve not managed it yet. I am in a mood. Worked a bit. Went okay I guess. More notes. Sick of this chapter, this book. Am not making it to the gym either, gotta get home. Ugh. Entry 112, Thursday I am angry, sad, afraid, disgusted in response to what’s happening politically right now and that’s distracting. Trying to set that aside and work is hard, but it’s always hard to set aside stuff and work. Ugh. Sigh. Still on chapter 4 primary sources. I remain tired of this phase of the work and this chapter. Oh well. Must be done. At least there’s good music and coffee. And I will go to the gym today! Entry 113, Friday On the bus to work. Going to my office, had coffee at home. Going to print stuff for chapter 4 and read over it and work on re-organizing in order to set up integrating material from the new sources. That should go fine. I’m going to try to make it to the gym again today, felt good to do so yesterday. This afternoon’s the faculty writing group write-among session. I’m pleased about that. I wish the book was done and I worry it won’t be any good once it is done. Decided to work at the library, ran into some colleagues which is nice but everyone’s been chatty and I’ve not gotten as much done as I’d hoped. “I’ve not gotten as much done as I’d hoped” is the working title for my memoir. I thought on the bus today about how little of my life is actually in this document, the diary is in part for that purpose, it’s a document I use to winnow my attention, sift out the things that demand my headspace, but it’s also a bit sad that I have life and politics and culture things I’d like to write about and I don’t. I suppose that’s lots of people’s experience though, and I’m not a memoirist or columnist, so I gotta do the job I have. Also a random thought: over the years I’ve heard lots of colleagues, including with tenure, express reservations about what it is and isn’t advisable to say. That speaks to some of the actual limits on intellectual freedom for academics, and the fact that people need tenure to have intellectual freedom does too - the need for tenure suggests that universities are willing to police thought for people without tenure. (And then there’s the intellectual freedoms lost by the economic situation for so many people in universities...) Anyway the point of intellectual freedom shouldn’t be to encircle a select group with a right to that freedom, it’s something everyone ought to have in a free society. Sigh. Back to work. Entry 114, Monday Another appalling news story this morning about separating families at the border. I keep thinking about my kids being in that situation and it makes me feel nauseous. Every kid crossing the border has been through stuff no kid should be subjected to, and then how they’re treated by government employees on top of that... This story in particular said that the head of the association of pediatricians visited a facility and the employees weren’t allowed to hug or pick up the kids to comfort them. Good god. I called all my congressional delegation while waiting for the bus. I feel relatively confident that this practice will eventually end, but who knows how many kids get hurt in the meantime, and the result afterward will be a reconfiguration of the Overton window on immigration that sanitizes the prior and still ongoing brutality. A continual ratcheting down of our standards as human beings. I’m going to try to set this aside in order to work, and I wonder if it’s wrong to set this aside. It’s later in the day. Emailed this to Alex: “I've had a mixed day. Had to catch up on reading for my class, then taught, then down to work. My fault for putting off the reading for teaching, as a result I worked on book stuff at less than optimal time and have no time left for the gym today. That said, I did get some book work done. Tomorrow I’m gonna print again and work from paper copies of stuff for this chapter. Between tonight and tomorrow (and probly just tomorrow, success rate of anything happening at home is close to zero) I need to read this article for review, figure out some re-imbursement stuff, read for wednesday’s class, and read for my book review. Shooting for an hour of book work tomorrow, maybe a bit more but not a lot more. I really want to go to the gym tomorrow and do other work so I can minimize future disruptions to my routine.” Summer sucks. I’m alone a lot, I feel pressed for time and yet feel more demands on my time from my family, feel guilty for how I feel about that, I keep hearing from people with tenure about fun parts of their summer and I resent it because I feel like I can’t slow down. A few people have told me I’m really on track in terms of getting the work done in order to get tenure, but that doesn’t feel that good to hear because it feels like they’re saying I can relax. But I don’t think I can relax. There’s so much work under the water, so to speak, with the actual writing just the tip of the iceberg. (Ugh this mixed metaphor.) I feel like if I relax I will stop doing that under-the-water work and will end up falling off track. Sigh. That said, with some luck maybe I can get chapter 4 done by the end of this week or next, and get on to chapter 5, which should go faster. I think I might be able to do 5 in only two weeks because it’s based on the old chapter 4, which was nearly done and pretty polished. I think after that I will write 6 (the doctors chapter) and see what happens, then