I'm typing this on October 13th, 2020. I've done 33 total entries this year. I've done four so far this month. I'm glad to be back at this for now and am going to try to get back to the discipline of it. I clearly fell off earlier. I'm pasting in this post the pre-October entries that I haven't yet posted. I'll put up the October ones later.
* Monday January 27 I am working to restart the writing diary/vent file habit. It’s the first day of the term. three classes today. had to drop the car at a mechanic’s on the way in because the window got stuck down. worried about the cost. nervous about the first day of teaching, I hope the students like me, I hope they rise to the occasion. I broke my ‘do some writing as the first job related thing and first on-the-computer thing I do of the day’ this morning, need to shore up that habit a lot. the reward though: cover of my book in my inbox! I like it! it’s exciting. I’m pleased it will be out soon. Life after the first book is odd, still settling in to it. I am not sick of the project though, I am still interested in talking about it if anyone cares to hear about it, I care about the book. Okay but now what? I did a brain dump and self-organization session over the weekend to lay out the current writing projects I’ve got going on, the ones that are connected to intellectual relationships, and I wrote out some goals. I’m going to revisit those though maybe tomorrow? We’ll see. Trying to take this semester at a walk, not a run, a cool down lap after long periods of exertion. All of that said, what am I working on now as a writer? (Always be closing! Coffee’s for closers. Should watch that scene again.) 5 minutes is up - timer was a good idea, got me into motion. I can use another minute or two. going to do something that involves new writing for a few minutes then editing for a while because that’s where one of my pieces is at in the life cycle. Shooting for 15-30 minutes of writing time today. Sustainable, rebuilding a rhythm and a practice, a livable writing life. Onto it now. ps- just checked and I started the writing diary 2 years ago in January. January 12, 2018. Starting its 3rd year now. Huh. Neat. Copied this intro scrivener and logged in writing tracker that I didn’t write first and that I did vent file before other writing. Baby steps, back to good habits. Looked at my list of writing projects. Going to do 10 minutes on LPE piece, new writing, good to do some new writing, a heavy lift even if brief (especially if brief, heh) every work day. Then 10 minutes of editing the piece of Paul and Umut. Each of those gets up to 5 minutes of spillover time. Also going to read a bit of a writing book today and read a bit of an academic book. Again baby steps to good habits. Free wrote for LPE paper, 559 words, about 15 min. Now to work on editing the thing for Paul and Umut. Did 10 minutes of work on the latter. It was challenging! 195 words plus some notes on what to do and how as I move through a major revision. Oof. Glad I have a fair bit of time on this and am not under immediate deadline pressure as it feels like the piece needs a lot. That said I gotta say diligently in motion on it so I don’t end up under pressure and having to grind it out last minute. All in all a good day of return to routine. Gotta maintain this. Tuesday 1-28-20 Slow start this morning, and tired. Three classes back to back at the end of Monday is challenging. A colleague says the next day feels like a hangover. That’s apt. In that condition I’ve used the morning ineffectively. Context matters too - if I was paid more we could afford a second car and I’d have gotten in to work sooner rather than having to wait for the bus. Oh well. The context is never favorable, like most people I don’t get to have a life of favorable contexts, have to live the life I have, write in this life, not justify not writing because of the ways this life falls short. Recentering now. I have office hours for a while soon and will likely be interrupted. I want to use the pre-office hours portion of the day effectively. I’m going to do 15 minutes of free writing on a new idea, then 15 minutes of working on editing, then onto other responsibilities during office hours. Wednesday 1-29-20 The usual! Tired again. Toddler was up super early, and the start of the semester has been demanding so far. I think I forgot the start up costs and also the mental shift from ‘I think about and keep track of 5 things’ to ‘I think about and keep track of 50 things.’ Once the semester’s rhythms are established and I’ve set stuff in motion in my classes - so the students will carry more of the discussion with less input from me - then it will ease up a little. Here I stand I can do no other. Gotta write anyway. Hoping this second cup of coffee kicks in. I will say, I’ve been back on my routine for 2 days now, so that’s something. This is day 3. I was talking with Alex this morning - he wrote a chapter outline, I am excited for him and it’s going to be a great book, and it’s restorative to spend time feeling excited about books; being other-focused is often what’s best for me - and I decided that the best thing I can do this semester writing-wise is get back to routine and discipline goals. Better shorter sessions with more regularity than longer sessions more irregularly, even if this means less total writing time. I do have projects and so on and if necessary I can at some points put in longer sessions and work in ways that are more deadline and product driven but the heart of this semester as a writer is re-establishing habits and having a functional writing life for the long term. So what am I doing today? Ten minutes on the LPE piece, even if just free writing, then 10 minutes on the piece for Umut and Paul, likely a mix of editing. Then 20 minutes of reading and note taking for the latter, the onto other responsibilities. Thursday 1-30-20 Poor of time this morning, as usual tired and distracted and today reacting poorly. Resetting now. I am feeling interested in the ideas for my new thing I’m starting, feeling a little nervous about deadlines for other work and nervous about the quality of the ideas in the thing that I’m in the middle or near-end with. I get more nervous the closer it gets to an audience that’s not my personal friends. Oh well. I would like to be fearless but bravery is good too. I’m going to do a short input of time on two things, one some new writing and one more editing, then read a while, then other responsibilities. Friday 1-31-20 At writing group, first of the semester, starting with writing diary. This is day 5 of following this plan. Pleased about that. How am I doing? I am tired, maybe teetering near to starting burn out. The set up time of the semester’s start is more than I planned on, and stresses of this point in the career cycle, plus this family stage (my kids and I need to sleep more!) and our recent illnesses. I’m feeling overly sensitive and overreading interactions with people. That’s how I’m doing. Need to work out more too. I suppose it makes some sense: spending lots of time alone in this job and spending lots of time under scrutiny as untenured, so when I’m around people I feel scrutinized. Relationships removed from the above are going well though, enjoying music writing and blog post writing. Nice to talk to Alex the other day about his book process and progress, and to talk with En today about same. All of that is good stuff, nice to make contact with the good parts of the work, the stuff I was excited about when I started, the stuff that was part of why I wanted to start. Teaching’s going well too. So, today, what’s the plan? Short work on LPE paper. That will take me through this beginning time of the writing group - this group and starting with writing=good idea! Pleased about that - and later in the day I’ll do some work on the Elgar piece. Other work responsibilities later. I think that’s also part of my mood, adjusting to the new responsibilities and managing them all. Monday 2-3-20 Monday after a mixed bag of weekend. Ehhhhh gotta buckle down and just do the work. Been a slow and distracted start this morning. The day’s offered me distractions and I’ve taken the offer. I gotta get over that and just get down to it. Going to do two 10-15 min sessions per the two main projects at the moment, then read 15 min, then onto other responsibilities. I don’t have to like it, I just have to work. I can work my way into liking it. I can’t like my way into work, that’s not how it goes for me. Tuesday 2-4-20 The usual burgh. Making myself write anyway. Looking forward to spring break and summer. I want some time off and I want some time without being evaluated. I think I have eval fatigue, even when the evals are positive. This summer I’ll prepare my tenure file too, so… Anyway. All of that said, I like the projects I am working on. I am genuinely interested in the ideas and would like to read the things I said I would write. Feeling some impostor worries, but not especially loudly so that’s good. I should find my copy of the Boice - wait, I loaned it to Josh, I should ask for it back if he’s done - and reread it, do his writers’ self-talk exercises. They helped last time. This week is shaping up meeting-ful and adminsitratey so less writing time than I would prefer. Then again my main goals right now are in discipline, structure of process, and the actual time goals are modest, so it’s fine, I can get the work done. Going to do two short sessions, one for each of the two main projects on my desk right now. Might get interrupted as I’m in office hours. Knock on wood. Wednesday 2-5-20 Checked email and whatnot before writing, and started working on writing a little (read over some of my print out of Elgar and made a few notes by hand) before vent file. That’s all a mistake. Have to stick with the best practices. As usual, tired. Stayed up too late listening to music, messing around with some old audio files (‘field recordings’ manipulated) that I made a while back. Fun to do that, I could use more creative outlets, especially music and drawing related, but the lack of sleep is a challenge - Lottie woke up in the middle of the night as well. Oh well. Hard stuff but ordinary hard and I’m good at working hard. This also isn’t forever, the context will improve. I’m trying to get things done but am also and even more so working to preserve and expand my work capacity so that I can take advantage more fully of more favorable contexts when they begin to occur: working sustainably is part of that. Burning out would be pound foolish. Yesterday I got the Elgar piece re-outlined and some of the prose chunked out into new order, feeling good about that, I’ve hit the phase where the work feels possible again on this piece, which is cool. Going to work on it now. Ah, also: temptation now will be to overwork, so I’m going to 30 minutes and stop after that. Again, sustainable. If I don’t work as much now even though I want to work more, I will feel frustrated but I also will be in effect prolonging the number of days I spend wanting to work. Actually maybe I should do 15 min on this piece and 15 on the LPE piece, for which I have less feeling of possibility… a planned and rational distribution of discomfort… Steer by best practice, not impulses and comfort. Plus if I overwork other responsibilities will stack up and eventually get between me and the writing work. So writing less now means writing more in total, and means a little more frustration now but less discomfort total. Thursday 2-6-20 Diligence failure, poor use of time this morning. That’s one of the threats of being tired. Sigh. I am not going to waste even more time beating myself up about this, I am just going to get down to work. I forgot my notes for the Thompson piece in my office and am a coffee shop. I’m going to do 15 minutes of writing on the LPE essay then try 15 min on Thompson essay but might bail if it goes poorly without my notes, then walk to my office, 15 (more?) min on Thompson essay, then gym, then other responsibilities. Friday 2-7-20 I’m at faculty writing group we’re spending the first bit writing quietly together. I should schedule more sessions like this, I like this kind of writing alongside each other kind of thing. I’m in the usual headspace and condition - tired, stressed etc - though it’s quieter in context of this shared writing space. I’m figuring out my argument still in the middle of this second drafting process for this Thompson essay. That’s challenging, one of the peak intimidation times. Going to get onto it now. Monday 2-10-20 I thought I had a meeting this morning but it’s 2 weeks from today. That’s a bit embarrassing and I wish I hadn’t rushed out the house, would have liked more time with my kids. The time freed up is nice. I’ve lost some of it refocusing, need to get better at planning and at things I can pick up rapidly during unexpected loose end moments (‘edge time’ I think it’s sometimes called?). Anyway. In the chair now. Going to write for 20 minutes on Thompsons piece then maybe another 20 on the LPS piece, then onto other responsibilities. I would like to finish the Thompson thing ASAP. Tuesday 2-11-20 In the chair. The usual starting point - tired, etc. It’s a good music day though. I am excited about some new records coming out (new Bruxa Maria!!), and I am frustrated that I am poorly paid so I need to check my bank balance tonight before buying any records. I’ve been poorly paid for pretty much my whole life and I am morally opposed to that but I am not especially angry, it’s been so long that it just feels like a fact of life. What I am very angry about, however, is my employer’s posture of respecting and valuing me while paying me poorly. That particular combination of rhetoric and action is crazy making. Anyways. I am going to go work on my marxist essay now. Oh on a more positive note: I’ve been asked to write for the Legal History Blog in July, about my book. That is very exciting. I’m a little intimidated, and I am flattered and honored. It’s a cool institution and I’m pleased people over there care about my work. Thursday 2-13-20 Didn’t diary yesterday. Day was super action packed, teaching and student meeting. I did make myself write for 15 min or so at the end of the day, which was hard because my head felt very foggy. Today I am tired out. The beginning of the semester is challenging and the fall and winter interim (so-called break) was high workload so I have accumulated tiredness. Sigh. Anyway. On an up note, I got the proof for the cover of my book, including the blurbs. It looks really nice and the quotes are touching. I need to write everyone thank you notes. I am at a coffee shop now. Going to work on the Thompson essay for 30min then see what else to do. Friday 2-14-20 In the chair late in the day, day got away from me for various reasons. The usual! Tired etc. I’m excited about the proof of my book cover, that’s cool, and I like the record review I just wrote. Going to work a while on this Thompson essay! 20 minutes I think then other responsibilities. Monday 2-17-20 Had to run some errands this morning and went to the gym so less time before teaching. Going to the gym is such a mood improver, worth the time costs and I suspect might in the long run turn into a time saver/time generator because of the mood and focus improvements. (I also went to the bakery and got my family donuts, doing something nice for my family before I go to work is also a mood improver, reduces the sense of guilt being away from them and is a way to spend time on what I really care most about.) I checked my email before I started writing, not a best practice. That’s a temptation with the gym in the morning. Resist it! I was going to work on the Elgar paper then remembered I sent it to Rob for a read, kind of him to do that and it’s nice to have it off my desk. Going to wok on the LPE paper for 20 minutes. Started to just jump into it without dairying first, which would have been fine but I want to keep the diary habit for when I need it. Onward. I did ten minutes and write 370 words, that’s enough for today on this given other responsibilities and I think I need to do more reading and sifting of old drafts, I identified those tasks in the writing for today. Tuesday 2-18-20 Late start today due to other commitments. That late start meant I really had to check email and do a bit of other work before writing. Situationally-compelled departure from best practices. Rest of the day might end up pretty busy so I’m going to write now for a little while. (Tuesdays are shaping up to be less writing-amenable than I had hoped. This schedule of all my teaching on M/W has some perks but it has costs in that I end up with big blocks of writing time, which is inefficient and unpleasant. I have to think about if I want to keep this schedule or not, if the other things that recommend it are worth it.) I’m back to the Thompson essay. Rob kindly read and gave comments. The essay is not yet ready and that is hard, frustrating, and I feel nervous I can’t pull it off as it turns out to be more complex than I thought. I think the timeline’s been delayed by book and other factors beyond my control and if I think of the timeline in terms of inputs of time on the essay rather than calendar days I’m actually on track fine. Going to work on it now. Wednesday 2-19-20 Feeling tired and kinda resentful. I am tired of being tired, I am tired of working so hard, I am tired of giving up so much like time with my kids and time for other interests outside my job. Oh well. This isn’t forever. What’s really going on is that I had a hard fall because of a combination of factors like finishing my book and overcommitting to projects, plus career stage stuff like more service and life stage stuff tied to my kids’ ages, then we all got real sick in January and I had to spend time on the projects I overcommitted to so I didn’t get to decompress enough, and I took on a bit more this spring in part for the money and the tenure file, so I’m now feeling the accumulated tiredness. It’ll work out, and I like what I am pulling off and I am proud that I can pull it off, especially in this kind of context. Going to work a bit on this Thompson essay then switch to other responsibilities. (I wish I’d gone to the gym today…!) Thursday 2-20-20 In the chair. Relatively alert? Relatively calm. I don’t want to write this essay and don’t believe I can finish it. That’s all just noise, poor mental hygiene, need to clean that up, do another round of mental posture work, gotta get my copy of the Boice book back from my friend. Got music on, got a window of time, gonna write on this essay a while now. Friday 2-21-20 Today went off the rails! I am resetting for a brief writing session now. I will pick myself up and dust myself off and work better on Monday. Will also try to get more done in the margins of the weekend. Ugh. Monday 2-24-20 The diary is feeling less necessary at least today and Friday. Not sure why. I’m not in an especially better mood. Maybe the diary’s not about mood so much as getting myself into writing regardless of mood? I think of it as about changing how I feel but maybe it’s more changing how I behave in response to how I feel? Or bits of all fo the above - it does help document mental habits, hence the refrain peridocialyl of ‘must improve mental hygiene’ (taking a lot of will not to fix that typo…! I will let it stand, I will!) I want to keep up the discipline of writing in here though for the sake of the benefits even if right now they are benefits I don’t really need, because I want them in place for when I do need them. Routine’s benefits are systemic, it builds safeguards that I want in place for when they do help. That they’re not helping right now is not reason to abandon them. (Plus this has other benefits like the mental hygiene need-identification, plus it’s just nice to see lots of entries, small sense of accomplishment, and it’s not like this is time consuming, this entry’s been 3 and a half minutes so far.) Okay onto the work day. 30 minutes on the Elgar/Thompson piece then other responsibilities. Wednesday 2-26-20 Forgot to write in here first yesterday. Had a productive day though. Today has gotten away from me. I think I overdid it a little yesterday and also didn’t get enough sleep. Other responsibilities intruded, and, tired, I didn’t exercise the discipline to put writing first. Now I’m short on writing time. Oh well. Not the end of the world, everyone has off days, but I need to not make a habit of it. I’m tired enough that I might struggle to do the thinking that writing requires but I’m going to try. Short session necessary because I teach soon. Here goes. Monday 3-2-20 In the chair. I slept okay last night and night before. I was feeling less tired but now can feel that I am fading a little - skipped coffee this morning, trying to cut back, maybe this is the cost. I think I need to dial down workload as soon as I can get clear of current projects (and the wave of grading that’s coming in)… so I guess in July… heh. I am feeling a bit nervous about this conference paper but I’m going to just write like I’m talking and see what I get. Here goes. Monday 5-11-20 Back to this! I need it. Haven’t done one of these since the Before Times. The During Times have been hard, distracted by the news and the uncertainty, and online teaching’s been exhausting. Also hard to find ways to work at home. I try to focus on how we have it better than many, but I just feel guilty and more scared that the bottom will drop out, and furious at the ‘we care about you’ rhetoric paired with unsustainable demands from my employer. Anyway. The semester is over. Aaaand two of my kids came in to chat with me in the room I was working in, 2yo wanted to sit in my lap. I gave her a hug and changed locations. Working feels impossible and I don’t want to do it either. This is what dissertating was like, so I know I can do it. This is so hard and I am frustrated that there’s been little institutional effort to reduce workload, at least any that I can see, and there’s been massive increase in workload as well. It makes the personal expressions of good feeling sit poorly. Like I guess I’m glad people in charge feel, as individuals, respect and gratitude for the people lower on the food chain, but this isn’t a work life that feels like being respected. Anyways. Down to the work. Tuesday 5-12-20 Work email today stating an intention to be back in-person in the fall. Feeling nervous about that, really don’t want to get the virus! A lot of time between now and then, trying to tell myself to not take it too seriously, but it’s distracting and I’m annoyed about the uncertainty (news flash! work is inhumane!) and once again frustrated that this comes from people who speak a vocabulary of values and care. Oh well. I’m going to work on a LHB post. Thursday 5-21-20 My spring semester is over. It was hard. I’m glad it’s over. I’m nervous for fall and resentful I have to teach this summer class. The class is cool though and less work than the semester was, so I can start to decompress. Also a little tense I have to start doing tenure file stuff soon, nervous about going up in the fall, but also glad I will be - these are not times where it’s good stay untenured longer! I want to get bak to a writing routine. I’m going to work on blog posts again for now, give myself a little while to do that plus writing diary to get some routine/rhythm in place, then start thinking about more ambitious projects. Monday 5-25-20 Slow start today. The usual complaints - tired, distracted, etc. I wrote a draft of a sort of column for an academic newsletter. I like it well enough. Glad I wrote it. I might see if I can make the time and energy this summer to do more of this sort of thing, relatively short form writing related to my stuff. I’m not sure if I want to do the reading it’d require but it’d be nice to have done it. I’m also craving a big project, I have to figure that out. I wish I had time for more of a break. I could take a break from writing but there’s all the tenure file and teaching prep and so on, and I think if I cut writing I will resent that other work more. Writing is consolatory and offsets the ways that other stuff depletes me. I am not looking forward to the isolation of the summer but I am dreading it less than last year because