Poking my head in
I don't know why I haven't been posting more. Obviously, once you hit a certain point, it becomes increasingly difficult to say anything meaningful. We've all experienced this. We meet up with an old friend who asks what we've been up to and we reply, "Nothing," even though it's been a busy few years since you've had the chance to talk. So to an extent, not posting breeds not posting.
But I think it's something else. I've been writing a lot more on my dissertation, and I think that's sapped my appetite for writing, to an extent. It's certainly a worthwhile trade-off -- I've gotten a tremendous amount written -- but a trade-off nonetheless. So while you all have missed, I'm sure, my semi-coherent ramblings, I have gotten the bulk of the paper done. That's good.
I"m currently rewriting the introduction, and it's pretty scary. Since I've been throwing myself a bit more into work, I've realized that the way I've been thinking of the project hasn't been the most helpful. Specifically, while I had been thinking of it as centering around liberalism (Bill Galston, Steve Macedo), it's really around democratic judgment (Seyla Benhabib and Hannah Arendt). Overall, this shift has led to a clearer, stronger argument. But, it is still freaking me out a bit. Meeting with The Tuna tomorrow, which should go well; if it does, I'll have the intro finished in a few weeks, and I'll only have one more chapter to write, which I might be able to finish over the summer. So, you know, good stuff.
Another reason I might not have been posting much is that I've been, at a low level, mulling over some of the gender stuff that I wrote about in my last substantive post. Being in Japan made me think about the ways in which others see me, and the ways in which I present myself to the world. My capacity for childishness surprised me, once I stepped back to take some stock, especially given the extent to which I think of myself as in touch with (in fact, kind of reveling in) my faults.
It's weird. I vacillate so quickly between mature and immature, and so briefly. And I'm never sure exactly why I do it. I mean, on the one hand, some of my friends think of me as the daddy of the group. My family thinks of me, for both better and worse, and the relaxed one, and the wise-beyond his years. On the other hand, some of my friends think of me as the obnoxious, immature one. And I think they're both right.
So to what extent does it make sense to leave the latter behavior behind (if it was even possible to do so)? What would be lost? On the one hand, the obvious answer would be, "Nothing of value," but I tend to distrust simple answers like that. What does the obnoxiousness and the childishness buy on the positive side? (And I don't mean to engage in Aristotelean essentialism here, because I don't think that there's anything natural; I just think that personal facets tend to exist in a matrix.)
Part of this is the reason I've made a conscious effort to be more positive. It's hard. I tend to interact with things in a negative way. Even when I'm enjoying myself, I do in a negative way. I enjoy the lack of clouds, rather than the sunshine. I like the absence of stress, rather than relaxation. So the shift to more positive phrasings, even when the content is negative (being annoyed, rather than not liking something) is really difficult for me. And I'm not sure why.
See, even there I do it. I should say, "I'm confused about why," but I go, reflexively, for the negative phrasing. So, you know, it's a work in progress.
There's obviously more stuff that's gone on between the last update and this one, but I'll let it slide, at least for a bit. Will I wait as long between updates? I don't know right now. Probably depends on the weather -- it was sunny today, and that got me more animated than usual.