So I bumped into a Soothsayer... BEWARE THE IDES OF MAY
And yes, I know it was the Ides of March in Julius Caesar, but I'm not a ruler of Rome and it's not March, now is it? Here's the deal.
This is not an "OMG I'm so sorry I'm not posting/paying attention to Livejournal," because I'm not. I've been busy. We have a lot going on right now, and I do not have the time to write and edit the kinds of posts I want to write and edit. However, this has meant that I am not writing or editing much of anything, aside from lesson plans and student work, and frankly, while I do get paid for that, it's no good.
My writing has stalled to shit. I look at blank Word documents and the work on my diss and my other projects and I cannot write. Not I don't know how or I don't know what to write; I try to force myself to write, and nothing good comes out, so I end up deleting it and all the time I spent writing, ah fuck it.
Then I think back to 2004-2005, when I was writing all the time, even at a time when I was working 80 hours a week, I still made the time to walk to the library and make a post to my blog (which is dead and deleted, you'll never find it, even those of you who were there in my Blogspot days) back when I still didn't have internet at home. The bottom line is I'm not writing, it is pulling me down emotionally and it is starting to impact me professionally. My best work, academically speaking, came when I was active in blogging and getting out posts on a daily or almost daily basis. I have to find that again.
Here's the problem: I'm gun shy.
I have a lot I want to write about politics - but there are a lot of people who already agree with me, so what's the point, and I don't want to anger my friends who disagree with me.
I want to write reviews - but who really cares? I am not an expert on the things that I am often reviewing, I have insight, but frankly, people will like what they like and no one should base what they watch, read or listen to based on what I watch, read or listen to. Do you really want your time to be spent reading 19th century French melodrama, Shakespeare, Melville, Russian novelists and Virginia Woolf? I doubt it. Only insane people like me choose that combination. As to anime and manga reviews, I want to do them, but my friends who are into anime and manga are watching/reading already more than they can handle, and those who aren't don't really have room to add another interest to their lives.
I want to write about issues - but I know I will turn into exactly what I hate about people who write on issues. Every time I see a post about what "feminists" think, I get the knee-jerk reaction that is "No, that is only what School X of feminism thinks! Schools A and Y actually think the opposite, and Schools B, Z, D, and Q have mixed and lively debates on what they should think about the issue you just over-simplified." The example of this is almost always porn, which Radical Feminists (Marxist/2nd wave, etc, see the level of definition this would take) are opposed to porn, and people will represent that is all feminists are opposed to porn, when in fact, Gender Feminists, Queer Feminists, 3rd and 4th wave feminists, and many other feminist schools on the fringes have opposite or more nuanced views that are not as simple as MacKinnon and Dworkin trying to claim that porn is the cause of 100% of societies problems (and see... I'm doing it right now: over-simplifying and over-generalizing a more complex issue and the view on that issue to explain why I avoid writing about issues). There is no way to have a blog post about any issue worth reading about that doesn't instantly devolve into "lowest common denominator" BS without being so narrow as to limit the audience drastically. I feel I should save those ideas for journal articles anyway.
Well, anyway, fuck all that because it doesn't matter. Starting tomorrow, and for the rest of May at the very least, there will be no fewer than 5 substantive posts on this journal a week (not counting this one). Bottom line, I need the practice. I have to write; it has to feel natural again. The time to be gun shy is over. It's time to start making regular posts again.
So, let me apologize in advance: I am sorry if what I write offends you. I'm sorry if you disagree. I welcome informed and well-written dissent. I do not welcome nit-picky bullshit because it will neither help me nor advance any kind of useful discussion. If you specialize in nit-picky bullshit like people who are perma-banned from this journal because you never read books because "reading is boring," leave now. In fact, if you don't read books, why the fuck are you pretending to be my friend in the first place?
Also, please, what do you want to see? What do you want to read? Some of you have been with me since 2004, so you've seen a lot of me already. What would you like to see now?