the transition from face to face human contact to summer isolation was more drastic than the transition from online professional life to summer. I dunno. In any case, I’m going to work on another blog post. Wednesday 6-3-20 It’s 12:15. We had our faculty writing group tele meeting today. Nice to be back in the group. I realized in the conversation there that I will benefit from doing some more macro-level planning for the summer, laying out goals and deadlines/milestones. I feel anxious about this because I don’t know how to chop the project into steps yet. Knowing myself that’s a sign that this is good work for me to do! I think I’m going to set up some conversations with friends and colleagues to hold me accountable for this and to help me figure out the steps, or at least commiserate with me while I figure out the steps. Some steps: - Figure out some key secondary works to read and take notes on - Figure out some key primary sources that are available now that I can work on (pieces of legislation, court decisions) - Reread the notes and plans I have for it so far, take further notes based on those - Review my other writing projects, pick two that I can develop as side projects that are secondary to the main project - Figure out a daily routine (this is easier for me than the macro-planning, do this later, I’m just brainstorming right now) - After I have the above sorted out, break the information generated by those into smaller and subsequent steps: acquiring materials, reading materials, etc. - Put those steps into chronological form, in the calendar. That will also bound how much time I allocate to those steps. I am very nervous about new projects. This is partly due to where I am on the project-lifecycle for these projects, and partly due to my routines and habits having fallen apart due to the [looks around] whole world. Daily routine: I should get back to the best practices I focused on before. Don’t do anything for my job and don’t do anything on a device until after I’ve written, and I may add ‘and read’ to that. Order of operations should be writing diary/vent file, free write, read, take notes on reading, other work. I’m going to start with exactly 30 minutes of free writing, exactly 20 minutes of reading, from ten 10 20 minutes of note taking per day. That’s all on the new main project. After that, other work, followed by 30 minutes work on a secondary project, at least 15 min of it writing/free writing, I can read for it if I need to as well, after writing. I should remember to cycle between side projects to develop them: I want a portfolio of materials at different stages that I can plug in to as I go along for times when the main project is off to readers. That will be a while! Also: I should add to my daily routine logging time and add to my weekly routine a check-in for the projects as a whole and checking in to the social/interpersonal/communal life of the project: do I have conversations with people scheduled, etc. This feels like a good start at planning. Still feels daunting but more manageable now. I should set up a new to-do list and self-organization file in here for writing, capture the above in that file. Five min left in my 20 minute writing session, going to write on the project now. Did that and did about 8 minutes free writing in response to the FWG convo about teaching (file ‘6-3-20 notes on how teaching can help my research’). I should capture that in the new file I mentioned above that I should create as part of re-organizing myself for the new projects and whatnot. I had another thought and have lost it now! What was it? Argh! Ah I remember. Another thing that would help would be to try to map out smaller things I can write that will serve the larger project, like I did with conference paper. I heard Chris Tomlins say that about his newest book once, the Nat Turner book, that he’d written essays en route to it. I do also want to just read as a reader and make time for that, works by friends, works in my fields etc, for instrumental reasons like feeling competent/up to date in my fields again and for that as an intrinsic good, also because it’s thought provoking to read others’ work (our work being internally dialogized) and because it’s nice to make contact with friends and colleagues in that way via their books, and just the intrinsic good that is reading. I should plan this out too as it will go better. Plan it out on the daily routine level and on the goals/deadlines level - make myself syllabi for my different reading purposes. This too will go better if I can build in a more interpersonal/communal aspect. Blogging my notes would help too I think. Oh, and read about writing, including Steinbeck’s writing diaries! That also will help. I don’t need to leap to 100% or ever hit 100% but these are best practices and trying to practice them, even when I don’t fully hit them, will help, just keeping these guidelines in my head as aspirations is helpful and also provides more of a sense of forward motion as well. Friday 6-12-20 I can feel the summer slipping away. My summer class is nearly done. Now what? Tenure file work, teaching prep, etc etc. What am I writing? At present I’m not. I’m frustrated about that. Thieves stealing my time. Today I reread the draft proposal I wrote for a second book. It’s written in a tone of confidence that I don’t feel, it’s really just hypotheses, guesses. I do like it though. Soon I should reread it and write up a list of tasks that it implies doing, use that to guide my work on the book. I should also figure out an allocation of time over the summer to different kinds of tasks, and different writing projects. There are 70 days until the first day of fall teaching. 50 of them are work days, tops. If I can do 2 hours per day on the new book that will be 100 hours. That will help, I will be in a different place after 100 hours, even if I am not at an ideal place yet. Aside from that, another 1-2 hours per day on other writing tasks. That will be enough writing work for the summer. 7-22-20 Fifteen minute timer set. I’d fallen off these and then was experimenting with hand writing them as morning pages. I wanted that to work better but I find it’s not what I want. Morning pages and other journaling practices may have other benefits and I’m open to experimenting with that stuff further but for me in my writing practice at present doing the vent file the way I was doing it is a better practice for the time being at least when it comes to my writing specifically. I am rattled by the pandemic and it’s (mis)handling by various authority figures and I keep getting re-rattled by news and by work emails. It’s like a loop or something and a kind of hyper vigilance I think. I want to work on reducing those stimuli and also on shaping my responses to those stimuli. Little by little. I am not where I want to be in the arc of my writing life this summer or in output, stage of project, etc. Any of it. I’m working on just accepting where I am instead of judging it. I am in a good place re: the above - arc etc - even though I can imagine being in a better place. Don’t let better be the enemy of good. Or rather try to reduce that habit. So, today, next: writing session on a workshop paper the onto the rest of the to-do list. I procrastinated starting. Loneliness and covid fear and fear of writing! Going to write now. Wrote on the LPE piece, went well. Wrote a tiny bit too long, pressed against stopping in time. Then procrastinated, posted Legal History Blog guest post, procrastinated more. I think the vulnerability I’ve felt and the attention, which has been good attention, has been distracting, invites judgment into my head, even positive judgment does that, harder to get and stay in a flow state.
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I've fallen off the discipline of keeping this diary to an important extent, and fallen off posting entries here. Posting a dump of entries now, bringing this up to date as of January 24, 2020. Cool to have 240 of these entries. Might reread them someday, not sure.
Thursday 4-18-19 Should have diaried first, didn’t do so. I’ve been doing some primary source research on the doctors stuff. I’d thought of this as outtakes from diss and book, presented some of that material worked up into (what I hope succeeds or can succeeds as) a standalone piece. I started looking into more primary sources in part in response to some criticisms and in part out of curiosity. I’ve been vacillating between bored and excited about it. I think this extra work is not productive at present for the specific object I am trying to produce. There could be another article or multiple or a book here, if I want to pursue that. I am unsure at present. I think I should hold off on all of that and try to be maniacally focused on getting this object produced with minimal time and effort. That feels funny, or rather cynical and ugly, to say. I think it’s actually the best route though because producing this object could help me decide if I want to pursue further work on all this or not, in addition to instrumental benefits. So I am going to give this draft a quick read. Friday 4-19-19 Tired. Unmotivated. Used my time poorly this morning then had meetings, now am post-meeting and feeling all of the inertia, reinforced now by guilt and regret. This is a fun time! Ugh. Regrouping now. Going to do a short writing stint then some work on other responsibilities. Will create a plan for next week before I go home. Had a hard time getting anything done for a lot of today then managed to write effectively on the doctors thing, which I got to a point where I felt I could put it away. I sent it to Alex asking him to read it and give me feedback by approximately early June. It’d be nice to have the piece relatively finished by midsummer - enough that I could send it to gatekeepers - and it’d be nice to stay away from it until early June. The law anthology piece is out to readers now as well, so I’ve no immediately live document for which I am trying to produce new prose. That’s a relief. I would like to begin a new book now/soon, but begin it very, very slowly and have it be very much on the back burner. Alongside that I want to make something of my Fraser paper, and I should talk to Eric about our co-written piece. I should also read the book I’m responding to at ASLH and see if I can get that written in advance. Writing time will be scarcer in the fall. Rough distribution of time over summer, estimated: - 15 min/day of work beginning new book - 45-60 min/day of priority 1 (either Fraser or thing with Eric, not sure yet) - 20-30 min/day of reading+taking notes on ASLH panel book - 20-30 min/day of priority 2 (either Fraser or thing with Eric, not sure yet) Go in that order too as I think that will leave me most refreshed and so on. I should figure out the rest of my priorities for summer. Monday 4-22-19 I am in the chair. I have not followed my best practices of diary first then writing. I checked email and whatnot. I feel more tired as a result. Must remember that I pay for it when I don’t follow the best practice. I have a day of mostly teaching-related administrative work and I am kind of dreading it. I don’t want to write or do anything really. I am very tired and feeling a bit sorry for myself. The two article/chapter drafts are off to readers. I am going to spend a few minutes free writing on how the Fraser paper could become an article, then a few minutes free writing on a new project. Mon May 13 Back at it after a long grade and sickness hiatus. Uuuuuggh I am paying for that hiatus. The hill grows every day it goes unclimbed. Feels totally vertical now. Maybe I’ll cry. Okay that’s overly dramatic. But god damn. Okay Im going back to the piece for Umut and Paul’s edited volume. Going to free write for a bit on that then crack open the file. Okay 721 words. Now to prep for a meeting. Back to work later. Ugh got a rejection on the latest iteration of the Murray article. Sad and mad about that. 5-22-19 At the faculty writing group summer kick off event, we’re starting with 30 minutes of writing. I don’t want to write! Not today, and feels like not ever! I am tired, and tired of writing and work. It is all so tiresome, burdensome. It’s not optional though. This is not a hobby, it’s a commitment and one with consequences. The Elliott Hulse thing - motivation is bullshit. I am unmotivated? Fine. Do it anyway. (Cue Alec Baldwin’s Glengarry Glen Ross speech.) Sigh. So what am I working on? Ummmmmm I’m going to revisit my list and make a decision. Looking at the list gets 2 minutes tops. Okay doctors article. Thurs 5-23-19 Wow what a difference writing near people makes, yesterday in the writing group, so much better than alone. Have to think about how to have more of that in my life again. Feeling at a loose end today, unsure what to do, unmotivated etc. Motivation is bullshit! It’s a discipline, not a hobby. So, figure it out. Will do. Going to look at my list and pick one. June 7, 2019 Slept wrong and my shoulder and neck hurt. Can’t get into a comfortable sitting and typing position. (Typoed that as “sitting and typing poison”; mood appropriate!) I wanted to get right down to work today, focus focus focus. Didn’t. My habits need a tune up. Some work things and some life things are weighing on me right now, need to not dwell on that and not use it as an excuse for poor habits. I think it’s a bit like different sorts of economic downturns, business cycles and larger cycles and bigger crises… I think right now I’m having a work frustration downturn and a minor life challenge downturn overlap, and they do so at another kind of downturn in terms of my writing projects - some stuff is very early, other stuff is very late, and nothing that’s on my desk is in the middle. Early and late require more pushing, I feel the momentum in the middle. Long term I’d like to get to where I have just enough projects to always have something that’s providing some momentum. Maybe this is just wishing again for greener pastures. Someday someday, it’s today right now so get to it. Okay. I’m going to do 15 minutes on the doctor article then re-assess. Thurs 6-13-19 Lack of motivation! A mistake to think motivation matters. Motivation is the feeling that shows up as the reward, the endorphins afterward. Scared my work sucks, as usual, scared I can’t figure it out, etc. I’ve not made things easier for myself because I’ve not planned out as well as I could have the tasks to take up, so I’m having to choose what to do. I’m going to just pick something and jump in there. Soon I’ll do the planning for the sake of future starts. Timing/context’s not ideal (of course it never is), as it’s late in the day for various reasons, starting earlier when more fresh is better. Gotta do the work in the windows I have though, wishing for other windows is silly. Okay jumping in. Went fine. Had more ideas, arrived at some motivation. The trick to writing is to write, learning that for the millionth time. Fri 6-14-19 Tired again, distracted. Hard to start. What am I doing today? I’m at a lull point with projects. It’s always hard work but I’m at an even harder work point, no momentum in the projects to pull me forward. Oh well. Gotta do it anyway. Monday 7/17/19 In very late for various reasons and haven’t written since Friday so am especially struggling. This was a badly planned and executed day and I am frustrated about that. Those frustrations are snowballing - so many design flaws! Summers are stupid! Etc. I am wasting already scarce time this way. Writing is never easy, is it harder today or is this how it always is? I am so tired of this, I want to just quit writing entirely, never write again. I would of course miss it. The coffee hasn’t helped, I overshot the jittery line, and I am not alert/awake/slept enough. Ugh. Okay so what will I work on? I’m going to commit to a 15min free write on a new project plus 15 min on the co-written thing then move in to copy edits on the book. I am earning… something here, if the difficulty is virtuous. I hope it is; I’d hate to think this was all a waste (actually I do sometimes thing this was all a waste). Anyway own to actual work. Okay I wrote 15 min on a new thing. I pretended I know what I’m talking about, I may well be wrong in some of the claims and will need to find evidence either way (and change what I can’t support/what is contradicted by evidence). Still, I wrote 543 words. Good enough. It’s something. It helps me think and holds the space in my routine. Wed 6-19 I feel like I need a vacation, a restful one where I sleep for like 12 hours a day. In a few years, when the kids ages’ and my work responsibilities permit. Partly I’m tired from going back to the gym maybe a bit more assertively than necessary. Ah well. It’s low energy tired, not exhausted. I have some worries about my book, the usual, but I will live with the stuff I can’t fix and deal with any problems as they come. What am I working on today? Going to review my project list and see. I got a fancy coffee and its delicious and very hot so I’m sipping it slowly, maybe a quarter cup into it, so my caffeine supply’s on the low side at the moment as well. Thurs 6-20-19 I got the proofs of my review of Dan Bouk’s book. That felt nice. I like the book and I like my review of it. I made one correction, filled out the forms and sent it in. It’s nice to finish a thing, and to like a thing. What now? Time is scant because of various other obligations, feeling tense about that. Am I going to miss the gym again? Sigh. What to work on... gotta check my list and really dive in. Fri 6-21-19 Extra tired today. Coffee’s too hot to drink fast, can’t stop yawning, can’t make up my mind on what to work on. Ugh. Will be pleased to see this life stage and career stage end, though I know I will miss the former. The latter is trash tho. Anyway. What am I doing, have to review my notes from before and figure that out. Okay starting with the coauthored article. Monday 6-24-19 Trouble getting started; not choosing to jump in, that’s the trouble, or part of it. I suppose it’s not true or fair to say ‘lack of discipline is the sum total of the difficulty’ - I have to not only do the work but manage the doing; set up an infrastructure myself so to speak - but self-discipline is most of what I can control. Need to keep my response to lack of diligence a pro-productivity one, though, not make it a further waste of energy and time. Probably should figure out better accountability structures too. (Summer is a lie that masks design flaws!) So, what am I doing today? Lookin @ the task list now. Okay down to work. Worked a while. Forgot to record time or word count first so hard to mark progress. Sigh. Tuesday 6-25-19 Need to go back to writing journal is 1st thing I do everyday for work and 1st thing involving laptop, followed immediately by writing. I am struggling w/ the summer lack of accountability and intellectual community. Hermitage or hyper-availability, what a poor arrangement. I suppose it’s profitable for the beneficiaries. Mustn’t let myself tip over from accurate analysis into cynicism. What am I doing today? Must check the to-do list. Have to get home early for a family thing as well, and want some gym time as well. Need to focus and get down to work… ideologist interpellate thyself… Wed 6-26-19 In late, had other responsibilities earlier. I can feel the difference in mental acuity. Am I aging into being a morning person? The horror…! The coffee has not kicked in yet and I want it to so much. Going to work on the co-written piece. Ugh. Why do I Thurs 6-27-19 Tired today. Yesterday ended on a disorganized and sour note, had to rush home due to mix up re: the car, had to walk quite a ways. It’s too hot today, was last night, should have turned the A/C on, slept poorly. Got coffee but hot enough to require small sips, not caffeinated yet. I am in the chair though. That’s the starting point today I’ve not taken the scenic route to get there. Going to review my to do list and jump in. Top item was reread for consistency; I can feel that I’m tired enough that this is going to be challenging. Going to instead plan to go to campus later to print the thing. Reading will go better on paper. Or maybe try later after the coffee kicks in. Fri 6-28-19 In late. So much harder to start on days like this. Need more coffee. Total lack of motivation or energy, and feel pessimistic - big case of the whybothers. Gotta do it anyway. Not optional. What’s on the list? I am so tired, typing is like pulling teeth. Did a bit. Did copy edits too, then took a walk and more edits. [Shrug] Wed 7-3-19 Had a difficult parenting morning, took the kids on an outing and it didn’t go well. Has taken me a while to shake that off. Sigh. I am tired of work and of the balancing act of work, family, and trying to get a little exercise sometimes. Oh well. This career stage and family stage are both quite intense and ultimately not that long-lasting. Gotta play it as it lies. So what am I doing now in the remains of the day? Gotta figure that out. Fri 7-5 I worked yesterday a bit, I forget what I did though! Brief window again today. Harder to work late in the day. Just now I have multiple things off my desk. I have things I could work on that are currently backburnered; I’d have to return them to the front burner then. The upside to that would be greater proximity to completion and the sense of momentum I’d have once I woke back up to those pieces. The downside is that eventually the things on my desk will come back and then I’ll have too much again and would need to re-backburner those things. I also think that working on them now will leave me in the future with no options for things I can have momentum on. So I’m going to leave those back burnered and work on the more long term stuff that I’m also in much more early stages of. That will be harder now but is the better long term choice. Going to pick a thing and free write a bit on it, then read a while, then onto other non-writing responsibilities. Mon 7-8-19 This doesn’t get easier I guess. Every day I have to pick the rock back up and it’s always heavy. I should probably return to the mental hygiene effort I was making earlier this year as I think I’ve slid back a bit on that. But I also think I need to just embrace the fact that the work is hard work, and stop wishing it wasn’t. Sigh. Mondays especially hard, the days away, and I’m in later, also harder, more tired. ‘The context is inauspicious’ I cry every time as if it matters. So what am I doing? Where to start? Going to glance at my projects list. Okay going to free write for the possible new book project. This is a spacer as per Rebecca Schuman, it’s fine if the results are garbage. Better: the results will be garbage. It’s the image MK gave me - the reservoir of good writing is below the reservoir of bad writing. Getting out the bad writing helps make the good writing more available for the future. I feel the annoyance and doubt and so on of bad writing now so I can feel the benefits of good writing later. Present me taking one for future me (who should do more to express gratitude to past me; a mental note for that mental hygiene thing I mentioned). Okay down to it. 340 words. Enough for today. Wed 7-17-19 I got my last footnote edited yesterday so that’s the manuscript as done as I know how to make it. Wrote emails trying to begin thinking through blurbs, and getting the book indexed. I’m having pre dissertation defense nervous feelings; this emotional state was unexpected. It’s not a big deal, volume knob is turned low on those feelings, just a surprise is all. Didn’t write yesterday. Can’t remember if I did the day before that or the 4 days prior. I may well have written on things that I didn’t put dates on. I know it’s at most 4 days because I have a dated free write on the 12th. I did do some writing in condensing footnotes and such. I’m not minimizing the accomplishment of the book, I am very proud of myself, it’s just that I want to maintain the discipline of creating new prose from scratch a little each day. Anyway, if I’ve not written the past few days then it’s just a few days and I’ve had these breaks before. Going to write now. Thurs 7-18 I am so tired. Late in the day. Late start (raccoon in the attic, had to call pest control to try to get them to come out; also hung out w/ Sam