decide at the end of that how much time I have (or do not have) to work on a new 6 (making the doctors into chapter 7) I am going to the gym tomorrow for sure, I felt so much better after that the other day. Going home now though, and pleased for the flexibility to do so. Entry 115, Tuesday No less appalled, distracted, or tired today. Called my congressional delegation, the offices of which said zero of substance. I am not doing all that I could do about these terrible acts, but I am doing all I can do without sacrificing commitments to people I care about. I have to live with that and get on with it. I wasted a lot of time reading the news today. Ran into a friend who said the national situation is similarly weighing on her. I can see from the sidelines that the same is happening with other friends and colleagues. It’s nice to see directly that I’m not the only one. What’s the Melville line? Something like “Yet there is hope, time and tide flow wide.” I worked a while on my book, forgot to diary first. Must re-establish discipline of diarying and of writing first. The work sucked, the book sucks. Not true, just how it feels. I next need to reverse outline chapter four, macro-level outline -- section order -- and then assign my remaining notes and quotes from primary sources to a skeleton/annotated outline corresponding to that reverse macro outline. Whatever can’t be thus assigned does not go into this chapter. From there I’ll integrate that material then reread the draft for micro-/meso-organization like paragraphing and any other issues I identify. I think this work is going to hurt but will objectively not take long as long as I just get in the chair and do the damn work. The truth is that I am appalled but also am at a gut level to some extent satisfied to have the appalling circumstance offer a virtuous seeming excuse not to work on the book. I have done enough work on the book today and worked well. If I had put in the time sooner I’d have had time to go to the gym but poor time use means I once again continue the trend of sacrificing care for my long term health and well being. What a foolish thing to do. Onto other responsibilities now. I have about an hour left today. Entry 116, Tuesday. Fuuuuuuck. [cue endless screaming] The last few weeks have been difficult. It is July 10 and I am back to work, motivationless and fearful. Oh well. Fuck it. The rock must be rolled upward no matter how Sisyphus feels. Time to work. Doing some revisions on chapter 4. [STILL! ARGH!] Entry 117, Friday I worked on chapter 4 revisions the last two days but forgot to journal. I am not yet back on an even keel and it sucks. Feeling very negative and am back to too little sleep and struggling to balance work and family. Oh well. Going to work on chapter 4 again. Maybe this is just the rest of my life, writing for godot. Entry 118, Tuesday July 24th. More bad and lazy time. I got a fair bit of work done in there actually, just inefficiently and with much angst. The monsters in power are distracting, as are my wonderful family. I put away chapter four lsat Friday, pleased about that. I did some pre-work for chapter 5 that day and yesterday. I’m now onto 5 in earnest today. Plan for the (scant! [moment of silence and mourning]) remains of the summer is to focus on working writing away each day, a restoration of discipline and focus. I think diarying will help with that. I am feeling intimidated to go back to 5. I hope the material I set aside for it in the spring is okay. I hope it wasn’t a mistake to switch the order of 4 and 5 and redo what I’d done for old chapter 4, I had been feeling like it was pretty good. Maybe it was a good call and this will mean new 5 goes fast. We’ll see. Here goes. Worked a while. Worried I’m being inefficient but I’ve diligently applied myself at least. Break for lunch now. Soon I’ll be changing locations to write with others, hopefully people come today. When I get there I’ll do the tasks I wrote down on this pass through my notes. I sent this email to Alex: “I sort of gave out mid-day. (Partly I was annoyed no one showed to the faculty write together meet up. I gotta check my attitude, taking my annoyance and frustration as an excuse to stop working and mess around online is silly and self-defeating.) I regrouped and worked some more. Mostly planning and organizing notes. I now have a 45 page zero draft or minus-one draft based on stuff from last spring, plus 12 pages of notes organized in line with the outline of the draft (so I can be like 'section 5 needs something, let's see if I have some of it already in my notes or need to write it totally from scratch). I think I've fallen into 'how can I make the most of old prose?' mode instead of 'how can I create the chapter I want and which doesn't yet exist?' That's inefficient and more unpleasant. So tomorrow after I do my paper to-do list I'm going to open a new file that I treat as a new draft. I'm going to try write prose in that file that goes in the book, and cut from my prior draft and notes as much as I possibly can. I think this will mean I get to a next round draft of the chapter pretty fast. Fingers crossed. I think I'm going to take a break then a quick gym trip then home. Notes for later: I should start devoting a little time every day to fall teaching, to my book review which is crazy over due, and to faculty writing group stuff. 