I hope you enjoy. If you don't enjoy, well then, no one made you come here or read, now did they?
This is not an "OMG I'm so sorry I'm not posting/paying attention to Livejournal," because I'm not. I've been busy. We have a lot going on right now, and I do not have the time to write and edit the kinds of posts I want to write and edit. However, this has meant that I am not writing or editing much of anything, aside from lesson plans and student work, and frankly, while I do get paid for that, it's no good.
My writing has stalled to shit. I look at blank Word documents and the work on my diss and my other projects and I cannot write. Not I don't know how or I don't know what to write; I try to force myself to write, and nothing good comes out, so I end up deleting it and all the time I spent writing, ah fuck it.
Then I think back to 2004-2005, when I was writing all the time, even at a time when I was working 80 hours a week, I still made the time to walk to the library and make a post to my blog (which is dead and deleted, you'll never find it, even those of you who were there in my Blogspot days) back when I still didn't have internet at home. The bottom line is I'm not writing, it is pulling me down emotionally and it is starting to impact me professionally. My best work, academically speaking, came when I was active in blogging and getting out posts on a daily or almost daily basis. I have to find that again.
Here's the problem: I'm gun shy.
I have a lot I want to write about politics - but there are a lot of people who already agree with me, so what's the point, and I don't want to anger my friends who disagree with me.
I want to write reviews - but who really cares? I am not an expert on the things that I am often reviewing, I have insight, but frankly, people will like what they like and no one should base what they watch, read or listen to based on what I watch, read or listen to. Do you really want your time to be spent reading 19th century French melodrama, Shakespeare, Melville, Russian novelists and Virginia Woolf? I doubt it. Only insane people like me choose that combination. As to anime and manga reviews, I want to do them, but my friends who are into anime and manga are watching/reading already more than they can handle, and those who aren't don't really have room to add another interest to their lives.
I want to write about issues - but I know I will turn into exactly what I hate about people who write on issues. Every time I see a post about what "feminists" think, I get the knee-jerk reaction that is "No, that is only what School X of feminism thinks! Schools A and Y actually think the opposite, and Schools B, Z, D, and Q have mixed and lively debates on what they should think about the issue you just over-simplified." The example of this is almost always porn, which Radical Feminists (Marxist/2nd wave, etc, see the level of definition this would take) are opposed to porn, and people will represent that is all feminists are opposed to porn, when in fact, Gender Feminists, Queer Feminists, 3rd and 4th wave feminists, and many other feminist schools on the fringes have opposite or more nuanced views that are not as simple as MacKinnon and Dworkin trying to claim that porn is the cause of 100% of societies problems (and see... I'm doing it right now: over-simplifying and over-generalizing a more complex issue and the view on that issue to explain why I avoid writing about issues). There is no way to have a blog post about any issue worth reading about that doesn't instantly devolve into "lowest common denominator" BS without being so narrow as to limit the audience drastically. I feel I should save those ideas for journal articles anyway.
Well, anyway, fuck all that because it doesn't matter. Starting tomorrow, and for the rest of May at the very least, there will be no fewer than 5 substantive posts on this journal a week (not counting this one). Bottom line, I need the practice. I have to write; it has to feel natural again. The time to be gun shy is over. It's time to start making regular posts again.
So, let me apologize in advance: I am sorry if what I write offends you. I'm sorry if you disagree. I welcome informed and well-written dissent. I do not welcome nit-picky bullshit because it will neither help me nor advance any kind of useful discussion. If you specialize in nit-picky bullshit like people who are perma-banned from this journal because you never read books because "reading is boring," leave now. In fact, if you don't read books, why the fuck are you pretending to be my friend in the first place?
Also, please, what do you want to see? What do you want to read? Some of you have been with me since 2004, so you've seen a lot of me already. What would you like to see now?
I hope you enjoy. If you don't enjoy, well then, no one made you come here or read, now did they?