who is leaving for a good elsewhere, happy for her and sad not to see her as often soon) and very tired - the heat, the baby, the raccoon, the lateness of the hour. I read a while and hit the point where it was hard to take in the words. Too late in the day for coffee though. Sigh. So going to make myself free write a bit, for the discipline like. Fri 7-19 More sleep, more caught up, less tired. As good as it gets I think. Oof. My mind is blank regarding possible new project so I think I need to read and have more to react to, dialog with, draw upon. For the sake of free writing I’m going to switch up and free write on something else; this is spacer writing, holding the discipline and practice, so that content is less important. I’ve written a fair bit toward the possible new thing, almost 7,000 words over the past month and change, that’s a lot considering how little I actually know about any of it! For this spacer writing I will try to keep doing that for that project and when I am drawing a blank I can do it for other possible projects; again I’m just holding the space. I think I am creating ideas that are interesting and will help me in the future but that’s a by-product. Plus writing on one thing can spark ideas about another thing. So, going to free write on something else, then spend a while reading and taking notes, then onto other responsibilities. Mon 7/22 Slept super poorly last night, too hot. So tired now. Hard to think. Don’t want to do anything. Ugh. Mind feels not just blank but like a surface that can’t be written on, like a black hole pulling in light. Blech. Coffee’s still too hot to drink. I’ll wake up after the coffee kicks in though I have a work meeting to go to in just over an hour so time is feeling scant. I wish there was more summer left, I am about 6 weeks behind where I’d hoped to be. Oh well. This is how it is. Have to live with the reality of the situation, not wish it was otherwise. Going to read a while. Tues 7-23 Tired, distracted by other commitments, and I remain in this relative valley between projects with momentum — nothing rolling downhill that I can be pulled along by (the grass is already greener…! As if the book didn’t feel like one long uphill slog…) I’m trying to figure out how to integrate reading and writing. Freewriting is harder the less I know about a subject, but reading and learning without integration into a writing project is also hard, feels aimless. (Have to keep that in mind in my teaching, empathize even more with students who start from a dead stop.) Okay going to make an effort at free write. Did it for a little while, 150 words or so. Lots of questions, lots to learn…! Learning is hard. Decided to write on the book I’m speaking about in the fall. I’m only about a third of the way through but I wanted to try to get something down to collect some thoughts I’ve had and generate new ones to keep thinking about as I proceed, and so I’ll feel better about the conference deadline. That worked. I have 1650 words after 55 minutes of typing. Pleased about that. Late in the day. Emailed this to Alex. “I ended up writing a draft of my conference paper today based on what I've read of the book. I think that was a good use of my time and am pleased at the pace - 1800 words today - but I also feel like my performance was lackluster because my diligence fell off pretty significantly later and because I didn't make the headway I wanted to make in actually reading the book, only got about ten pages in. I think I need to retool how I define success; should probly try to default to 'how did I succeed today?'” Wed 7-24 Might be catching a cold. Sigh. Worn out, want a vacation, like a real one that’s restorative. Read a while, took some notes. Going to make myself free write. Thurs 7-25-19 Had some home repair stuff to do this morning, got in late. As usual tired and distracted. Perpetual ugh. Read that book a while. Did some work email. I am sad at how little summer is left. I am also sick of the summer, not just the heat but the social summer - the isolation and lack of routine. I don’t think I can afford a sabbatical but I would like one, and if I do take one I will need to set up routine and social contact. Sigh. Anyway. I need to get home soon, have not managed a free write yet; should have journalled first. Going to make myself grind out a free write now. Okay 27 minutes, 1030 words related to new project, mostly aspirations, some big picture plans and tiny bit of content. Wed 7-31-19 Late in the day. Been an off week. Read a lot earlier today. Free wrote some earlier this week on a blog post responding to an article. This spacer writing is hard to do - writing is always hard to do! - Maybe this is harder because it feels like I’m not doing anything worth doing, just holding the space in my schedule to write. Writing is always hard for a particular reason. Maybe it really is objectively harder sometimes but I think mostly whatever is making it hard this time is the hardest thing to deal with. It’s hard work that’s why it’s hard, it’s exertion. Reminder number five thousand. Going to free write for a bit now, I have a thought to start with. Okay free wrote 430 words. Thurs 8-1-19 Read a while today. Set up new OS so Dropbox will start working again. Then had too much in Dropbox, had to pull some stuff out. Annoying. That kind of meta-work feels pointless. Oh well. Tired now, minimal bit of day left. Going to make myself do 15 min of free writing. Not sure on what at the moment. Fri 8-2-19 Free wrote 200 words on new project. Felt like pulling teeth! Sigh. Family trip starts sunday. Summer feels like it’s evaporating. Sigh again. Going to do a bit more writing on another thing for a bit then do some teaching-related work, then probably read and/or gym? Mon 8-26-19 I’ve done some blog writing and note taking, and work on my book’s index and such, but no writing-writing really for a while, between family trip and course prep and a bit of time off. Tonight though I wrote up a prose toward a description of my second book such as it is, for the ASLH event. Glad to have that down. I feel inadequate and intimidated, but whatever. Gotta start somewhere, and writing this up gets me a bit further down the road. 9-13-19 Friday the 13th! Back at it. The dairying I mean. I’ve been writing with at least moderate dilligence for the last while but my records say I’ve not written in the writing diary for 2 or 3 weeks, and have been very spotty before that for month or more. I am today tired and distracted, and feeling a bit of the why bothers. I have a second book project idea in mind that I have suddenly begun to doubt. I had doubted my ability to pull it off all along but now I’m like ‘maybe I should do this other thing for my second book instead.’ This is all very premature as I am so preliminary, I have invested what is ultimately a small amount of time. The practical way forward is to find the area of overlap between the two projects and focus there, and decide later when it can be a more informed decision (since both involve substantial new learning about areas I don’t know well yet). This is also I think really just an expression of my worries and my career stage and life moment. The answer for that is to keep going and to also give my habits a tune up - start the diary again, check self talk to see if I need to tweak it, get back to a sustainable work routine and so on. I am also having a bit of the grass is greener and some sense of intellectual loneliness (meanwhile I feel harried and busy so that activity that is objectively an expression of intellectual community feels stressful in terms of time management). Again it’s not about what it’s about, it’s really about my underlying headspace. I think this is all normal for where I’m at. I like to think of it as a kind of inaccurate text to speech converter that is mistaking the groans and other exertion sounds of my writing life for utterances with propositional content. Mostly it’s just that exertion is hard, but that’s why it’s good for me, why I’m proud of doing the work. Anyway. I am not much relieved; I wanted the diary to fix everything and it didn’t. What’s the line? “My expectations always fail me.” Back to work. Did a free write on content for ten minutes, 400ish words, feeling better. Goign to log the time and words in my writing tracker. Tuesday 9-17-19 Yesterday did not go according to plan. Lots of unexpected in-person time for various reasons. All stuff I value but I got nothing else done and it’s tiring. I am feeling both worried and drained today as the rest of my week is looking to be roughly similar. There’s a phrase in a kid’s book I like — get scared later. Fretting now in my already scant time is counterproductive. Fret after the fact, to decompress, rather than beforehand in anticipation, that’s a big waste of energy. I am also intimidated by the stage of the work I am in. I keep thinking I need to (or actually will) get over that, but really this is a constant, just one that varies in its mode of expression. It’s like in my friend Tom’s comic that I have on my wall, every day you have to choose again. I’m going to write now. Wrote for 30-45 min, 750 words. fri 9-20-19 I accidentally wrote 11-20 at first because I glanced at the clock and it’s 11am but also it felt right that it would be already November.Where is the time going? To meetings and email. Sigh. Writing workshop today. Glad for it as I think I wouldn’t do this writing time otherwise. What am I working on? I have those potential book projects. I will work on the project description for one of those for the ASLH event. Five minutes left in workshop writing time, another round of writing time @ the end. Writing group was so good! We wrote a little (10min), checked in, discussed on piece of work-in-progress, now we’re back to writing. I am in so much better a mood now especially regarding writing. I also REALLY want to check my email and so on. I should start a resistance journal again and do it on paper. Okay I am going to write for 20 minutes, that’s our window. Friday. Been a hard week. I think I wrote nothing all week. That’s frustrating. I wrote this morning though for about 45 minutes, 1100 words trying to explain new project(s) for the conference event. Good to write. Tempted to keep going and over-write/binge-write. Going to stop now, better to get other work done now and help set myself up to integrate writing back into my ongoing routine. I will say, I like the future projects I’m sketching out. It’s nice to feel interest and excitement in a project. Thurs 10-3-19 I am in the chair and ready to start writing. I am going to work on a co-authored piece. I wrote yesterday. I have been writing recently though more eratically than I would prefer and without sufficient tracking. I might consider printing out tracking sheets and trackign by hand then inputting later. I am unsure. I should also go back to reading about writing. I am feeling a bit nervous about new writing projects and gun-shy about presenting my work to audiences I think of as gatekeepers. I am also feeling excited about the ideas in the work and about intellectual relationships that aren’t gatekeepy, like I have with my co-authors. Sometimes I think academic writing culture is an anti-writing culture, objectively anti-intellectual. It is hard not having a big project, not having big momentum. I like the small pieces I have going on but I want a bigger project to be further along. I want small pieces as a break from and as things that operate alongside but in support of a big project, not as things that are instead of a big project. That said in this lull between big projects of early time in beginning a new big project it is good to have small things to keep me writing. I need to be sure to also put in time, though, to advancing the big project(s). I suspect that means slightly less time at the keyboard and less time trying to create new prose and more time reading and researching for a while, and taking notes and thinking out loud about what I may be finding. Anyways. I am going to start writing on this cowritten piece. Short session. Short session turned out to be a long session. Gotta watch that. Glad for what I got done; got the co-written piece to another full draft and sent it to co-author. Need to move on to other work now, maybe gonna eat and recaffeinate first. Friday 10/4/19 11:57am Trying out the composition mode on Scrivener. Took a few minutes to get the settings how I like - the paper fully non-transparent (opaque! That’s the word!). A very irritating few minutes, I think indicative of my usual disposition to impatience and also to my situation/immediate mental state which is high frustration and impatience. I think I’m stressed a lot and it starts to feel like my personality, like that’s who I am. Some of that’s context that’s largely out of my control and some of that are mental habits that I could eventually change. I resent that the latter is all I can shape here. Sigh. Anyway. It’s friday, weekend coming up, looks to be full of home maintenance work, which is also frustrating, activity that’s neither especially satisfying nor restorative nor relational - unlike hanging out with my kids. I guess the mental weather report is cloudy and drizzly. Writing-wise what am I doing? I keep thinking of this as a lull but that’s not accurate, I’m actually pretty active as a writer, I just am active on smaller things and am early in the project curve/lifecycle of several projects. That’s a matter of the position or context in which or on which I am acting, it’s not a matter of my activity level. My activity level is relatively high, which I’m pleased about and which is a bit tiring. Not overly so, just that I am exerting myself and in terms of keeping track of my performance to any degree if I am doing a tiring thing but not remembering it then I will not understand why I am tired while doing other things. I’m tired because I’m working hard, in lots of areas, including writing. More tracking would likely help this. Have to get back to that habit. What am I actually writing on today? I am unsure. Should be a short session. Going to look at my project list and come back to here. Before I do so, composition mode is nice, I like the image I’m using for the backdrop (grey landscape scene, a field and abandoned barn like where my grandparents lived), and it’s good for focus. Okay going to free write for a few minutes with timer on the edited volume piece for next year. Free wrote 15min. Timer + composition mode = really good today. I want it to be a magical thing that makes writing always and forever after easy. I bet that will definitely happen, right…? Sigh. I also had trouble being motivated to start. But once underway it was good. 15min and 538 words, and clarifying and thought provoking words. Monday 10-7-19 Getting to writing late in the day, events conspire as ever, my own self-pity is a double agent within that conspiracy of events, as if spending time feeling sorry for myself is anything but a further loss of time. As usual I am finding it hard being in the early stages of things. I should try to map out projects and see if I can develop a portfolio of work, have two items per stage - say zero stage like I’m at much of the time now, then early but in motion, then middle, then late but still with writing task lefts, then finalizing when it starts to feel like busy work. This is an aspiration to a state that I find exciting (is that just what aspiration is…?) In any case, I should get down to work today. I am going to free write some ideas for another new thing that I’ve committed to writing. Ah I should remember that, committing to things is a way to get the work done, by threats. Anyway, down to it, 15min with a timer no less and because of other responsibilities no more. Okay 15 min and 694 words. Tempted to call them garbage words but I suspect that’s a bad habit. I have more words and thoughts than I did before. I am a few more feet up the hill. And I like some of the questions I have begun to wonder about as a result. In the chair. Slow start this morning. Tired, distracted, averse to working, scared, etc etc. The usual. Thinking again of my friend’s comic that’s on my wall, Garfield saying ‘every day you have to choose again.’ I think I could likely do more automating to reduce choices and save some will power but ultimately this remains true, every day it’s a choice, it’s a commitment that takes will and discipline. And yet at the same time it’s not optional. I have to do the work. I want to try to make the work inevitable, then get over avoiding the inevitable. On that note I’m going to look at my list of projects and pick one to jump into, 15 minutes is all, that’s not a big deal. I wrote in Scrivener composition mode with a timer (write a little after the timer to finish up a thought). Took a minute to shake off my frustrations with my context when I first started. When I am in that headspace am right but uselessly so, getting in my own way, hard to get into the subject at hand. I did it though. The activity timer app I have is good, I figured out how to have it do a pop up window when the time goes off, which is very helpful. Mostly wrote planning words today, figuring out how to further the beginning of this project. I keep thinking of it like ‘still need to figure out how to begin’ but I have already begun. I feel impatient with this phase of the project and worried that I will never get out of it, that I will not actually pull off the project, feels like I can’t do it, but those are just feelings not accurate assessments of capacity. It always feels this way, those are habits of mind (should revisit the Boice on self-talk and the Sword on emotional habits). Not real prose but a lot of planning words, 849 of them. That’s a good sized number for 15-20 minutes of writing. Happy with that. All told I have about 8,000 words toward this project. I think I will feel better when I get to 20k or 40k. I am figuring it out, I am under way. Okay onto other work. thursday 10-9-19 Suboptimal circumstances continue, as they always will, hence the need to vent. Had 8 student meetings yesterday, which is good and rewarding but very tiring, on top of teaching 3 classes. Haven’t been sleeping enough - work stress, partly - and woke up today with a cold. I’m kinda worried about the direction of the big picture at work (the small big picture I guess, as opposed to the big big picture of the world), and frustrated about parts of it. It’s not in my immediate sphere of influence, and I feel guilty about not trying to expand my sphere of influence to make my concerns actionable. I dunno. Stuff’s hard. Hard all over. Gotta live anyway. Hard to be patient and whatnot. The state of the world locally and writ large brings a lot of big feelings. It is better to be someone who responds that way than someone indifferent, but I dunno if it *feels* better. I dunno. Anyway. Tired, cranky, the usual. Lots of other work meetings this week too (I think we maybe meet too often; inefficient, though it’s nice to see people). Have to wake up, lock in, focus and get down to work. Wrote all this down, don’t really feel any better, but probably will feel even worse in a few days if I don’t write it down. I dunno. Going to do a short writing session on a project. 15 min again. I regret not writing yesterday. 17 minutes, 762 words. Still trying to figure things out. Up to 8600 words for the project. Aiming for 40k, I think around that point I will feel better about it, like I have enough to count as having started. To really get to 40k I may need to read more as well. Saturday 10-12-19 Didn’t write yesterday, day was totally full of meetings. Did talk to an old friend and colleague on the phone about the new project a little in the process of catching up a little, so that was at least making a little contact with it. Writing a bit before bed on some ideas I had tonight. Good to check in with the work, and having these ideas helps make clear that it’s good to try to write regularly because ideas will occur between sessions this way. Tuesday 10-15-19 My laptop is a distraction-rich environment. I just spent five minutes moving the icons on the toolbar around and getting annoyed at how there are like 5 of them that don’t do anything for me but do things for my employer, which crowds out actual uses for me like where the timer app icon is. Clearly a good use of my time and a proportionate response to a very important problem… sigh. I am in composition mode on Scrivener now, have to make this habitual because it really is better. Term is in full swing, this is day 2 of fall ‘break’, a term I loathe as there are no breaks. There are about two weeks of actual break a year in my work life. I did some writing yesterday for a co-authored piece, which has been a joy to work on. I am unsure what to write on for my writing session now as again everything is off my desk. I guess I need more writing projects but ones under timelines I control? Unsure. Going to look at my list now. If I can’t find an appropriate place to plug in then I will just pick one and free write, or free write on an article about teaching. I’m hesitant to do the latter because teaching takes up so much time and headspace already (I like it a lot but its hard to carve out room for anything else) and I worry that spending much time writing about teaching will result in teaching taking over my writing time/headspace. Anyway, going to do 15 min then onto other responsibilities. 15minutes-ish (wrote a little after timer went off) 722 words of spitballing. Little by little, day by day. Composition mode plus this timer app is GREAT. Thursday 10-17-19 In the chair. Slow start. Distracted and tired. Ah wait, gonna set 5min timer. Done, now in composition mode. Stop paying attention to that so I’ll stop paying attention at all and just write. Part of the fun is getting into a flow state, like with drawing. Maybe that’s part of the point of the journal, trying to get out the stuff that stands between me and a flow state, and helping create more clarity on the route to flow…? I got invited to write something for a journal based on a blog post and it’s cool and flattering but intimidating. I have to actually pick what I want to argue and develop, which is work and I am tired, and I worry that I’m not onto anything worth being onto. Having impostor feelings (‘maybe they invited me just to be nice!’) Ugh. Gotta reread the Voice and Sword and give my mental habits a tune up. So what am I going to do for today’s writing? 15 min on the new piece I got invited to do. Going to free write or try to write the first draft or something, to figure out what I really want to do. That gets 15min, as I have a lot of other work to do. Looking forward to writing group tomorrow and having a longer block of writing time. Honestly I feel almost constantly inadequate - mental habits again - but more objectively I think I’m doing quite well, productivity-wise, especially given my teaching load. Gotta work on recognizing that more, give myself some credit. Should maybe write about that, why it feels funny to do so. I wonder if it’s partly a class and region thing. Anyway time for my 15 min - ah the 5 min timer just went off, nice. Gonna get down to it. 647 words. Getting a bit clearer. Little by little. One foot in front of the other. Friday 10-18-19 In writing group right now. No workshop component. We’re doing write on site as a group for maybe 45 minutes. A different nervousness this way - must be accountable! Don’t mess around - but also comforting, easier to face the work. I should try to set up more work sessions with others like this. Still feeling nervous at a baseline level about the new projects, I should dig into and capture some of that nervousness, map the self-talk to try and interrupt it as per the Boice. I think I did pretty well at that last time I made an effort late in the book. I guess I thought maybe it was over and done then but maybe this is more like stretching, something I need to do on an ongoing basis. Anyway, going to get down to it properly today - working on turning a blog post into a possible article. Moving on to that now. Thursday 10-24-19 I’m at a high frustration time in the lifecycle of the job and to some extent in my family lifecycle, and I’m tired out so my frustration tolerance is lower. It will all work out but this is not peak fun-time. Oh well. I ran into a colleague this morning who is in a similar situation and we vented together then began to talk about trying to get together to read some things, we got into a tangent about being in our 20s and being excited about and having time to read things like Kafka and Kierkegaard and we both got much more animated and energized. That’s revealing. I want to try to remember to work to cultivate more of that, in a practical way - spend more time on things that will generate that affect. I will say, I took a bit of time last night to write a record review and tried to take some risks in it as a writer, that was rewarding and I’m proud of myself for making the effort. And now some scholarly writing time. I’m going to do 15 min on the possibility of turning a blog post into an article. 