15 minutes a day of each will be fine. I'll thank myself later if I do that.” Entry 119, Wednesday. Forgot to diary before starting working. Also puttered too long before starting to work. Goal: work immediately! Back to good habits. It’s hard. I think summer is a lie, a cruelty. ‘Go do this hard thing with important financial stakes, do it alone but for the support you create yourself; as you do so, pretend you are on vacation and the people around you will smile about all the time off you get.’ I get asked sometimes by people outside this industry if I’m off for the summer and I always am polite about it and usually just say ‘I’m teaching this summer, we need the money.’ The summer is basically a time to be alone too much doing work that’s draining without enough support. It sucks and is a stupid way to arrange the industry. It’s not a design choice, it’s a legacy, and if it has benefits they’re largely not ones that accrue to me. On balance I think summer’s worse. Distributing the work of the year across a whole year more evenly would be way better. Oh well. I read through my hand written notes on the draft so far. I’m going to take a quick break and eat then back to it. I wrote a new opening and have taken material from the last draft and put in the new draft. It’s now three pages long. I think next I should reread the draft I have, free write, and re-outline the chapter. Not sure about the best order of operations out of those tasks. Entry 120, Thursday Sore back today, been several days. Did not get right down to work, distracted again by current events. Gotta focus. On to work now. Chapter five. I know in my head I am making progress but this feels interminable. I think the chapter needs a restructure in the new draft so going to do that by summarizing then taking the summary as the new outline. Here goes. Entry 121, Friday Am in the chair at work, puttered before really starting. Tiredness feeding indiscipline. Back aches, lack of sleep, wishing there was more summer and also disliking summer. Ugh. Up note: I’m working with a friend today, so that’s nice. So distracted today. Going to eat, recaffeinate, and refocus. Entry 122, Monday. Ugh. July’s ending in two days. Am feeling behind schedule. In very late today because I took my big kids to an appointment. Good to get that time with them and be useful in that way but now it’s very late and I’m very tired and feeling stressed about the need to get something done. Sigh. God damn it. I can’t think straight today. I might make discretion the better part of valor. ARgh. Entry 123, Tuesday. Feeling much better today. Had a phone call with MK this morning, hearing about his writing and writing life was nice, and he asked about my book and was enthusiastic about it. I want to remember the points he made: moral thinning corresponds to a reduction of use values to exchange value; the demand for bread but roses too is a comment on that reduction, and points away from “a fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work” and toward “abolish the wage system”; the division of the labors of brutality are a kind of collateralized moral debt. Going to get out the notes for chapter five now and get down to work. I’ve done a fair bit of research on the section on insurance company lawyers. I’m feeling tense – partly impatience and partly fear I’m procrastinating by doing this and partly fear this is a rabbit hole. Also worried what I’ll find is just anecdotal or is not a deep enough dive; I’m imagining a future hostile reader. But what I can find is what I can find, live with that. Sigh. So much nervousness. Ah well. Life atop 40,000 fathoms of water. Worked well for a long while, took a break and walked to the room for the writing meet up. Met up with myself. Deep breath. Sigh. Feeling anxious about how little summer remains, as much as I dislike summer. It’s an artifact of a poor organization of time and work, hence its presence and its end both bring their own problems. Legacies abound. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. Entry 124, Wednesday Am at the coffee shop, have puttered too long. Blech. It is august first. Leaving tomorrow for a trip to see extended family. So little summer left. So much book left to write. I am likely not going to finish a draft by the end of the semester. Feeling a bit sick about that. Onto the day’s work. The work went well! actually went well! I think I’m done with the research and initial writing for the new section of the chapter. I’ll need to do some work to integrate it into the chapter and perhaps flesh it out a bit more, but still, this is closer to done. Feels good. and I am VERY TIRED. Entry 125, Friday In Indiana, family trip. Long drive yesterday. The usual today - tired etc - plus the distractions of a new coffee shop. I’ve taken too long to start, again. Getting out the folder now. Working on chapter five. Scared of the chapter, the book, etc. Here goes. Work has gone okay so far. I’ve got through the paper copies of my chapter draft and notes. I think the draft will need another pass later because I ended up skimming sometimes out of impatience and tiredness. Still, forward motion. Short break now. Turned out a long break. Back to work. Entry 126, Monday At coffee shop. Feeling the trip, feeling the impending change in my time with the semester starting. Going to work today in short increments with a timer, rotating between task types. Trying to reset my headspace: I am grateful for the flexibility my job affords, and I care about the subject matter of my book, I’m glad my job affords me the ability to pursue certain kinds of excellence. I know my book will be a small thing in the big picture but some people I care about will care about it and that’s exciting. Okay getting out the paper folder and setting up the timer. Work went well. Nearing the end of chapter 5, which is exciting. Entry 127, Tuesday Got some good work done on the chapter. Wrote before diarying. That was a mistake. Re-establishing the discipline of the diary will help re-establish the discipline of writing for when I need that discipline. Going to walk part way back to my mother in law’s house, stop at the public library and put in a few more minutes of work there. The walk will help me reset. Entry 128, Wednesday Like yesterday I wrote first. Got to get the diarying back into habit, will need it as the semester starts. Skipping discipline when the writing feels easy will mean lack of discipline when the writing is hard. On the plus side, the writing felt easy today. I should have started sooner though. With some luck I’ll finish chapter 5 on Friday; tomorrow’s a travel day. Entry 129, Friday Back home. Very late start to the work day. Poor diligence after arrival. Have to focus. What am I doing? Not sure. Going to figure that out. Figured it out, got down to work pretty well. Entry 130, Sunday Small window, about an hour today. Reading the paper copy of the draft of chapter 5, would like to get all the way through it. Got through it all. Lots of notes by hand but it all feels relatively small to me, I may finish the chapter tomorrow, and start 6 on Tuesday! I’m excited at that prospect. Entry 131, Tuesday Yesterday ended up packed with family stuff, didn’t work on writing. Back at it today. Worked prior to diary again. Gotta change this, re-establish the habit. Will think about how to do this. Plus side: I’m putting away chapter five, calling it done. Short break to consider what to do next. I should start six briefly for the sake of tomorrow’s session. I opened up 6, feeling the unpleasantness of back to beginning of a chapter. Blech. On the plus side, this means less unpleasantness to feel tomorrow about it. Though there will definitely be unpleasantness to feel tomorrow too around this chapter because early in the chapter is hard. I will get it written though, I know that and that’s a new confidence. I am pleased about that. Entry 132, Thursday Yesterday ended up being all family day kind of unexpectedly. I appreciate the flexibility to do that, probly the last day I can do that this summer, and I worry I’ll have to pay it back time-wise on a weekend later. Sigh. Am at work now going to figure out what to do. Am on chapter 6. How to start the chapter...? ... by starting it. I wrote a draft of an intro. Next up on this chapter=read all my old notes. That will feel crummy but whatever. Do the work. Entry 133, Friday Again wrote before diarying. Stop doing that! Get back to diary first, at the start of the day, then write, right away! Otherwise the work went okay today. I have a new outline for chapter 6. Entry 134, Monday Got to work, started working on writing right away for about 5 minutes then remembered to diary. I had too large of a cup of coffee this morning and am feeling the jitters, compounded by work stress. Oh well. I am going to spend 20-40 minutes on my chapter. Cutting that by 5 min because of already having started. Work sustainably. I’ve outlined the chapter (did a version of that on Friday and revised it now, looks fine I think). I’m going to now sort my notes and prewriting into that new outline. Feeling scared about the chapter and the book but excited about being so close-ish to the end of the first draft of the manuscript. Maybe I’ll do that thing I read about where I print it all out and drop it on the table for the sake of the thump it makes. Finished moving bits around in light of the new outline and made notes for next time. Feeling anxious because the outline needs further revision i.e. I don’t yet fully have the organization for this chapter worked out. I’ll write my way to it, and it will be hard work to do. I can do hard work though. Nice to be further along, I’ve rolled the rock some more. I wish I was closer to done - my impatience is kicking in hard, as I flipped through the paper copy to sort the material into the new outline I really, really wanted to go faster and skip more and so on. To-do list is in the file. The gist is to finish turning these notes into a usable resource for drafting the chapter. Not much more time required for that, then into real drafting (from prewriting to attempting prose). I am going to struggle to stay future-focused rather than focused on how to save old work. Enough for now. I worked longer than I had planned by maybe half an hour but it made sense because the sorting would have cost me more time if I stopped in the middle. And I did still keep the work reigned in. Short break then onto other tasks and responsibilities. Entry 135, Tuesday I am not being a good steward of my time today. Alex said that to me in an email about himself, that’s so much my day today. I am resetting now. Short bit of book work. Getting out the folder to see what that work should be. I'd fallen off of posting there, I'd just been keeping them in a file. It's good to put them here, one more small source of accountability.
0 Comments
|