15min, 565 words. In a bit more doubt about the piece than when I started because I developed new questions, sort of tore out the floor and realized I needed to build a new foundation. Important to realize but means a bit more work than I thought I’d have to do. I’ll get there, though this is not the most fun realization. Anyway. Onto other work. Friday 10-25-19 Slow start today, not diligent enough, regret that a little. Am tired, not enough sleep and an overly long week, not enough breaks in the future either. Oh well. Refocusing now. I am intimidated by this article project. Facing the gatekeepers is anxiety inducing. Maybe the point of peer review is to keep people who are less fancy out of the circles of the fancy. I dunno. That’s an effect tho. Academic publishing practices seem out of whack, whatever the reasons. Anyway. I saw a thing where someone suggested trying to write in comic sans font to reduce writing anxiety. I’ll try that. Okay 15 min, 400 words. [Shrug] It’ll have to do. I think I’m on the right track now…? Hope so? Monday 10-28-19 At coffee shop, short window of time before a meeting (what kind of monster shcedules a meeting for 9am, that’s the middle of the night!) doing this diary for 5 w/ a timer in composition mode, just writing anything to make my fingers move on the keyboard. Kids trading colds at home, me too, not enough sleep, too much work, and the coffee’s too hot to drink. Going to a new faculty orientation event to talk about faculty writing group, feeling a bit of fraud feelings, which are inaccurate but are a clumsy expression of the challenge of writing. What does McPhee say? A small version of writers block faces every writer at the beginning of each day? What am I working on? I guess the article version of the blog post. The proximity to gatekeepers makes it so much worse! Might try writing in comic sans again. Maybe try to get mad, fuck that bullshit gatekeeper garbage, I used to get fan letters from senior scholars with my dumb little blog, the broken systems of peer review are the problem, as is the other garbage they’re embedded in. True but didn’t work as pep talk. Anyway. Onto ten minutes of grinding out prose.Okay 10min. 300 words. Ugh thursday 10-31-19 On the bus. Tired, grumpy. Too much work, too little sleep, and I haven’t written for the last 2 days Missed the first bus too, found myself grumpy about the second bus, people using the bike rack and stuff, slowing the bus down. That’s unfair and petty of me. Back’s been sore lately too, too little exercise, too much sitting. A supervisor at the postdoc I had after grad school said that he lost 50 lbs after getting tenure because he could say no to things and could prioritize exercise. He said being pretenure is really bad for your health. I’ve hung on to that, that this isn’t my fault. Ugh. Lots of bad institutional arrangements in the world, and lots of dull whining about them. Good to let it out, get bored by it, and so remember to focus on other things that are enjoyable. Looking forward to writing group tomorrow. In the coffee shop now, gonna drink my coffee then look at my writing tasks. Going to do 15 min of timed free writing then will pick a project to do some work on. Oh yeah I need to remember to look at the Boice and Sword on self-talk, I can feel that mine has slipped, tied to getting drafts back with comments. Should journal on that as well, would make for better quality of life and more efficient work. 40 minutes, 1000 words. Lot of big feelings, struggling with the ideas, still figuring what I really want to say in this essay for S+S. Sigh. But I’m 1000 words closer. My friend Bill said something the other day, we were complaining about the hints of winter, the cold and snow, and he said ‘but this is also all taking us that much closer to the first day of spring.’ That’s a good attitude. I write down into the dark and cold because that’s how I can eventually come out the other side. Friday 11-1-19 Music on, at writing group, silent writing together for about half an hour. Doing the vent file as a best practice, tempting to just jump into the writing. Frustration tolerance low lately due to lack of sleep and due to stress at work and stress from money; I think we’re getting by okay but expenses have been high (again!) this year, this time from car stuff etc, so we’re basically covering our costs of living each month right now. I work so much and our kids are so much work that it’s hard to imagine doing any more work right now but I also want to be able to buy a meal out sometimes and get a new record or t-shirt - not to mention trying to save for things like a new water heater and furnace and windows, or paying for the salary cut that would go with a year-long sabbatical - so I am considering looking for gig work online. I resent that I have to do this, think about this. The messages that come with my job confuse me - ‘we respect you, we value you’ and I think that’s sincere from the people who say it but those are not built into financial operations, hence the money worries. Respect doesn’t pay for my increase health insurance premiums. Anyway, all that on the mind. I think it will work out, as long as our relative luck holds i.e. barring any unforeseen problems (like we had this year with the car dying). Stressful tho, and makes the hard parts of the work weigh heavier. Timer just went off telling me this has been 5 minutes. I think this combo of composition mode hence reduced distractions in view plus a timer that pops up plus some music, this is a good way to work. And so now onto the work. Oh also, mental note, I want to work on mental hygiene again. I got some traction on that last year or earlier this year. That was in a different context re: the lifecycles of my projects/my writing life. I had late- or late-middle-stage book writing tension. Now I have very late stage final revisions of article plus very early stage beginning an article and beginning a book tension. So different self talk I think, plus probably just need to just periodically/regularly pay attention to and give a tune up to this self talk. Okay now for real onto the work, feeling more calm and positive now, the vent file works, and not much time for the payoff. Going to read Eric’s notes on our co-written piece then set to work on the piece. 21 minutes left. Monday 11-4-19 Tired, long weekend, parenting and home repair. Blowing my nose and finding dirt and concrete grit from the work in the basement. Ugh. Lots of grading to do and some course prep, tempting to abandon writing but I have 2 pieces back on my desk from a co-author and editor respectively, and have been approached about a third for end of the semester, and need to tweak my conference paper for the new panel format. I experience this as stressful demands on my time, which is accurate, but this is also me getting into relationships that form a context that promotes my getting writing done. Good problem to have. Now off to work on the co-authored piece a bit. Tuesday 11-5-19 At the coffee shop. Tired and distracted. A lot of ambient noise and flashing lights in my writing life right now. Ugh such a whiner! ‘The task itself is hard and that’s compounded by the circumstances being less than ideal.’ I should just write that down and print it out and tape it to my computer and all over my office. Still gotta do it. I guess it’s good to ask how I feel about it today. I feel kinda tired and kinda sad about it, feel kinda hopeless. Low energy feelings, feelings that maybe drain energy from elsewhere, an energy leak in the writing system. Sometimes I’m bad about stuff and that’s not pleasant either but it’s kind of energy I can draw on. I guess one thought is that I don’t need to feel energized to do the work, I just need to put in the time regardless of how I feel. That said writing down how I feel can sometimes help me start to put in the time, which is the point of this exercise. I’m going to get my Boice book back from Josh, he said he finished it, and read it again. Boice says something like write in a state of calm alert. I forget the term but it’s good advice. Cultivate the discipline to discipline the headspace and do the work. And to do the work regardless of headspace. Perform the techniques and the headspace will catch up. Okay enough throat clearing - and there’s the 5 minute timer! - Time to start writing. Going to read over the coauthored draft then free write intro and conclusion. Read it, wrote 1300 new words. Can’t tell if they’re any good. Probably not, but some of the ideas definitely are. We’ll see. Thursday 11-6-19 The usual malaise! I think the reality is that as a scholar I feel intellectually lonely. I don’t feel that in all areas of my life and there are some relationships and community that I am fortunate to be part of and for which I feel very grateful, but the time I have for those relative to other demands on my time is out of joint. And I feel this more acutely regarding peer reviewed work than regarding other academic work (and the record reviews I’ve been writing, that’s felt nice). Oh well. This isn’t forever and I think in the long run I can at least mitigate this further. Worth percolating on that. I’m pleased with the institution and relationship building I’ve done here, formally - the writing group - and informally, and I think I can expand that stuff further. I do feel a bit frustrated and surprised that no one else has done it before but maybe things have changed in some way I don’t understand - a friend said the other week that the post financial crisis academic world is very different, obviously the most important elements being the job scarcity and worsened pay and conditions, but in that also everyone coming out of grad school wants a life as a scholar and has had to really hustle to find anything at all, so people who get jobs enter those jobs kind of hungry. Anyway. Again, still the usual malaise, tired, grumpy. I could use a break. I should get tenure in a year and a half, so maybe summer after next I can take some actual time to relax (though that’s hard given my kids ages, whatever). Okay onto writing. Going to do 15 minutes on the S&S article trying to build on my blog post. Then grading and meetings. 20 minutes or so, wrote 700 words, I think these words may be halfway decent actually? Fingers crossed. Monday 12-2-19 On the bus. I wanted to do teaching prep (I’m being observed today, feeling tense) but the wifi is down. I haven’t written in the writing diary in almost a month. Maybe that’s part of why I’m dissatisfied. This past week has been hard. Grading storm, holiday (holiday was nice but I felt the loss of work time at a challenging point in the term), and grading on the weekend. Ugh. Anyway. As usual, tired, bad attitude, not in a context that facilitates success, etc etc. I’m intimidated by my writing projects - smart coauthors for the cowritten pieces, smart editors for the anthology pieces, and then the new book… I want to hide from it all, not write any of it. But I also want those pieces to exist in the world and no one else is going to write them. In any case today is looking to be packed with non-writing responsibilities. I look forward to being able to get back into writing more predictably and serious once the semester ends, this has been a challenging term. I should be more fair to myself as well: I finished my book then did the various tasks required to finish that off, dealing with the copy editing and so on. That took up a lot of time and tired out my writing muscles. I found it frustrating because I didn’t advance any new writing or improve as a writer by doing that work, but it is still work - I’m spending my time reasonably well, I just don’t have the time I would like. Friday 12-6-19 I’m at our writing group meeting! There’s a writing diary entry for Monday of this week and one for nearly a month prior. Oof. My routines need a tune up. I’ll make that a goal over the holiday/january interim (I keep saying ‘break’ then taking it back). What do I even write am I a writer that’s my headspace. I’m nervous about getting back to writing with more time and focus now that the semester is wrapping up, feeling the impostor syndrome, maybe I just pulled it off because I was in a good grad program with good advisors. That’s nonsense of course. I’m qualified, not an impostor - I should practice saying that more often, the first part (find a positive expression for ‘not an impostor), probably be good for me. But at a gut level this is where I’m at. That said I’m also excited about the prospect of getting back into writing. I am interested in the current and new projects. The 5 minute timer is up, that’s enough writing diary. Going to free write about the new book project, I think I have 15 minutes before the next agenda item for the writing group. Friday 12-13-19 Friday the 13th, appropriately enough given the UK election results yesterday. Blech. I got proofs for my book last night, which is exciting. I went over the first 18 pages today. 274 to go! Maybe I should try to make my next book shorter… I like the introduction. For a theoretical work and a work of academic history it’s angry, pointed, which I think suits the times. I’m at a coffee shop now and can’t get the internet to work, I don’t really even know why I want to get online. Feeling a bit lonely I guess, my family are away visiting the grandparents, and I also want to procrastinate from all my grading. Another batch of papers should have come in this afternoon. I need to check and dig into that. I’ve had a relatively productive week writing-wise, though at gut level I don’t feel like I have. I got two co-written pieces that had been in my inbox pushed through to the next stage and back to co-authors, and have now gotten them back so that they are ready or nearly ready for submission. That’s exciting. (Typoed that as ‘that’s existing’ which is funny and arguably apt… maybe I’ll write an essay someday on existentialism and midwesternness…) Cowriting has its own worries built in (largely just social anxiety) but on balance I like it better than solo authoring. Or I like it differently from solo authoring. Either way, I want to do more of it, it’s nice, fun, edifying. Reading the intro of my book I had some ideas for things I might write blog posts or think pieces on. I’m going to free write to capture those for later. In a little bit I’m going to head to the botanical garden and try reading more of book proofs there. Then grading tonight. Might make myself do a little new writing as well, no sure yet. Friday January 24, 2020 (!) I need to return to the diary habit. It’s good for me. The discipline helps, helps me get other things done and better. I did a writing check in by email with a friend, wrote this as part of it: “ I wanna give my writing habits a tune up, I've let the routine and organization/discipline go. I've gotten a reasonableamount done but I think I could do it more efficiently and with less stress if I do that habit tune up. I also want to get back into reading about writing, I think that helps, like even just a little regularly as a kind of daily devotion” I counted, I’ve got 56 unposted diary entries, 57 including this one. I’ll post them up to the diary blog site. It’s cool and weird that I’m on the other side of my book now. I tallied it up and last year plus the18 days of 2020 so far, I wrote about 28,000 academic words last year, not including my book. Today I wrote a long abstract or introduction to a new thing for something I got invited to do. I dropped my current projects into a Scapple file including updates. I like all the stuff I’m working on. It’s thought provoking and it’s relationship-embedded writing so that’s nice. I especially like the cowriting and want to do more of that. I like having a range of pieces that are in different stages, though juggling the deadlines and stuff gets a little intimidating. I’d like to keep on having a portfolio of works at different points in development so I can always be in motion. I might want to have a bit less going on, for the sake of concentrating more on the new book project. Then again I also want to write more review essays. I should think more about those different aspirations and priorities. I guess the new book is the most important priority in some sense. Really what I want is a writing life, a writing routine, more than the outputs. I think I should integrate working on the new book into my daily practice (I need to read more too, make that more of a daily practice). Other writing helps me read and stay in motion and it holds the space for writing in my life so that when I’m ready to generate prose or at least free writing to find ideas for the new book - ready in the sense of I’ve read what I need to - I can do so because my writing routine held the time open in my calendar. Monday 4-15-19 Family in from out of town. My brother brought us a new used car to replace our old one which died unexpectedly. Had a great time with him and his family. Lots of little kid play, got a lot of work off my mind, not fully but to a greater a degree than usual. That was nice. AND SO TIRING. I think one of my lats is sore from carrying kids around. In the chair now. Feeling tired, lack of motivation, the usual. Four weeks of teaching left, then the wrap up work. It’s nuts that’s it’s only 4 weeks. I feel like I’m just getting to know the students. Used the morning poorly. Ugh. Sigh. In break between classes now. Going to do 5 minutes of work on my article. wed 4-17-19 cold or allergies or something today, past few days. ugh. Feeling tired, not enough hours in bed, plus gym yesterday. Felt good to be back after a few weeks. Gotta figure out how to go more often, totally worth the time. I worked yesterday on the edited volume piece, didn’t diary first. Gotta maintain the best practices so they’re in place when I need them to be in place. I will say I squandered the morning on Monday then had a very full day of teaching and meetings. I managed 5 minutes of writing time in the middle of the day and am proud of that. Would have been better still had I used the morning well. Long day today as well, am using the morning better though I came in late. Still better than Monday. Edited volume piece is intellectually exciting and the writing/revising feels interminable. I am gaining new and more fleshed out ideas, connections between different things that I hadn’t seen before, all of which is cool. I wish I could get it into shape to send off soon. We shall see. Going to work on that for a short interval now, 10-15 minutes. Over the course of the day I got the draft to a stopping point and sent it to some readers. I’m going to leave it for a week or so. Now to figure out what to do in the interim. Thought before bed: I can and should work on the doctors article again. I’m feeling pulled in multiple directions here - am I responsible for reading every single thing? What about all the stuff I know I read but no longer remember, am I responsible to reread? Clearly the answer has to be no. I think what I have is good and I should dig into the points I am trying to make of my own, and THEN read around further to buttress that via additional primary and secondary text, but I am also feeling like a fraud and feel like I thus need to read everything now, including stuff I read long ago and don’t remember. These feelings are hard. In terms of action steps, I should find my old notes and see where I can go from there. AlphaSmart files ported in 4-11-19
4-1-19 Monday April 1 on bus to work. I havent written in this way about my work in a while. At the immediate moment I am tired, in the sense of how much or rather little slieep I got last night and in the sense that I’ve been working a lot lately without enough break to recover - immediate and accumulated fatigue. I live a rich life in which I have developed a sophisticated palate for the types of tiredness. Some mind going blank and delayed processing time on the nose, a flavor of simmering frustration and exasperation with hints of silliness and impulsiveness, a lingering finish of doubt mixed with satisfaction at being a hard worker and hints of smugness. That joke could be better. We all could. Anyhow, on the bus thinking about work. Major events lately - meso level, so to speak, cyclical in the semester rather than career and life milestones - a large wave of grading due to a paper, two conferences presented at two weekends in a row (really feeling the lack of a weekend), grade reports, some admissions, some required meetings. Action packed. I’ve been trying to find times I can stay home to spend more tie w/ my family, flextime for the out of town and whatnot. That’s going okay, I think, though my time’s not really fungible in that missing a thing like dinner or bedtime stories isn’t really replaceble by being home in the late morning, and in that when I’m gone it changes the rhythm of family life and in a different way so does my being home at times I’m normally not. Oh well. One form of waged labor corrects the abuse of another and so on, as the Marx quip goes. I’ve gotten some nice appreciative emails from some students regarding my feedback on their papers. That’s gratifying. I work hard to give substantive comments and I want the students to feel I’ve spent the time with their work, so that the continue to spend the time doing it. Trying to get and keep them focused on the substance not the outcome. Good responses to my work at the conferences. I don’t need to impress people though I won’t deny it’s nice when I’ve felt I’ve done so. But I do want to come off as sincere in all the right ways and to get responses that take the work and intellectual values animating the work seriously. Engagement, is what I;m saying. I got that. That’s beter than impressing really because with engagement someone thinks wit you. Pleased to have had that happen at both events, relationships nurtured, and my own writing drive. Ah, thats a thing. My drive to write is relationsal in a various respects, might dig into that later, the various orientations to other people bound up with my own drive and values around being a writer. Some of the fun of the work is finding new thoughts and feeling proud of myself, should think about what other bits are fun; from there, when is the fun motivating and when is it a perk. I suspect that the dividing line between those twwo roles for fun will be organizd around relationality. I should get back to doing this diary regulaly, this feels nice. Book is still in the slow proofreading stage, I wantthat done, feeling impatient. Lots of ideas for articles and papers, some of them actual projects tied concretely to ohter people - ed. vol piece, etc, and ideas for future books. I’m trying to suspend the ‘I can’t write them all oh no’ response, which is a bit like mourning the imaginary kids I won’t have instead of focusing on my new baby. Further mental hygeine work needed. I am at the librray now and am going to get down to work. One other thing I want to capture, at the 1st conference I had good conversations about writing process with colleagues and this came up again at meeting here from more senior people and I am pleased to feel appreciated for the work and honesty I’ve had in saying I need this, and validated that I am onto something. Very grateful that En has partnered with me in this work, I’ve said that and should again. I find that work veyr valuable, more than individual attention in a spotlight I like being the promoter who sets up the venue and the practice space so ohters can be in the spotlight. I like performing too but they’re different. Within the appreciation and validation is also some potential for greater future relationship and community, against the threat of intellectual loneliness and for the positive taken on its own terms good time and satisfaction of that kind of relationship with others. So, some hope in there. Okay now to figure out my day and week. 4-2-19. I wrote a while today, shoulda diaried first as the riting didnt feel good. Not sure why. Stress from other things I think, leeching in, plus just writing is hard. I am tired out from travel and work. I can feel my attitude slipping a little recently. Have to shore it up, focus on gratitude. I wrote on what is hopefully an article about doctors, and wrote a good plan/to-do-list for that, and I wrote some notes for a new book project. SO SCARY. I think thats part of why I didn’t feel good about the writing. I find myself having what-if thoughts a lot lately, what if I’d had a different career, or a different kind of academic route in the past. I’m not dwelling on it, just noticing those thoughts. I think it’s that I’m impatient, it’s grass is green if only kind of thoughts. Need to refocus on my accomplishments in the life I actually have rather than focus on hypothetical accomplishments I miht have had in hypothetical other lives. I should start reading more about writing again, and this diary will be more necessary I think, for the sake of attitude and focus maintenance. I will feel better after more sleep too, harder to be positive when tired. Enough for now. Keep up the diary habit and keep up the writing as a result. 4/8/19 On bus. Tired. Don’t want to work today, and it’s an especially task-packed day. I;m in the effortful part of the term. It will be nice when it eases up. What’s on my mind writind-wise? Little. Some ideas fo the edited volume pice for Umut. I’ll work on that when I get to campus, after coffee. I think I’m going to make a priority of regrouping, planning, organizing these next few days. Small inputs of work to produce a product right now, and some of the remaining time spent creating organization, vision, and system to faciltiate greater productivity in the future. Part of tat plan should include going back to reading writing books and mental hygiene re: writing. MY self talk has improved around certin parts of teh work.I had a thought the other day about an arrea to work on but it escapes me just now, I think I wrote it in another day’s writing diary, I’ll have to check. I ‘m on the 2nd bus now. I may have a cold. Sigh. It will all work out in the end. Just keep going. So the plan is get to work, get coffee, start working on the doctors piece for 5-10 min then the ed. vol. piece for 5-10 min then shift to other obligations, looking over the week and planning accordingly. And prioritizing long term and organization over short term productivity. Nother thought: build habits of recognizing hard work, praise for the things I want to continue. I hesitate to link that accomplisment in terms of anything official because that’s basically weather (grateful for Stewart Lee’s remark on that). Another good habit would to spend more time on gratitude. With that in mind I’m proud of the time I’ve put in and the work I’ve done to make that time possible, the context construction, and the relationships. entries written in scrivener on computer 4-3-19 Wrote for a while tonite. Stayed up too late. Will regret that tomorrow. Feeling better having written. I had been feeling some tension and some anxiety about writing and also career-wise, various ambitions and so on plus some ‘grass is greener’ and some impostor syndrome. Writing made me feel better. I was writing about possible future projects. I’m nervous as to my ability to do those, and I’ve been feeding that nervousness via doubts about institutional support and my ability to do the research given existing support. I keep finding myself thinking about how my book is based on research I did in grad school and being like ‘can I get research done at this career stage?!’ but the reality is I had almost no money for the research I did in grad school so while I wish I had more research funds, I have at least as much as I did in grad school, and I’m a better researcher and writer now. So if I could do it then I can do it now. 4-4-19 I am feeling a bit drained. That’s fine. Comes with the territory, and comes and goes. Feeling a bit worried about deadlines and some career aspiration discomfort. What’s the Dillinger Four line? “My expectations always fail me.” I’m pleased that I’m diarying before writing. Alex read the new intro to my doctors article, said it’s good and he’s excited to read the rest. Me too! Gotta write it… I should find my writing books, put them all in one place, go back to slowly dipping in, keep up this diary again and maybe moved toward a kind of daily reflection as well. The self-talk work I did went well, probably more I could get out of that. Feeling okay enough, feeling like I’ll have a career within the bounds I’m hoping for. The rest work-wise is just details really. Going to free write a bit now. Free wrote a while on various new projects. About 600 words in about 20 minutes, very very rough prose. Suddenly beset by impostor syndrome - I can’t do it, I am not smart enough, and so on - and bad feelings regarding feasibility - I won’t get funds, other demands on my time will crowd this out, and so on. Hard stuff. Need to keep going. 4-5-19 Most of the day off paid work. A took the big girls to a performance and I stayed home with the baby. I took the car in to the shop this morning because it’s begun to smell faintly of gas. This afternoon the mechanic called me and said basically ‘buy a new car.’ That’s distressing. Also saw an ugly altercation between the mechanic and one of his employees when I picked up the car, felt I should do or say something, and didn’t. I dunno. All of that rattling around. A took all the girls to the library so I worked about 2 hours. Mostly writing. The doctors article is coming along. Not there yet but I am finding ideas I am excited to figure out. I’m learning something and developing my thoughts by working on it, which is satisfying. I didn’t write in the diary before writing today, I wanted to just jump right in. Fine for today but need to restore the habit so I have it for when I need it. All in all under the circumstances a pretty productive working day. It’s weird begin back in an early draft (though it’s quite far along as early drafts go, because it’s drawing on dissertation out-takes; probably be even worse when I’m REALLY back to square one in the future!). I think I’ve got a mental habit of judging my writing to think according to the standards of writing for presentation, and am blaming my first drafts for not being final drafts. I think I’m also worried I won’t figure it out and so on. I should go back to working on self talk. I have to get the Boice book back from Josh, and find my copy of the Jensen and reread the latter, especially pay close attention to the writing myths stuff. Anyhow, I showed up and did the work today, pleased about that, proud of myself. 4/9/19. Writing diary first that’s the plan. Stick to the plan. I did some email earlier because I was multi-tasking parenting and work before I left the house. Sigh. I can feel the difference that made, not for the better, mood-wise and in terms of reading the news and stuff before working. Stick to the plan, it’s really for my own good. And I can feel my writing-related mood has slipped some even from earlier this morning. So. This week’s going to be full of meetings and prep for meetings. In the remaining time I want to writing diary first thing, then write, keeping the writing short and sustainable. Maintain a routine I can sustain. Okay going to plug in and do the work. I may have written too long today but I am enjoying it. Unsure. Going to regroup and think about what I want to do. 4-10-19 Up late reading to the oldest kid, stayed up extra late to finish our book, then put her to bed and did a bit of writing. Middle kid woke up extra early this morning. I’m kind hurting from the tired. Oh well. Day full of teaching and student meetings. Small window of time this morning. Don’t want to use it. Want to sleeeeeep. Going to do 15min-ish of working on the article draft and anthology draft. Sort of in ‘what’s the point’ headspace but showing up is not optional. I’ve been doing this writing on my laptop and sometimes the Alphasmart, hadn’t felt the need to update this site in a while. I think it’s better to do so, though (hence the posts below that I'd been keeping offline) so that it’s there before I need it, so to speak. We’ll see. I’ve fallen off the diary habit recently because the work’s been going well. I think my efforts around self-talk succeeded at least to some extent. I think it’d be good to return to the diary habit though, again for the sake of having the practice in place before I need it. We’ll see. Pleased that the writing’s going relatively well lately, generally speaking. One other thing, I copied all the old posts on here into a file so I have copies of everything, I hadn't been keeping copies early on. Total words in here= a little over 46,000 and I've done this at least semi-regularly for a little over year. That's satisfying.
Entry 149, Thursday Some trouble getting out the door at home this morning - some trouble just getting moving, felt very worn out upon waking up. (I can feel the guilt, the many guilts, fluttering above my head, landing on my shoulders.) I went straight to the gym this time. Felt very good. I should continue that. And now I’m writing in the diary as my first work thing. When I left the gym I texted a friend saying I was going to the coffee shop and he wrote back ‘I’m already here.’ I choose to take this is as a sign. My book is away in the care of another friend. I’m antsy to get back to it, to get on with it, to get it over. The usual impatience. (Is the impatience flocking among the guilts? Maybe it’s one of the branches the guilts perch on? Life amid a garden of unpleasantries.) In the interval away from the book I have some non-writing tasks which I feel like I, ever virtuous, simply must do instead of write. That’s a mistake to avoid. Perhaps write less, to the degree that other responsibilities may in fact require a real reallocation of my time, but still write first. This is me reminding myself to re-establish good habits that have slipped and to shore up the ones that remain in place. The trouble is, what to write? I need to start with the best one, of course. Of course not, that’s just dithering, self-obstructing. I’m going to set a time, give myself 5 minutes to choose, if I haven’t by the end then I will just number them and google ‘random number generator.’ Going to look at the list now. Looked at my to do list, moved all the writing tasks to the top, picked what I’m going to work on. NOW I NEED TO CHECK MY EMAIL SO URGENTLY AND I HAVE TO TELL EVERYONE ON TWITTER ABOUT IT. Deep breath. Another deep breath. One more for good measure. Here goes the work on the new article. Going to set a timer for 30 minutes. I can check my email after that, if I first write in here that I’m going to do so. Start timer, begin reading notes, starting now. I did a review of the earlier article draft. I think the new article will be substantially different, I’m excited about the new article, I’m going to treat the old article as raw material; it’s high quality raw material though. I wrote a to do list and did a little free writing. Onto other work. Entry 150, Friday Flawed start to the day, some sleep stuff, some family stuff, some logistical problems, some indiscipline. I am tired out. I have lots of feelings about this article and about the tenure requirements at work and so on and so on. Anyway. Resetting now. Setting timer for 30min of article work. Worked about 90 minutes. Entry 151, Monday I wrote first before diarying. diary first diary first diary first. re-establish the habits. Did free writing for my article. Hard to be back to figuring out a piece. I know I can figure out the article if I free write enough. Just keep going. Onto other work now. Monday night: feeling hopeless about this article. I wrote a bunch on it twice now and it’s all felt like false starts. I keep hoping I can find the answer in the prose I’ve already written. I do think I can re-use a lot of that but I need to write my way to the thing that will help me re-organize. What a pain in the neck this all is, what a stupid set of processes, I keep thinking the article sucks but remembering several people who liked it a great deal. Just sent one of them a thank you email. Entry 152, Tuesday Home w/ sleeping baby, rest of family is out at a ballet performance. I like that we can afford for my kids can go to stuff like this, it’s a thing I like about Des Moines. I’m reading a bit while wearing the baby in the carrier, taking some notes. I have some thoughts on how this article I’m reading might fit with my article that I’m hating, err, writing. Going to put down some thoughts now. Entry 153, Thursday Been more than a week and the latter bit has been a stupid fucking week; what are likely hate crimes on campus. ASLH conference was great before that, but between that plus family plus work this week I feel like a husk. Quick thought then I have to catch the bus: my paper is about situating Murray’s trial in relation to the reproduction of capitalist social relations; what light that moment can shed on that social process and vice versa. Okay gotta get to the bus. Wrote a while before bed. ARGH writing is so hard! Entry 154, Saturday I wrote some new stuff for my Murray paper yesterday and sent it to Will for his class to read, I sent it to Dan as well. I hate it at present. I wrote a blog post for Legal Form, about 1800 words. That felt good to get done, and Umut liked it, so that’s gratifying. Still feeling antsy about my book and anxious about the new article and SoTL piece. Sigh. Entry 155, Sunday Baby’s asleep, read a bit of Ghostly Matters on recommendation of a colleague, had some thoughts that I freewrote for the book (regarding memory and the Faulkner quote about the past not being past) then some more I’m going to free write now. Okay did that. Entry 156, Monday On the bus. A friend here in Des Moines texted me about applying for a job in another city. No one warned me about the loneliness that would come with an academic career, and all the people who I’d lose touch with. Sigh. I hope they get the job of course. Starting the morning at the library, not the coffee shop, shorter walk to teach afterward and there’s coffee there anyway. I talked to Evan over the weekend, Barbara gave him a copy of the McPhee writing book I recommended to her. That’s cool, nice to feel like I have something to contribute. Legal Form ran a blog post I wrote, that’s been nice too, good to be in conversation with people about ideas. Later in the day. I did a lot of syllabus writing this morning, which made sense but doing stuff other than writing always makes sense and that’s the problem. If only the context was ideal, I whine every time. Sigh. Have to live the life I have, not wish it away. So, I’m going to work 30 minutes now on my stuff. I wrote for like 90 minutes, worked on my essay about Law, Labor and Ideology. quick gym trip now. Entry 157, Wednesday Wrote before diarying. Stop that! I waste more time by not diarying, the diary is a warm up that results in better and more efficient work. I should make myself write that by hand 100 times... I did an hour’s writing, that’s good, and I spent time printing stuff to help myself get more done over the next few days in the corners of holiday time (it’s thanksgiving tomorrow) Entry 158, Thursday Thanksgiving was nice. Lots of time with my kids. I’ve especially had a lot of time with the baby this week, which is lovely. My family went out to an event at the library wednesday night and I got a lot of cooking done then, a bit more today. The meal turned out well, I’m pleased about that, proud of the work, glad they enjoyed it. I did a bit of free writing earlier while the baby slept in the Ergo carrier. I need to get to bed but thought I’d diary and do a bit of work for work writing, not sure what, going to check the to do list. Okay wrote for 20min. To bed now. Entry 159, Friday Another day off the job. Nice to be home with my family but hard to think about work at all - my wonderful kids are a big handful - and I dread the return to work, specifically am worried about a cold start trying to get back to writing. Read something tonight for someone I know. It’s so good, wrote some notes to them about it. Feeling a lot of doubt and negativity about my stuff. Got comments from a friend on my article, helpful stuff, and I hate the article, hate not having it figured out yet. Ugh. I need to get to bed but am going to do at least 15 minutes of writing related to the article then maybe another 15 for something else. Entry 160, Saturday Wearing the baby in the carrier while she naps. Freewrote a bit for the paper my friend and I are working on about writing groups. Should have diaried first. The habit matters. I don’t need it now but I need to act now to have it in place for when I do need. That’s part of the hard part. My kids have friends coming over for a playdate, I’m going to go to the library to work a while during that after the baby wakes up. I guess I’ll keep working on the writing group paper? Unsure. Should diary then to set and maintain focus. I stayed home and worked upstairs. It went fine. Occasionally distracted by the sounds of the kids. I read an article by someone I met at a conference recently - great stuff! I am jealous again! - and wrote them an email about it. I feel very tired out and kind of down about my work, lots of self doubt. It’s my job though, not optional, so just have to do the work while feeling those feelings. Okay did some more work on the co-authored paper. Not liking what I wrote. Oh well. The good writing is facilitated by the process, it requires the bad. I just counted and between today and the last two days I’ve written 2300 words toward this paper, a lot of repetition and very rough but I like the output level. Entry 161, Monday On the bus. Cold snap came, very unpleasant, my skin’s dry and cracked, let extra time for the bus in case of ice still had to run for it. Trying to recenter my head on work after a few days off. Was lovely to get sustained family time for several days, makes me look forward to the winter break. I’ll have to work during it but would like to aim for shorter days. What am I working on? First thing’s writing but what writing? I’ll free write again on article Dan commented on, then really read his comments closely then figure out a plan for work on the article. It doesn’t have to be a finished plan, just enough to start working and keep going. Lots of big feelings about the article. Gonna do it anyway. I wish people had been mean and rude about it, then I could get mad and cop an ‘I’ll show them!’ attitude. That people were polite and nice about it leaves me feeling worse in some ways, less to push against in order to leverage myself into the chair. Okay that article first, at least 15 minutes of writing, then the writing group piece, then the SoTL piece, then maybe pivot to conference papers? Spend some time reading? Unsure. Just stay in motion and track the time. Feels like a luxury to have this time to use and plan like this. Next semester will be harder, will need good habits then, so I should work on shoring them up again over the rest of this semester. At coffee shop, struggling to focus. Tons of awful bad news in the world, no motivation. Must remember that motivation is at best a mild reward and at worst an excuse for moral weakness. Do the work. There is no magic trick, the thing required to do the work is to do the work. Okay free writing for 15 minutes on my article. Did that, included some venting in it. I want the article to be angry, angering, but I want that to not just be rhetorical, I want it to show an appalling world I have now free written my way into a sense of possibility to the extent that I now can start the work despite the suffering I know it will involve and uncertainty I know I will feel as a result I can feel my impatience raging. Ponder on how to quiet that or step around it. Pay attention to when I begin to let it steer, and be sure to take back the wheel. I will want to cut corners on the new writing required. Be disciplined about not doing that. Lots of free writes, better more free writes than less. I am as usual afraid that starting anew will mean giving up, will take longer and oh! The consequences! While an understandable response for part of my mind to have, steering by that would be mistaken, self-defeating. going to walk to campus and begin the steps in the to-do list I wrote out in this free write. I did all that then taught and had meetings with three students and my brain feels like mush. I am going to do another 15 minutes with a timer on my article. then will do some other non-writing tasks for 15 minutes then am going to the gym. Okay I wrote 30min. Total 1000 words today. I feel hopeless, hate the article. Proud of the work I did though, this is a heavy weight that I carried. Entry 162, Tuesday On the bus. Cold, so tired - up early to go speak to Will’s class, up too late reading bedtime stories to my biggest kid, and slept badly. Been thinking about my article at the bus stop, going to free write on it. Free wrote. Went to Will’s class (went well, I have some notes on the convo and some reader responses from a few students who wrote on my stuff). Free wrote again for 15 minutes. I don’t think I know yet how to write this article. I don’t know if I’m ready to start doing real prose but I’ll try and will also keep on free writing. “Dear mom, I am writing about a bear...” Entry 163, Thursday I guess I didn’t write in here yesterday. I thought I did. Oh well. Write half an hour yesterday over the course of the day, should have diaried first. Don’t remember what all I did, free writes on my article I think. Today I worked a very long time - again no diary first though, gotta keep on this - on my article. Mostly re-organizing and whatnot. Hard work, not satisfying but I have regained at least a measure of a sense of possibility; earlier today I had really felt hopeless and wanted to just not write this piece. Glad to have pushed through that into a less hopeless space. Onto other work. Entry 164, Monday. More lack of discipline. Positives: I turned in a draft of the book and a short note explaining what I’ve done. I don’t know what happens next. I expect disaster, will settle for nothing less than unconditional approval, of course neither will happen. In a bit of a weird spot now between things. Not sure about this article given where the book is currently at. Feeling some pressure at work to get it out the door but I’m not convinced that’s the right move. I want to be like ‘I’m the author, it’s my call!’ but I am untenured, and I also don’t know if I trust my own decisions here either. Ugh. I have a new idea for another book which I’m excited about, and some other articles. I might turn to that stuff instead. I should review my notes and see all the future projects I have in mind and figure out what to do next. Will likely just mean a leap rather than a sense of certainty that I’ve picked the very best possible option. And of course I am beset with meetings right now, harder to think as a result. I looked at the permission page on the press and whatnot and I think I’m fine to write this article. That’s good (I GUESS!). I have a meeting in half an hour, I should make myself write. Okay I’m going to write this article. Later today I will find the materials for it and freewrite a little to find my way back into the process and whatnot. Will flip through the Belcher book as well and see about using it to make myself a timeline for writing it. Entry 164, Saturday All discombobulated by various work and life events. Sigh. I am going to write my way back into this article. What am I doing? I am writing this article. I’m going to go free write on its purpose. Entry 165, Monday Worked on writing a while yesterday, forgot to diary or to track the time. Sigh. I’m going to do 25 minutes now. Feeling tense, frustrated, disliking the article. Gonna do it anyway. I want to remember this for future purposes. Okay wrote half an hour. Feeling better about it now. Gonna eat and do some other stuff, then back to writing later in the day. Okay did another 30min. Again, feeling better. Starting to feel a bit tired. Took a break and did another. Draft is about 4800 words of body text so far. Put it in a file to print to review. Entry 166, Tuesday Once again starting writing before diarying then running out steam early. Lots of feelings about this article again, don’t want to have to do it, scared it will suck and people will hate it, bored of it, etc etc. My friend Tom once made a comic strip about Garfield turning his life around and starting to work out, one of the lines is “each day you must choose again.” Okay another session. 12:44 Entry 167, Wednesday didn’t diary first again. oh well. my habits too are a work in progress. Today ended up longer and more tiring at work than I expected. I got very close to being like ‘I’m too tired and busy to work on writing today’ but an email exchange with Alex made me do it. I’m going to tell him so and thank him. I worked for 25 minutes, did some small stuff in the article draft and added to my to-do list/plan for further work on the article. Wrote my way back to a sense of possibility on the article. Onto other responsibilities. Family comes back tonight, very excited to see them. Entry 168, Saturday Time off has been nice in that I’ve enjoyed family time and the break from writing, and that second bit is something I might pay for later in that I will need to ramp back up. Ah well. Tonight I did fixes on Angelica’s copy edits to the first 17 pages of the manuscript. There’s one bit I don’t know how to deal with yet, which I will return to. I’m going to do what she IDs plus the formatting required by the style guide. Later I will need to make sure all the notes are consistent style-wise. I also want to try to read the whole book out loud, for sound, might help with bits of it. Anyhow, progress. Entry 169, Wednesday Back to work in the new year. 2019. It’s the future. I’ve got a planner and a paper notebook, trying to maximize productivity. Going to start with going over Angelica’s edits so far. Entry 170, didn’t record day I can feel my impatience raging. Ponder on how to quiet that or step around it. Pay attention to when I begin to let it steer, and be sure to take back the wheel. I will want to cut corners on the new writing required. Be disciplined about not doing that. Lots of free writes, better more free writes than less. I am as usual afraid that starting anew will mean giving up, will take longer and oh! The consequences! While an understandable response for part of my mind to have, steering by that would be mistaken, self-defeating. Entry 171, didn’t record day, early January Testing the alphasmart.I might cover the screen. This is file 1 now. Later i will test out how to export stuff to the mac. Kit wants to type on here. She can do that in file 2. Ayla’s typing is in file 3. I think the files at a button - file 1, file 2,etc - would be very convenient for like opening up a file for the vent file then switching back to free writing. At present my plan is to use this for those two purposes and that’s all. I have to test the export to Mac and see how that goes. I notice a ‘clear file’ button. Hmm. Ok I tested it by typing a bit in file 4 then pressing it. It’s a y/n are you sure prompt. The big girls like the alphsmart so far. that’s cool. if the keep liking it hthen I’ll buy nanother one. I’m living with these typos. I can see them. I might try coviering the display on here, I dnunno. Anyway. I Today I started reading Boice again. I had a conversation with Alxex about writing gorals for the semester. I mentioned my goal of changing my mental habtsits. That mae me made me actually commit to starting today. Grateful for Alex, today and over all. So I started Boice ltate in the day and holy cow was it hard. Impacientience ragin, feeling like it was impossible to chanege my mentl habits. I started skimming super aggressively. I reset, decided I would read the book afresh at a reasonable pasce -- I don’t have to read it slow but I also don’t ahve to rush through it was I w as I waws doing earlier today. I read the preface. 4step process, automaticity, externality, self control, and social skills. I hink I’ve learned a lot of those things to an important extent bt but I think I ahve relative deficits in my self control skills. I’m going to read the book through on the theory that it can’t hrurt to worok work on skills Ive already acquired, and that may help me use those successes in working on the skills I’m focusing on. Later I’ll also read the Sword Airr and Light and Spceace and Time and also Jensen’s book. Will journal my way to new mental habits. Boice p3, regular modest amounts of writing time helps take up habits that promote long term productivity s well as well as efficient, painless, and successful writing. Cool. Thanks robert. Looking forward to it. And again I’m down the road to an important degree already. Giving up writing in exhausting binges. Yes. Part of the appeal of writing too long is that it feels good to be in motion and to not have to do the work of starting. That’s self-defeating and the gain are epaid w are repaid with interest. Internal critics (p8-9) mine are loud but indistinct, like Nirvana lyrics. They express that I am inadequate, a fake, that my work is unlikable, wrong, stupid, weird, bad. p9 ‘high apprehensives’ tend to leave too little time for planning and prewriting, and for editing. That’s me. Impatience because of anxiety. I hadn’t thought of that connection beofre. Thinking about my anxiety and impatience brings on the anxiety and impatience -- what if my book sucks, I hate my book, no one will like it, no one should read it, people will be mean about it and judge me for its defects which will be many. I just want to get it done ASAP and rush through the process so I can stop spending time with it, which will of course lead to more mistakes. That’s my internal monologue I think. i finished Boice’s chapter one. i recognize myself in a lot of the struggling writers he describes and quotes form. I also don’t haeve a lot of what the chapter covers, which is to say I’m farther down the road than I givemyself credit for. I feel for the writers he talks about, and I’ve been there myself a lot previously. I’m not where I want to be but I have achieved a lot not only in output and habits but as a result of those I actually feel better than I have sometimes. I take his point that its possible even likely to sometimes revert to old habits though, and even if that’s not a possibility I’m still not at the stopping point I want to be at. I’m going to do his exercise in a moment but I want to say that first I think a lot of my own troubles come at least in part from a fixed mindset about my own intelligence. Some of this also comes from having been bullied by shitty teachers (I had lots of great teachers too, though some of themalso helped encourage my fixed mindset). Wherever it came from, well, its not my fault I’m like this, I’m the product of forces beyond my own power. But moving on from here can only come from me and from what I create with likeminded friends and colleagues -- not my fault but still my responsibility. Okay, Boice’s first exercise, at end of chapter 1, describe your most recent attempts at writing, espcially those with problems. I often delay starting, do lots of things other than start writing, especially things that make me feele connected to other people. I sometmes feel lonely as a writer. Why bother writing, no one will read or care, it’s just going through the motions for my job and it will separate me from my loved ones, it’s hoity toity to write, it’s trying to rise above my station and leave my loved ones behind, it’s arrogant, and for such a dummy as me to be arrogant is especially bad. That stuff goes through my head in some way. Plus people will hate it, dislike and judge me for it, fear of evaluation stuff and perfectionism. So that goes through my head and I put off writing sometimes and then I get anxious about the time I’ve wasted and running out of time and I use that anxiety to help myself start writing. Then I feel guilty about wasting time by procrastinating. Once I actually start, after a while I feel better. My confidence shows up after I’ve written for 15-20 minutes. Then I struggle to stop at a moderate amount of time. Once in motion I want to stay in motion. The writing gets to be fun, and also there’s relief that it doesn’t hurt and there’s fear that it will hurt next time and so I feel like I need to keep going or there will be a consequence from stopping. That causes problems because of neglected responsibilities (which in turn can pile up and come to undermine my writing routine - if I put off other work long enough then I have a big heap of that work and so no time to write for a few days, which breaks my routine and I lose the benefits of the habit and have to do the work of re-establishing the routine). I can see how impatience is present across this and driven by anxiety. Boice’s questions beginning on p34. q1. I described the dislike above, theyre mostly about fear/doubt and I guess some self-talk that’s only semi-conscious (emotional habits, mental hygiene). I find it hard to start, and somewhat tiring but not too bad. I find my own reactiosn to writing more tiring than writing itself, and sometimes I get itno a flow state and it feels really good. q2.I have both too little and too much time. I feel like I lack the time to make writing happen and I resent the things that create that lack, and that I have to work to make up for it. And I feel like I have too much time in that I have to spend too much time writing or rather too much time in the presence of my own emotional responses to writing. Really this is a time management issue - and actually I’ve been quite successful for my career stage as a wrter - and above all an issue of what Boice calls self control/Sword’s emotional habits. q3. NO I DO NOT FEEL GOOD YES DOUBTS AND FEARS GET IN THE WAY. This one is huge for me, yes I feel like a fraud. q4. Anxiety: I get ansy, distracted, put my attention on other stuff, want to walk around, throw myself into other things, the internet is the worst for enabling this but there are many other enabling devices available, and so many that feel virtuous (‘really must get to my email!’ etc), and all the self talk stuff I mentioned. q5. hard to start, yes, this is recurrent, I procrastinate on starting. I work best if I write very first thing. q6. difficulty finishing, this is less of a thing for me, I’m more likely to under-revise, try for a successful single draft etc than to linger too long. q7.a. definitely can get overly negative. I cope by just doing the work I guess, talking to friends, walking around, reading about writing, social/accountability habits too. b. i don’t hurt myself professionally but I do overwork and sometimes make other work harder as a result becuse I have to do it in less than ideal circumstances. c. I dont get that issue so much of cramping. 1. six. 2. four 3. seven 4. eight 5. seven 6. three 7. four, four, zero Having concluded the chapter I think the main thing is more comfort than productivity. I’ve achieve productivity, I want it to be less painful or not painful at all, actively fun would be best.That would reduce the degree to which I have those other issues, which is not a high degree really. Okay, on chapter 4, p41. Calling it a night. One thought: maybe a book of self-reflection prompts and some nice journals, as a way to start writing, ease in, make that a habit perhaps? Worth trying. Once I’ve written anything it’s easier to write anything else next than it was to start in the first place. That is, once I’ve started it’s esier, I’ve got some momentum then. So think through the easiest and most habituable starts. Okay bed now. Following Boice’s spontaneous writing advice in the next chpter, I forget the number. am at home, family’s here, noisy, probly gonna inteerrupt me, fair enough. I find interruptions super ditracting when doing regular writing but I think with this is’s less of an issue becsause I’m jstust trying to make words, not worryig abouw ath what the content is. my knee was sore last night and it was too hot in here I slept really badly I am tired, and am tired fo of poor sleep. I cna’t find tee foam roller, I found the wood rolling pin and rolled out my right leg, SO PAINFUL. n I need to roll my legs more often clearly. need to walk more too I think. Kit made a spy codename generateor - two yogust containters, in one yogurt container a list of spy-ish adjectives, in the other nouns. Kit: code name Blue Fox. Ayla: code name Swift Cat, Charlotte codename Moon Panther, mine Black Death, Ang: Night Wolf. Pretty cool. Please call me Dr.Bubonic. NPR playing trying to tne it tune it out, or really when I’m writing and some flow happens I just do turn it out, that’s enjoyable to notice, funny to notice my non-noticing I suppse but it’s a skill, attention management. Okay I think this is enough spontaneous writing for now, just wanted to follow the book’s instructions. I have to write down properly the notes re: work chores that I wrote down on the back of my hand last night. Anyway, enough now. I’d forgotten that Boice recommends this kind of writing every day for 5 minutes as a warrm up, that’s a good practice, related to but not 100% identical to Jensen’s vent file, is sort of like Steinbeck’s Grapes diary (which btw I should start reading again). Entry 172, More Alphasmart files ported to laptop. I transferred my file to the work mac, saved it in scrivener in a folder (1-5-19).I should start doing date and time entries on this on here for the sake of transferring and organization. Boice says tenmintes of generative writing. I do this a lot but okay, I’ll go with the program. Long pause... haha... My new article is a reply to a piece calling for a shift in focus in legal studies toward distribution and distributive justice. I argue this shift needs to be broader, toward the economy and toward economic justice. I want the piece ot both amplify and engage the authos’ argument. I don’t say anything in it about class and perhaps I should.That may take things too far afield from the piece as crrently drafted. i dunno. Maybe clss is another later piece. Class piece for labor scholras? legalscholars? I dunno yet. The new piece is pretty far along, I’m going to keep workign on it. After that, time to do the Fraser conf paper and the industrial medicine conf paper as well. The fraser paper amounts to using employee injruy law reform to specificy/concretize the setting for a theoretical conversation between Fraser and Poulantzas. The gist: some crises are in fact generative for capitalism, hence boundary crises and boundary struggles need better specifying. I can draw on Marx ch10 (and 15 maybe?) of v1 re: hours laws as another example. That was a kind of crisis too, and was generative for capitalism. The industrial mecindicine piece is trying to use outtakes from the book to become something else. What do I want to say? well one thing is the Anderson point: private government, delegated sovereignty. Industrial physicians exercised a bit of that, and did so on behalf of a range of actors - the nation/the government, and employers. Physical exmination changed in its goals: serve health and nation and class (biopolitics, very macro), serve the employer and employee mutually as long as the former is especially benefitted (biopolitics localized), serve the employer against the employee (surplus population). In that final moment industrial physicians did a kind of emotional labor and representational labor as well: they took on the grief and regret, and whitewsahed programs so their employers didn’t have to take on those feelings.They were the human agents of dehumanizing policies, they personally carried out impersonal orders. In doing so they served higher ups, helping depict subordinates in an attenuated way that hurt those subordinates and helped superiors.OK that’s ten min. Oops. I was supposed to be writing about writing experiences! I did his GWS II before GWS I. Let me do that first one now. I remember being praised as a good writer multiple times. This came I think from my being a very avid and frankly precocious readerr. Having taken in a lot of those sentences, I learned to put them out. I tried to sound fancy like in books, and for my age I was good at it. I think it helped me acqire a fixed mindset though because it was about being and a state of affairs - I *am* a good writer, I *have* a good vocabulary - this quality of me, some entity.There was no recognition that I had learned this and no pointing out of (let alone praise for) effort. Genearlly with other kids if you were smart yo didn’t have to work, dumb kids struggled. I got put into a ‘gifted’ program, another entity - a gift, not learning. All of this somewhat helped my writing and in the long term hindered it in terms of comfort for all the fixed mindset reasons. Likewise re: my grades and my parents’ responses (‘A B? an A-? why not an A?’ lots of praise for straight As etc.) I think that cultivated impatience, I would rush through work - who needs to take time? only dumb kids - then get annoyed that the end product wasn’t great. I would also try to get the first drafts great, I rarely revised, other than line edits and even that rarely. No one taught me to write to think (I learned that from zines, I taught myself that), or how to revise in a substantial way. I also despite the praise only sort of thought ofmyself as a writer, I was more like a smart kid and a thinkerwith the writing just a transparent medium, no sense of craft and laboring over it. That took a long time to change, especially re: aademic stuff, I would write student paper columns and zines and stuff and that was writing and then in class I was a thinker,, intellectually serious but not doing writing. None of that served me well, other than the extracurricular writing I did, which did serve me well. I wanted to master craft (still do) yet was (still am) impatient with the work and quick to give up on it thinking I’m too busy or incapable.OK ten min. I read Boice’s generative writing III, which = use prior generative writing to create ideas, like ID those ideas and start outlining basically. This is totally how I work though I’ve called it free writing for big ideas vs structuring. I like his suggestion to regularly alternate - write to think, then summarize the findings of that thinking and try to structure the piece as a whole or the section/next section, that kind of alternating makes sense and I de facto do this a lot because of my habitual free writing (I like that term better than generative writing). I think adding deliberately an ending bit to free writes that is this summative and structure-making/outlining step at the end could be good. I’m pleased to find/feel that I’m doing some parts of the writing process well. The bits on 67-68 sound good to me. He says this process teaches patience and that is true in my case. I remain impatient in affect sometimes but I do things like stop and free write, re-outline, etc. So I experience somee impatient-derived discomfort but I do act against the impatience in significant ways. That’s progress - hard work makes the brain grow. Sunday. I read Boice’s chapter 6. he starts this part of the book with refernce to the prospect of moving “beyond a grudging otput of useful writing to writing that is also self-controlled and capable.” (p74) That’s where I’m at now and is my goal. Chapter 7 focuses on that. Six was good to reread though. First off some successes: I have done a lot of what he recommends, in terms of daily writing and so on. That’s been hard won and I’ m proud of it. I coud - will - be more comfortable but I got here to a good plcae (finished a draft of my book quickly!) through a lot of hard work. Proud of that work and what I’ve chieved. One other thing: it would be good to do another review of chapter 6 while at the mac, to highlight some of the best practices, especially some of teh ones I haven’t done as much of before like planning out fuller projects -- all the steps from present status to finished, and estimating how many writing sessions those steps get, plus planning to work on more than one project. Also: more charting (on paper maybe?) of time and output and whatnot, and of habit - writing before other work. I think the alphasmart would help w/ that as I could type on here on the bus and not do email. Charting that pratice would be good. Okay just two chapters of the book left, about 36 pages. Pleased about that. I realize that the journaling to change mental habits will take longer than those pages, but I’m pleased to be really beginning soon. Other thoughts on planning this process: reread Sword on mental habits and Jensen as well, and the first bit of Belcher’s Writing Your Journal Article book, about writing discomfort. Might also google around about how to shift from fixed to growth mindset. Later, go thru Boice’s citations and write up a list of ones I want to read. that’s not for this mental habit project, it’s for FWG and faculty development programmatic stuff at work, which is of secondary priority to this right now. I finished the Boice. I marked the places I want to go back over and make more concrete plans around. Mostly around self-talk. I think I say things like ‘this will take too long’ and ‘this is boring’ and ‘I suck at this’ and ‘this is no good’ and then sometimes things like ‘this is good enough don’t bother’ and ‘I bet this will go fast, especially if Im good at it.’ I should go over the projects I have, write them out on blank pages, just so I can see them/name them. Then sketch the steps. For each there’s prewriting to find ideas, or an ongoing commitment to freewriting, then outlining. and a bit of back and forth on each, then prose generation and reverse outlining, that’s the basic elements. I should map out how long I think each of those elements needs, with a rough sense of my output pace and my schedule - these are deadline projects so I have to meet those. I will, I just have to figure out how. I do have some self talk like what if I miss my deadline but much more like what if no on cares, what if they hate it, what if I embarass myself, what if I’m wrong, etc. I’m going to review the Boice bits I marked and do the specifics he talks about in terms of tracking self talk and planning to interrupt it.I may see if there’s another book on this and check his footnotes too. Going to review the Sword now. One thing: I’m going to be tempted to skimp on this. I would benefit from going slow and taking a while on positive self affirmations to supplant negative self talk. Here’s some: I have achieved an impressive degree of skill at making writing happen, and at writing itself - the product is good; people I respect are interested in what I’m doing (self talk: they’re faking it, they’re lying, they’re wrong and actually I’m no good, I’m charming so Ive fooled them into thinking I’m good at this, they are just being nice because they like me but really they don’t mean it.) That’s silly. They like my work, they genuinely do. That’s why they like me, above all. These are busy college professors who don’t have time or incentives to fake it. Stuff to work on. I have worked hard to learn the skills I’ve learned. I’m good at woring hard. I don’t need to know everything right away, that’s what learning means. I’ve learned enough to serve as a basis for what else I need to learn. Okay, Sword now. Sword, p166. Previous bits in this setion on emotional habits have mentioned few times trying to bring positivity to writing. Im excited to write. I’m excited abot people reading my book. I like learning new things, finding new ideas,making new ideas and thoughts. I feel satisfied and proud at having made something - this thing didnt exist, now it does, and I did it, I worked hard, I exerted myself virtuously -- I am a winner, I am champion, I am strong. So, page 166. A time I felt productive: when I made my zines in college. I binge wrote, but I loved the focus and I created a lot of words, that joy of making. I also have many times enjoyedthe flow state of writing. Its lovely to have my selc consciousness shout off for a while and just be in the moment making words nand sentences, finding new thoughts, envisioning new possibilities. Sometimes I can get into the rhythm of the langauge, like with my impulse to three item lists, and I like some of the prose I’ve made, like the bit Scott complimented me on at the ABF thing, the opening re: Marguerite Murray, and Evan re: my points on Thomas Crowder. Frustration as surmountable obstacle: this is a low numbered wall climb, I’ve climbed this many times, it’s exertion but surmountable exertion, just keep making the moves, and even if I slip I have a belay and can climb again. Frustration as friend: when I get frustated it’s because I care, I am excited about the project and subject, it is my energy urging to go onward. It may be a bit rough around the edge but it is on my side, i J ust have to corral it, lead it effectively. Reading about writing craft and well-crafted prose, good call. More EB White essays, and the how-to books by Sword and that Elements of Academic Style book. OK done with sword. Went faster than I thought. Ah wait, going to review her quiz again. After that I’m going to go over Boice with a legal pad and brainstorm and note take on the bits I marked, moving into operationalizing. I think this may be less involved than I had thought, less of a full time job so to speak and more compatible than I had previously supposed with continuing to get new writing done. Very cool. I’m excited about this and feel a sense of real possibility. On the bus. Mood and self talk around writin: pressed for time I’m gonna run out of time and not get tenure I have too much to do other than witing and that gets in the way, I have to get to that stuff I dont have time to write writing means such a sacrifice, I have to make the writing really good because my time is so scarce and I resent the burden of the writing time requirement. what if no one like my writing, doesnt care or else hates it? what if I made some egregious mistake and look stupid, what if I AM actually stupid? Deep breath. two more. None of that is accurate. I do have a lot to keep track of, and I am successfully managing it. My work is good as attested to by the feedback of multipe readers I respect. Yes, my book will make at most a small splash, but some people I care about will read it and care about it and I can teach it and my students will engage with it. They rise to occasions in a cool way and will do so with my book and that will be very rewarding. OK self-talk noted and responded to. Now what? Am on bus on AlphaSmart, feels a bit funny but it’s good and also wow do I want to get on the laptop and get on the internet! I should keep a resistance journal too. I wonder whats on twitter what has Trump said and done lately is there an email in my inbox maybe I’ll listen to some music, read about some music, read about weightlifting and cooking. Today’s plan: work on article a while. then return lib book, then reimbursements and my spring class then gym then home early. Going to look @ paper copy of article and notes for a moment, then probly open laptop and look @ it on there. On way to coffee shop now, willl work on writing theer and nothgn else, other stuff can go to campus. Entry 173, Monday I’ve been writing a bit more on the AlphaSmart, moving back to laptop occasionally. self talk check I dont want to write, I am bored by the project, I am bored by the act of writing, I am scared of rejection, I deserve the rejection, the work is a reflection of my value as a person, no one will care and also everyone will hate it talking back: I will feel better once I start to write, I feel good having written, I feel good once I am in the writing doing the writing, I am excited about the ideas in my work, and the detail work of line edits and so on does matter, rejections are normal and not a reflection on my value as a person lots of great work gets rejected, sometimes the gatekeepers are wrong, and sometimes good work does get accepted including my own work which is good, and my friends will like and care about what I’m doing, that’s what matters, I have networks I’ve built for myself and what I’m doing matters within those networks. Entry 136, Wednesday
In the chair. Doing some work on chapter 6 starting now, getting out the paper folder. Feeling tense! Suddenly feeling inadequate again re: what I haven’t read. Living with limitations and finitude is hard. I went through the paper copy of my notes on chapter 6 and my impatience is raging! Three deep breaths. I am making good progress on the book. I am writing the book. It’s happening. All I can do is what I can do, getting amped up about it not being more is a waste of time and energy. Did a bit more writing and note review and thinking for chapter 6. Feels painfully slow. The early, steepest part of the learning-and-making curve. Entry 137, Monday I wrote some on Thursday and Friday at the writing group/workshop meeting, forgot to diary, just dove right in. Again I need to restore my habits and discipline. Today is the first day of classes and I am very distracted, tense and jittery. Again I am very distracted, that the distraction is different doesn’t matter. Going to do 30minutes of work on my book then walk to my office. What am I doing? Need to remember. Going to look at my notes. I worked a while on chapter 6. Once again discovered I don't have the structure right. I feel very impatient. Sigh. I now think what I'd imagined as the penultimate section should be the first section after the intro. I'm going to proceed that way for now, will plan to write what I now think is section two. To do so, I’m going to review the notes for this section and chronologize them as I did previously with the other section. That won’t take long, even if it feels like it will. That should speed up the actual writing. I have to head to my office and shift to teaching prep. I’m going to first document my writing time in my spreadsheet. Entry 138, Tuesday Checked email before writing. STOP DOING THAT. Am at coffee shop now, am going to get out my notes and figure out what to do about chapter six. Worried the chapter sucks. Okay I reviewed my notes on tasks and dove into the work, reviewed my notes for this section of the chapter, I think it will go fine but I *feel* really stressed about it and want to avoid the work instead of dive in, which is counter-productive. Quiet down amygdala, I got this. The work has in fact gone well, worked about 2 hours, got a lot done. Still feeling the same, but not as loudly. Need to remind myself I’m writing the first draft. Okay, onto other responsibilities. Entry 139, Thursday Wrote yesterday, forgot to diary. Wrote today before diarying. Again must change this. Writing went fine. Meeting afterward, lots of email. Sigh. Need to do other work then back to writing. Writing went well enough. I think I’ve cracked chapter 6 enough to write a shitty first draft, will need revisions internally but that’s always the case. I’m excited that the book first draft is nearly done, I’m a bit worried about revising it all. Entry 140, Friday. Did it again. Worked before diary. I need to reset. Bad work day today, took most of day off for Kit’s birthday, try to work in a window, it’s gone badly. Lots of guilt, anxiety, tired from stress insomnia, and have a headache. Blech. Plus side: I outlined the latest subsection of chapter 6. Poco a poco. Entry 141, Monday Two kids sick and it’s labor day but I gotta do the work. Don’t wanna. Gonna. And I’m taking more days off post-tenure, fingers crossed I get it. Entry 142, Tuesday I wrote an ending to chapter six yesterday. Pleased about that. Worked too long, feeling it today, and am short on time because of other responsibilities I didn’t get to. Short work session starting now, going to free write on the point of the book over all to see about starting to think through the conclusion, then list some tasks for the sake of next work session Entry 143, Wednesday Now the baby has a fever and the five year old’s throat hurts. Hopefully the fever’s just a side affect of vaccinations yesterday and the sore throat’s just post nasal drip. My biggest kid was really sick for about a week and I felt really bad for her, really don’t want the littler ones to have to endure that. I feel guilty about leaving for work while the kids are sick, feel guilty for A’s added parental workload and exhaustion. I remember one of the directors of the center I was at in Indiana saying that he became a marathon runner after he got tenure (because then he could say no to more things and make more time available for his health) and lost 50 pounds. He said being pretenure faculty is really bad for your health and the work-life balance is all wrong. It was nice to hear someone senior say it out loud. Nice to think that there’s some more balance possible in the future too, won’t always be like this. And my kids won’t always be so little. I’m on the bus to work, going to the coffee shop first. Plan is coffee and 15-30 minutes of book work then class prep and other responsibilities for the day. I carried my big umbrella today against the rain and getting on the bus all the water on it fell all over my. This is a metaphor for something. I am less wet than I’d be were I umbrella-less though. The wi-fi on the bus isn’t work and I find that irritating but I think it’s really for the best. Bus internet is a bad idea, at least mostly. The next book work: review chapter six diagnostically, review my paper and electronic files for organization and briefly for content and comprehensivity of archiving the bits and scraps and drafts, review my notes for the book’s ending. BAD LAZY TIME Entry 144, Monday. It’s been too many days since I wrote. I wrote an entry on a Wednesday, then the next day wrote my humanities center talk. I binge wrote 4500 words that day and that night - stayed up really late. It was nice doing that, to be honest, for several reasons, but not good for me, also for several reasons. I wrote a tiny bit the next day, Friday, then came down sick over the weekend and remained so for the week. Angelica was sick too, and so was the baby. The big girls had been sick the previous week. It was exhausting, and the lack of sleep from staying up too late didn’t help. I took several days off because I felt too foggy-headed to write, and I had other responsibilities piling up. I did a few minutes of writing here and there over the end of the week as I slowly started to get better and as my family got began to get back on an even keel, but it was a rough week and a slow return. I feel better about it now having typed this out. Am now working on the ending to the book. Got significant headway! Pleased about that. Back at it tomorrow. I printed my to-do list. Entry 145, Tuesday. Still struggling to recreate equilibrium and routine, maybe just create in the first place. Been a challenging couple three weeks. I did some file and note review for the book ending, I should have diaried first! Do what is best! Stop cutting corners! My impatience biting me. I think I might gut chapter 1 when I revise - my own guts knotted as I type that - in response to some feedback I got on it last fall, and turn the interlude plus the remains of that chapter into the new chapter one. Have to think about this. Entry 146, Tuesday again. I’ve been working on my grant proposal. Submitted it late last night. I’m tired today. No options, gotta work. Going to make a plan and get started. Okay I read over my work file. Going to follow the plan and review my notes and raw materials. Entry 147, Wednesday. Didn’t diary before writing, should have. Am now printing out THE FIRST DRAFT OF MY WHOLE BOOK! Very excited. Appending here this thing I wrote to help plan my work: 9-27-18. As I read my manuscript I’m looking for the book-ness of it. What’s the book as a whole? How and what do the parts contribute to the whole? I want to look for specific contributions of each chapter in terms of facts/evidence, narrative/tone/moral content, and conceptual contributions. I want to be sure that the chapters are threaded together, that the pieces tie into a whole. For each chapter, before reading: - what is the book about? - what is the chapter’s part in what the book is about? - what are the conceptual, narratival, and evidentiary contributions of the chapter? - what are the ways in which the chapter sets up (explicitly or implicitly/foreshadowing) later chapters? - what are the threads I want to make sure to draw clearly from this chapter to later chapters? - are there ways I want to loop back here to previous chapters? * as I read, note whatever occurs to me. * after I read each chapter answer those questions again * then reread the notes I took and type them out with my answers to the above questions * then read over the notes I have on feedback from readers so far and see if I want to use any of that too * after I’ve reviewed the whole book manuscript, review all the notes generated by this process, categorize them into types (big ideas, macro-structure/threading between chapters, meso-structure in chapters, need for filling out new prose/gaps, need to finish footnotes etc, micro-structure), then read the categorized notes and prioritize them. Do the high priority (i.e. have to do it before it goes to readers) stuff then send it Entry 148, Wednesday. Many of my writing habits have fallen to pieces, especially the meta-level, the subtrate, like the diary writing. My previous entry was on a wednesday as well but it was well over a week ago, I don’t even remember when. Sigh. An update: I have a revised first draft, with completed footnotes and some degree of re-organization. A friend is reading through it for me doing what I think of as an egregiousness check, finding things I must do before it goes to An Official Reader. I felt let down a lot after I got the thing to that point of completion. I think that’s just the reality of the process for me - I ran hard, I felt worn out the next day. It’s fine, normal, just unpleasant, one of the costs of the exertion. I wrote a bit about this on The Twitter. Since then I have been at something of a loose end. I’ve written two conference paper proposals, and reduced the amount of time spent on writing daily. That reduction was in part a necessity because I’d let other responsibilities stack up somewhat, so the pause while the book is in a reader’s hand is an appropriate time to turn to that material. I do not like being back to the beginnings of things. Then again I have not liked lots of moments in the process of the book writing - that’s part of the point of the diary, to make discomfort not be something according to which I steer myself. I’m writing this at the end of the day instead of the beginning. I should return to this as a practice, re-habituate myself. It feels better to say this stuff, letting it out and whatnot. File under Vent file, Joli Jensen, wisdom of. Good to have written this, despite the less than ideal elements. I should find my copy of Steinbeck’s diary and resume reading it. Tomorrow I will see about writing in the diary first. Also, I updated my writing goals on googledocs. 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. Entry 101, Tuesday
Graded all day. Submitted grades. Pleased that’s done, I guess, but I’m tired and my head hurts. Going to do 15 minutes of chapter 5 then call it a day. Helping someone move tomorrow, not sure what’s up for the rest of the week. Read to the end of the draft. It’s worse than I’d remembered! Lots of organizational issues around the middle to end, and repetition of stuff I also put in chapter 4. All fixable stuff, but am feeling annoyed. It’s fine, just have to keep going. Entry 102, Thursday Helped Will and Sarah move yesterday. Am SO TIRED now. Again. Still. Mostly taking the day off today, it’s the anniversary of my and Angelica’s private and legal wedding ceremony. Wrote for 15 minutes while Ang and the girls were out. Worked on re-organizing chapters 4 and 5, I’m swapping the order of them and moving some bits between them. I’m nervous and tense about this but I think it’ll be much better as a result. Back to work properly tomorrow. Entry 103, Monday Friday went badly, I just gave up. Way too little sleep, couldn’t think straight and was in a foul mood. Today went better, I wrote before diarying though. Work went fine enough. I dunno. I wish the book was done! Got to keep going. Entry 104, Tuesday Baby was up late and early. I did a bit of the requisite parenting, am tired as a result. Probably didn’t due a fair share, am guilty as a result. Sigh. I tried to make it to a yoga class but had the time wrong, missed it. Now it is later in the day than I would prefer and time to start. I’m worried about chapters 4 and 5, which have switched order and need some bits moved between them. Nothing to it but to start, here goes. Entry 105, Wednesday Short window of time today and I kind of what to just jump into the writing but I think that doing these entries is good for me. Even if I don’t need it today the habit is good and I want the habit in place for the days when I do need it. This morning I woke up before everybody else, checked email (shouldn’t have! giving to anxiety feeds it!), ate breakfast, then my family got up just as I was packing up to walk out the door. Sigh. Usual lack of sleep, head is foggy. Drinking coffee now so should unfog somewhat. Yesterday Jamie Pietruska told me she’s excited to read and assign my book, that really made my week. I think am more scattered than usual lately because of the schedule change. Summers are nice but the change in routine is tiring, a kind of work on its own. As my kids get old and my family life less chaotic I would like to grow into a set writing time and routine every day, and have that be invariant over academic year and summer. Today’s work: chapter 4. Feeling tense about it, about the re-organizing and reformulating. What if I never finish, what if the book sucks, etc. I’m going to finish and it won’t suck. It’ll at least be good enough, which is good enough. I’m feeling nervous about the grant funds I wasn’t able to spend because of the snags at the law libraries (I live so much of my life in the shadow of the fear of getting in trouble or making some angry... sigh... should see a therapist eventually), and about the primary sources I have but haven’t read - what’s in them? what if it contradicts what I wrote? what if I have to go back to zero?! I won’t. That’s just the usual nerves talking. I actually like some of what I wrote yesterday and the ideas I found/made. I think by diarying this I’ve worked my way into a less comfortable state than when I sat down. Good to vent like this though I suppose. Going to work now. Did some okay work. Good enough. Later in the day, did some more work. I think I overworked today, am feeling the kinds of overwork feelings Boice talks about. I think I stopped early enough that it’s fine and will wear off by tomorrow. That said the work I did is good and the manuscript is better for it. Done for the day on this. Onto other tasks then home. Entry 106, Thursday At writing group, writing among colleagues. Did a good free write I’d been scared to do (what’s the point of the chapter?), found some new ideas and formulations, pleased about it. Group starts in two minutes so done with this for now. Onward. Later in the day. I worked again for about 30 minutes, 50 minutes total today. Not bad. I’m looking forward (well, kinda, and kinda dreading) to the summer getting summery, having more time to focus on my writing. Entry 107, Friday Writing group/workshop again today, day two. Went well yesterday. Babyfull morning, AM VERY TIRED started off feeling grumpy too. Saw a hawk on my walk in though and had a nice conversation with a co-worker. I am partway to a better mood. Group starts now, going to quietly work for about 25 minutes. Work went well enough. Workshop was very good. Going to work some more on my book now. Okay I worked. It went well. BUT THE NEXT STEPS MAKE MY STOMACH HURT. Starting on Monday the next things on this chapter I are to organize the primary sources I have left to engage with, then actually read them and take notes, then free write on the contents, then reverse outline the draft and as part of that to find a home for the results of working with those sources. I am dreading doing this, so I will want to procrastinate on it. I'm going to spend an appropriate time on this on Monday despite how it feels. I sent an email to this effect to Evan and to Alex for the sake of accountability. Entry 108, Monday The baby is teething and sleeping terribly. Life is suffering. Sigh. On my way in to work on the bus, late. I took some time w/ the baby so A could sleep some. I’m glad I have the option to do this, but the flexibility is also a source of stress. I get tired of constantly having to make decisions about what to prioritize. And I get tired of working tired, my time is wasted as a result - takes 90 minutes to do a task I could in 60 with enough sleep. Oh well. I’m going to start the work day at a coffee shop. More caffeine and some sugar will help me concentrate for a while on my book work. I’m going to do book work first. Going to dig into the primary sources for chapter 4. I’m going to do an hour of book work, then work on my summer class and other responsibilities. I’m going to try to get to the gym today as well. I’m worried about the primary sources making what I’ve got chapter 4 no longer make sense. I also keep thinking about revisions BW suggested (strongly) for chapter 1, basically swapping out the source base. I think it’s a good call but the work is scary and it feels like taking apart a chapter that I’d thought, and readers had thought, was pretty good. I suppose that I’m anticipating this is in some ways a good sign, as I’m quite close to the end of a pass through the whole book. And I think I really do have the time. At coffee shop now. Going to work. Worked. Spent a decent while on primary sources for chapter 4. Entry 109, Monday [yes, Monday again, no entries for the past several days. thinking of the bit where Steinbeck wrote in his diary "bad lazy time"] I haven’t done any work on my book for about a week and I’m feeling stressed about that. Last week sucked. This week’s shaping up better but I’m really upset. Going to open the file now. Work was hard to day. I ended up email Alex the following over the day “I'm in the coffee shop now, I have just under two hours until I teach.I can't remember what I'm doing on my book, it's been a week. Feelingtense and frustrated. Going to drink my coffee and collect my thoughts then start working.” “squandered time on facebook. :'( I updated the facebook blocker add-on to my browser (it had quit working), have worked on reading primary sources for maybe 15 minutes,feeling a bit better.” “struggling today, some frustrations but got to a good place. I'm part way through reading through teh material from a court case and have arrived at being excited to know about it so I'm stopping here today for the sake of an easier start next time” “ch4 to do list: - read all the primary docs in my possession and take notes - list all the other cases cited - look them up and skim them, taking notes on anything relevant and anything worth reading more slowly (err on the side of going fast) - print my notes - review quickly for points to free write -- do those free writes - print the chapter draft so far - review it looking for issues that anything from the cases/notes helps solve/address, and looking for places where I can put in stuff from those cases - put stuff in the draft accordingly - print and review again, asking what the draft needs in order to get done, making new to do list - do that stuff! - review remaining/unused notes from these cases, does any of it go into chapter 5? -- free write on anything that might -- free write on what, if anything, I might do with the stuff that doesn't go in (above all, thinking about writing something on the lawyers and/or insurance companies; not going to decide that either way right now, just want to equip future me to make a good decision either way) -- then onto chapter 5 speculating and reflecting: I am feeling, as we way with our kids, big feelings. specifically about not being done with chapter 4 yet. I am actually on a good schedule even though it doesn't feel that way. goal=try to get this done by the end of this week. But even if it takes all of June though that's fine. That will leave July and August for chapters 5 and 6. If I end the summer with the manuscript drafted through chapter 6 that's still a really good timeline. My impatience is not helping me.” Day’s ended up okay enough. I am back on track or at least am on track toward being, in due time, back on track. Entry 85, Thursday
I got right down to work today without diarying first. Weird. Work went well. I think I was excited to dive in today. I've figured out that for me writing and revising works best if I do multiple passes through a thing, once for key ideas where I'm doing a lot of disorganized free/generative writing, once for large structure (sections, mostly), once for small structure (paragraph and sentence order) and once for sentences/word choice. I pretty much always let myself go back so the conceptual unit gets bigger so that when doing a pass for small structure I can return to key ideas and free writing or to big structure. I never let myself skip ahead to the next pass This works really well for me. It's pretty fast, faster than other ways I've worked, but it *feels* interminable so I need to manage my expectations/impatience. Anyway, I'm now on what I think is a sentence-level pass of the chapter, which means it may be nearly done. I'm 1/4 of the way through and am only finding sentence-level issues to work on, which is exciting. I'm nervous that I'll find some big structural or conceptual problem 3/4 of the way through. Even if so that just means another week or two. I'm pleased to be so close to done with this chapter. I'm on track to finish it in about a week, which will put me at 2/3 of the manuscript initially drafted. Also: I am scared of revising the manuscript. That was the phase where I got writers block while dissertating. Entry 86, Friday Woke up tired. I was up kinda late and the cats were obnoxious and loud a lot during the night. I got to see my kids briefly before I headed to the bus, so that was good. Today is my mother in law’s last day here and I wish she was staying longer. She’s fun to have around and is a big help. We’re going back to being understaffed, basically. Sigh. I’m at a coffee shop now with friends, so the writing fear is quieter, smaller. Still sharp and bitey, but much more manageable. I got distracted by music and social media. I’m thinking of starting a resistance journal on paper, because my resistance to writing is often expressed in the form of using the computer to do stuff other than write, maybe getting off the computer to write that out would help. Today I’m on rereading chapter 4 draft. I feel nervous about it and impatient to be done. Feels like some boredom in there too but I’ve read the thing enough for it to be regular boredom, it’s really wanting to be done with the draft. Okay I got the paper copy out. Read through and made notes for the next revision. It feels close to done so far. That’s exciting. I’ve done 31 pages, 19 more to go. Going to change gears now I think because I can feel myself slowing down, working less efficiently. I’m going to refill my coffee then see what else is on my to do list and write an agenda for the day. Entry 87, Monday It was a long week and very full weekend and I am feeling all of it today. I want to be relaxing and having low key fun, and sleeping a lot more. I miss my kids too. I resent that I have to teach a summer class, that we need the money, and that I don’t get a real break of any appreciable duration. I don’t want to work on my book or anything else. And the work feels irrelevant. The world is on fire and is captained by shortsighted and selfish people, and I’m writing a work of esoteric interest to a tiny group of people. Sigh. Sigh again. I’m going to recaffeinate and get down to reading. The work today is reading through the draft of chapter 4 to ID issues. I wish it was done already. This stage of draft writing is always unpleasant, I always get really impatient. Made it through to the end of this pass, so I have a list of tasks to do Going to start working on those, am not going to try to get them all done today. Entry 88, Tuesday In late. Woke up from a nightmare two minutes before my alarm, didn’t have time to go back to sleep to reset, took a while to shake it off. Was hard to get out of the house on a timely basis, got to work tired, the usual... Chapter 4 revisions again. Sigh. Worked a bit. Went fine. Ran into some friends by working at the library, that’s nice, restorative. Onto the rest of the day. Entry 89, Wednesday Got in late, stayed home w/ the baby for most of the day so the rest of my family could do a thing. Am tired, grumpy, slow. Writing at the end of the day is crummy. Wrote, went okay. Entry 90, Thursday I am STILL on chapter 4 revision and I don’t WANT to be. Ugh. Nearly done, really, just am whining. Worked. Feeling better. Entry 91, Friday I had writing time blocked out for the morning but was genuinely unavoidably pulled away. I then had a day full of meetings and emails. I am tired now. Feeling emotionally worn out by the end of the semester, and frustrated that I didn’t write this morning. I also feel guilty because my wife’s home with the kids and I’m not. And I just don’t want to write. Am going to get out the folder of chapter 4 notes now and get down to work. Entry 92, Monday The teaching part of the semester is over. The grading part right at the end is about to begin. I don’t look forward to that. I’m not feeling the summer feeling yet, but I look forward to it arriving. Right now I just want to spend time with my kids or do some gardening and guitar playing and cooking. Oh well. The weekend was pretty full again. Nice but a tiring weekend means starting the week tired again. In the big picture everything is good, fine, I just wish there was a bit less of it all, bit slower pace. I’m on the bus, a woman just got on in an Eeyore sweatshirt. I should read the Pooh books again to reset my attitude, and for the sake of having more well-crafted prose in my diet. Maybe read more E.B. White too. I’ll be at the coffee shop relatively soon. The plan is to order coffee then immediately get out the paper folder with the notes for chapter 4. They’re very nearly done, I think I have a paragraph or a discursive footnote left and that’s all. I’m excited to set this chapter aside. The into chapter 5. One nice thing about summer will be more long writing sessions and fewer things competing for my attention. Am in the coffee shop now. Got distracted by email. I shouldn’t have checked it before I worked on my book. Ugh. Onto book work now. Entry 93, Tuesday I had a morning meeting and was up extra early because I had to take the trash out. I’m proud of myself that I was disciplined to work for a few minutes on chapter 5 before the meeting. Definitely too little sleep last night and am going to be coffee intensive today as a result. I wish I’d gotten to see my family before I left the house. I miss them. I thought I had two meetings in a row but the second meeting turns out to be tomorrow. I’m pleased that I’m into chapter 5. Going to work on chapter 5 again in a moment, maybe after my next cup of coffee. Dropbox quit working! Argh. Got it fixed. Onto work on 5 now. I got a fair bit of work done on 5 today. Feeling good about that. On Angelica’s advice I started 5 a while ago, to get the discomfort of starting a new chapter out of the way or at least reduce it. That totally worked, it’s much easier to start this one now than it would have been otherwise. I’m currently doing a mix of remembering what I’ve done, ramping up this chapter/ramping up my return to this chapter, and doing some new work for the chapter. Pleased about all of that. Entry 94, Wednesday Meeting today for faculty writing instruction project. Went well, heady conversations, dug into things I care about in productive ways. Pleased to be part of that, and tired out afterward. And as usual started the day tired. Sick of being tired. Parenting is insufficiently supported. Awful news today of the government starting to separate children from parents in migrant detention. I’m so angry about this. The powerful stomp on the weak, over and over, and don’t have to know the moral consequences. That they get to live with themselves is one of many things that upsets me. Sigh. As always the context for starting to work is less than ideal. Starting anyway. Going to get out the paper notes for chapter 5 now. I’m a little nervous about chapter 5 and issues of larger chapter organization. The answer to the first is to write the chapter, to the second is to finish the book and revise the manuscript of the book as a whole. The trick to going forward is to go forward, no trick at all, stop tricking myself into not going forward. I’ve done pretty well at that really, and I’m proud of that. Maybe I’ve accomplished enough that I can soon begin to try to remake my mental architecture - continue the behavior, change how it feels; keep writing, have writing be more pleasant. We shall see. Onto 5. One step at a time. I think I’ve worked half an hour now. I can feel distraction coming and my self-control declining. Taking a short break to reset, and eat and recaffeinate. I worked some more. And I accidentally threw out my paper copy of my chapter to do list, which was the only copy, had to reach into the garbage to get it back out. Sigh. Work went well, I moved the work forward. Entry 95, Thursday Very full day, wasn’t able to make time to write in the morning, I regret that. I probably didn’t try hard enough. Am now late in the day, very tired and have to write. Ugh. Going to do so for a bit then onto other responsibilities. Worked a while. Now to grade soke Entry 99, Friday Similar day. Sigh. Going to work on book for 30 minutes now. Entry 100, Monday. This weekend: attended a kid bday party and a neighborhood festival, got the jungle of grass in my backyard chopped down (it was definitely knee high in places) and got easily 30 mosquito bites. Got a bit of garden weeding done. Also got Kit to pick some arugula and plant some spinach. I was pleased about that. Nice to spend time with her, and she was brave about the bugs and worms. So was I! A centipede came out and she was like ‘eww gross I don’t want to be by that’ so I picked it up between my finger and thumb and tossed it away. Felt super gross and creepy but mostly afterward - I acted before the fear fully took hold. Pleased about that. The prairie plants in the front yard are start to look good, my neighbor complimented it too. I’ve been thinking of it mostly as an annoyance (so much weeding to do!), it’s nice to have it start to feel fun. Neighbor also offered to help me do some masonry on the house, second neighbor to offer construction/renovation help. Both those neighbors have also asked me to watch their house a bit while they’re away and exchanged numbers with me. Feels good to be cultivating relationships of trust and that people want to be generous like that. Angelica also pointed out that the construction help specifically is likely a perk of living in a blue collar neighborhood. Growing into a life here. AND I AM SO TIRED. I’m at a coffee shop now, I really need to get my grades done by the end of tomorrow afternoon, given the deadline and family commitments. That will be a challenge and will be unpleasant. I’m at the the coffee shop with friends, for accountability and moral support. I’m going to write 15 minutes (well, read the draft of chapter 5) then get down to grading. Worked. Chapter 5 is further along than I’d expected, it’s coming together out of the raw materials really, really fast. That feels good. And the problems in it, the first draftness of it, is really bothering me - I’m overreacting to the issues in it, which likely are normal and will work out through continued rereading and revision. Also: entry 100! Stoked about that. It's an endurance sport. Anyway onto grading. I've been keeping these in a running file on my computer for the past week and change. Posting them now, on Wednesday (diary day 84!)
Entry 75, Tuesday Read some more Steinbeck diary on the bus in. Got to work and read and checked email first thing. Such a poor choice, and one that’s contextually encouraged. Wrist and other discomfort today again. Sigh. Time to work. Worked on chapter 4. Made it further into the notes for revision on the hand written copy. Did some work on source acquisition for late chapter, not sure if that stuff goes into the book or into a future work but good to do either way, and is thought provoking. Going to free write a bit on the thoughts provoked. Entry 76, Wednesday Am at coffee shop. Didn’t charge laptop so battery is low. Can’t sit by Renee as a result, have to sit somewhere else by an outlet. There’s a metaphor in here somewhere. And another in this fucking endless winter. Ugh. Today I’m going to spend time on chapter 4 then a bit of time on source acquisition. I’m nervous about this stuff but the volume is turned down low on that. Some of this is just that I’m too tired for loud feelings right now. Okay I slouched my way into the internet and there are several people at the coffee shop who I haven’t seen in a while. Am going to order food and coffee and get out the folder for chapter 4 work. Getting responsible. Paper copy out, time to do the work. Entry 77, Monday Bad lazy time, as Steinbeck put it in his diary at some point. I am very tired and the weather is good and I have much to do that I don’t want to do. Sigh. I have squandered too much time on unimportant things. I now have my folder out and am going to work on chapter 4. Worked well enough. Read a bit of Steinbeck’s diary, noticed some stuff more consciously. He sometimes talks about what’s going on in his life, just as what he’s writing about, unrelated to the writing (‘this happened’). Sometimes it’s connected to the writing (‘drank too much, am tired now’ or ‘am distracted by xyz stuff’). These latter overlap with reports on how he’s doing and feeling. He also talks out what he’ll be doing this session in terms of content (‘today must get Ma more fleshed out’ or ‘section today on camp life’) and in terms of length (‘long day today’ or ‘just 1000 words needed’). He will sometimes talk about how much is left till the end (‘just 50,000 pages more’). I should write prompts for myself on each of those. Entry 78 Tuesday Chiropractor appointment today for various pains I have from work. Sigh. I’m at the public library now with a short window of time. Going to work on chapter 4. Should do the stuff I sketched out yesterday re: a set of prompts to make this diary most useful to myself. Okay worked half an hour, reviewing old notes and a bit of new work on the chapter. Nearly done with the chapter. Will need to review it all as a piece once the work is (ostensibly) done, to see how it hangs together as a chapter. I know that will likely mean I find some issues I wasn’t aware of and I will feel impatient about that. I am in fact making fast progress. Alex reminded me my original timeline was chapter 4 by end of summer and I’m looking at it being done by end of April. That’s real and yet hard to feel. Entry 79, Wednesday. I am acting lazy and selfish. I need to refocus. I looked at my diary from the other day re: the kinds of things Steinbeck writes about. I turned that into prompts. Describe the morning/day so far. Describe your emotional state. Describe how you’re feeling about writing. Describe the general writing task today. Note any feelings about the day’s writing task. The morning was nice in that I got to see all my kids and get some housework done. I’m excited that the weather’s gotten nice and am looking forward to gardening more and seeing what comes up out of what we planted. I’m nervous about my ability to get it sufficiently weeded out given the limits on my time. I missed my family when I headed in to work. My wrist is a bit sore and I’m angry about the hoops I’m having to jump through to request ergonomic stuff at work. The chiropractor was good, I felt better afterward and am glad he’s writing a letter. He’s also nice person and we had a good conversation during the adjustment. Over all I am feeling kind of tense and tired and don’t want to work on my book. I also have a lot of other teaching responsibilities that I also don’t want to do, catching up on data entry and routine emails (as opposed to ones involving some content/substance that’s immediately satisfying). All of that matters but the use and enjoyment comes later, not during the doing of it. I am feeling nervous about finishing my book on time, and also nervous that when I finish it I will have to revise it, and that it will go be evaluated by people who I feel are smarter than me. I worry they will hate or dismiss my book, and I worry that my book is no good. Acting on those worries doesn’t help. I need to work anyway regardless of how I feel. Also, the same smart people whose opinions I’m nervous about believe the project is good and that I can pull it off. If they thought the book was going to suck they’d have stopped me already. Today’s writing task is to go through chapter 4 draft on paper and do what’s written down there. I feel better having written all this out, I’m going to work now. I should save that writing prompt to help me do this better and more consistently. Okay worked a while on chapter 4. It’s coming along. Feel good about that. Entry 80, Thursday Have an early appointment today, have to get started immediately. I don’t want to. I’m tired and don’t want to work on my book. Ugh. Entry 81, Friday My kids had a fight this morning. They behaved very appropriately, maybe I should say disagreement instead of fight. There were hurt feelings all around. I was proud of how they handled it and felt for both of them. As I was helping them work it out and comforting them I started to feel anxious and impatient about how I needed to get to work, and then I resented work. Sigh. Now I’m at the coffee shop with a shortish work window and I don’t want to work. I think my book isn’t as good as I wish it was and I don’t want to spend the time it requires. That may be just an expression of my getting increasingly nervous about revising the first draft of the manuscript once the first draft is done and about it getting evaluated, impostor syndrome is starting to crop up. I’m good at this above all because of my work habits and discipline. That’s reality. These doubts aren’t reality, they’re poor emotional habits and are encouraging me to self-sabotage. I know that in my head but that knowledge doesn’t venture below the neck. I will say I’m excited about summer writing group stuff and the support and encouragement my friend En and I are getting for our efforts around that. Today’s writing task(s)=more chapter 4. Going to do that now. (I used the prompts I wrote for this, they help.) Entry 82, Monday Today is my wife’s birthday. I wrapped presents last night, my kids colored the wrapping paper this morning then she opened presents. That was nice. I feel guilty not staying home. I technically have the discretionary power to do so today, but if I did then there’d be serious consequences in tomorrow’s classes. There are a lot of these moments of the job, where I’m allowed to make a decision but really the decision is sort of pre-determined by my responsibilities. These moments kind of suck, breed guilt because it feels like the job is my thing, my fault. Oh well. I’m trying to get a lot done quickly so I can get home early. I’m feeling tired. Feeling the Mondayness of the day, the time between now and last time I worked. I really want to use my time poorly, look up the latest news and guitar lesson and exercise videos and so on. I’m also worried about teaching related stuff, I really want to check my email and make sure no one’s mad at me. I’m feeling tense about this chapter too. Maybe it’s not very good. Maybe the book’s not very good. Maybe no one will care about it, maybe it’ll be too weird or too obvious or under-researched. Today I’m going to work on chapter 4. I’m very close to done with it for the time being. I’d like to finish it today but I might not, more important to get home early than to meet this particular deadline. A week or so is not an appreciable difference here. Plus better to start the summer more willing and able to work than to start the summer with a bit more accomplished but less primed to accomplish more. Okay getting out the paper folder for chapter 4. Worked for a while on chapter 4. I basically just wrote a really, really long discursive footnote. I’m glad to have worked out the ideas there and think it may need to be cut or if left in it will be weird and readers will hate it. Sigh. I have 4 items from old notes marked to put into this chapter. I think if I binge-wrote for the whole day I could get them all taken care of. I am tempted a little, but only a little. I’m pleased that it’s only a little tempting. I am not going to finish chapter 4 in April as I had hoped and I am disappointed and sad about that, but I’m so close. This is about a week’s worth of work I think and like I said a week or so is not really an important unit of time here, it’s all the same really. (I say this in part because I find myself growing afraid about getting the book turned in quickly enough to be able to meet all the timelines to which I am subject.) And if I binge-wrote I would pay for it in multiple ways, including the writing would end up set back by at least a week so I wouldn’t even gain anything time-wise, I might even end losing more than a week. I have a list of big picture themes written out on the last page of the chapter draft. I’m going to give those some very limited time, maybe a day or two, to try to work them more explicitly into the chapter. After that they become things to marinate on and deal with later. The process: free write on them to sketch out the ideas, then see about where they can go in the body of the draft. When all of this is done then I’ll reread the draft as a document and see what small things I can do. I think that will be uncomfortable but it will be exciting to have a draft of the chapter in hand. Then I move on the chapter 5 too, which is also exciting. I think chapter 5 will take about 4-6 weeks of serious focused work, then the same for chapter 6. I really am on track to have a draft of the manuscript by end of the summer. Entry 83, Tuesday My 4y.o became my 5y.o this morning. It’s cool to see her so excited (‘this is the best day of my life!’ she shouted), and to see my 8y.o so excited about her sister and her sister’s birthday. I wish I could have the day off for it. And the kids were up SUPER early today so I am really struggling right now. Feeling some teaching and end of semester related anxiety, and am annoyed and anxious about a computer problem - computer was supposed to reset itself to download some encryption thing, but it didn’t work. I’m worried it’ll quit mid-work now. Or that I’ll have to spend time talking to tech support. Ugh. Oh well. Anyway. The coffee will kick in soon. Going to spend a brief window on chapter 4 then onto other responsibilities. Okay did that. I've been going over old bits I'd set aside for possible use in the chapter. I've only got one more bit, though it's sort of a big one. I'm feeling really impatient about returning to it. It'll be fine though. All in due time. Entry 84, Wednesday Relatively easy morning, bit of time w/ my family and they were engaged in other stuff as I left so heading out to work felt easier. I’m feeling tense about work stuff (to do list is too big to see it all at once!) and about money ([shakes fist at society]). I’m also annoyed with myself and with the damn laptop. I somehow had begun saving my draft in the wrong place so it wasn’t backed up, and the computer froze up yesterday and I lost yesterday morning’s work. Ugh. I was thinking I had to recreate that today but actually think I did so already last night. (I am in the precaffeinated stage of the morning, so my brain is foggy.) Okay I went through the bits for chapter 4. Next thing to do on it is print it and reread for coherence and organization and whatnot. |