A dump of prior entries not yet posted.


Monday 12-2-24

I was planning to write earlier in the day but instead I went for a walk-and-chat with a colleague. Good to catch up, happy to have done so, and I do wish I had also managed to write already today. It’s now later in the day and between classes so I’m a little tired and my head is more echoey, so to speak - less apt for concentration. Ah well. We do what we can, play the hand we’re dealt. 
Where am I at with writing? Well in terms of products I recently-ish turned in a revised draft and now have other drafts to revise as my immediate higher priority activities. I don’t love that phase of the writing. I made a list based on my vent file from the other day, writing and reading on different projects in different phases. It’d probly do me well to reflect again on the specific modes of work and thought. I currently conceptualize this stuff via primary, secondary, tertiary products but really what I’m after is inhabiting different headspaces. Getting back to the old gardening metaphor, I like a varied range of activities - planting, watering, weeding, pruning, harvesting, sharing. Not sure just now what the activities/headspaces are writing-wise and not worth the time to really dig into now, but eventually, soonish I think. But yeah I have a primary project now to work on and options for other stuff, all well enough and feeling alright enough - a little tired and distracted but also relieved as it was hard getting the last piece done - and I’m appreciating feeling better like this. Nice to work in a feeling of calm, so to speak. 
Going to now put some work into the piece that’s on the top of my desk. 

Tuesday 12-3-24

Late in the day, not ideal. How’s writing going? Well, I worked on it some yesterday so that’s a start. I also put together an activity tracker on paper for myself, trying that to see if it promotes the activity well enough. I like having a record of the activity, which weighs in favor of tracking on the computer, but that’s not the actual point, the point is encouraing the activity to happen, not actually recording it for the sake of having a record. Anyway that’s a good step to have taken, every little helps and I’m pleased with myself for taking the step. 
I remain in a phase of the writing that I don’t love as much. Good problem to have, I’ve had three pieces clear some initial hurdles and this is what happens when in that situation. Will be good to bear in mind the salutory nature of varying my writing activity though to prevent flagging. I’m also a little annoyed by some of the comments in the reader reports, which is probly unfair of me and just my distress at this phase speaking, but good to write it down to be less distracted by that feeling. I have a to-do list for this piece so am going to just get down to chipping away at the work. 


Wednesday 12-4-24

Back at it. Earlier in the day this time, so that’s good. What am I working on as a writer? Main thing is article revisions. How am I feeling? I don’t like article revisions, and I think I express that in part through the vehicle of my legitimate grievances with the rest of the world. Probly also turn to those grievances as a form of justified-seeming procrastination, to be totally honest. Lots of the tasks in revision feel boring and/or annoying but really what’s going on is I’m scared of people reading it and that it will be rejected. Those are understandable fears but the only way out is through. (I mean, I could quit, technically speaking, but I’m committed to keeping on writing so that’s not an option I’m willing to consider. Good to remember: I choose this, I do in fact want to do this, it’s just a thing I want to do that involves some exertion and distress.) And the worst that happens is that the article gets rejected and I do something else with it. That would be bad, it’s like stubbing my toe or falling off a skateboard (a recent experience!), unpleasant but manageable under current conditions so just keep going. 
How is the work going? It’s actually going well, especially for the circumstances. I ran into a colleague the other day and we were talking about the state of things at the place where we’re employed (that state: bad!) and our own individual situations. In the course of the conversation they talked about their own aspirations and said something like ‘well I try to write and publish like I would if I were at a research university’ and really, same, to a significant degree. And that’s working alright for the circumstances. A lot of that’s luck but a lot of it is effort and I’m proud of that. And I do find it rewarding. But that’s how I feel, not how it’s going. How’s it going? Well in fact. Gears are turning, process is in motion. Just keep that happening really. 
Alright going to work on this draft. 
I started to reread the draft and kept lapsing into skimming. I’m feeling very impatient with this and frustrated with the review comments. That’s amplified by the comments being a mix of wrong and right, and also as I read I noticed some other things - maybe it’d be better to make some stuff that now comes late be where the essay starts, and so on - so I’m feeling extra insecure about it. I think the next steps here are to free write in response to this skim, reread it again properly with the help of the computer reading to me to help me focus better, free write again, then see what I think. Maybe also start a fresh draft, writing up what I think the essay ought to be - do it like a talk for students - as a way to see if have the outline right. 

Thursday 12-5-24

Late on kind of a long day, late in kind of a long week. Bad starting point for writing. I wish I’d been a better steward of my time today but this disorganization is partly the result of being tired out and worn down by bad circumstances (a friend today said that the situation at my work sounds like a real lot and that was very validating, especially because I’ve only told them some of the details) and also just the normal grind of normal stuff, late in the semester, etc. So, how am I feeling about writing? Well I’m just kinda baseline tired and mildly grumpy so that’s how I feel, tired of and grumpy about writing. Other than that, I’m nervous this piece won’t work and will suck, will get rejected and I’ll get my feelings hurt. The usual, honestly, nothing notable! How is the writing actually going? I mean, today, not good yet. Over all, my writing life remains good for a bad circumstance (just staying a writer is a win at present) and especially good lately. That I don’t like this phase of the writing on this latest piece (and the next one after this! I’m rolling from annoying final stage to annoying final stage because I used my time poorly and because I was set up to fail by circumstances!), that isn’t information really other than a reminder that this isn’t a phase I like. I’m a baby about this stuff in general and especially so now when tapped out, pressed for time because of lower value obligations I can’t get out of, etc etc. So in short, it’s fine, good actually, just gotta do the stuff I know how to do, quit dithering and get down to it. This is all pretty negative, so it’s good to get it out I think, and it’d also probly do me well to try to find a positive just for the sake of my headspace, so: I’m doing cool work in cool contexts/networks/communities, I like what I’m figuring out, learning, encountering, and getting newly (and, I think, productively) confused about. So that’s all good stuff! Onto doing some actual writing now.

Tuesday 12-10-24

Friday and yesterday got eaten up with various medium-value (at best) work tasks, no writing, not even any thinking about my stuff, frustrated about that. I guess I read a bit of a memoir loosely on my stuff. Hmm. Anyhow, how am I feeling about writing? Lousy! Tense because I’ve been away from it and coming back is harder. Frustrated because of the impositions getting in the way of it and even more so because it’s not like those impositions took ALL the time, I also made choices with the remaining time, and poor ones. Harrumph. That’s how I’m feeling about my writing life, though, not about my writing as doing or as product: about that, I feel scared - what if this sucks, what if it never works, what if it can’t find an outlet and just lives alone on my hard drive?! - and also a mix of excited about the ideas involved and impatient to get through this stage and onto more early draft and reading expansively stuff. All of that said, I do like this essay, what I learned to write it, what I learned by writing it, and the curiosity I developed writing it and the direction that’s pointed me in for the sake of future work and learning. So that’s very cool, trying to enjoy and appreciate that. How is the writing actually going? The last few days notwithstanding, it’s going well (and really, this is a very hectic time so that it’s going this well at this time is a big win). No further thoughts or need to vent here, just time to crack on. Having just typed that I felt a spike of anxiety - what if I forgot in the last few days not writing, what if my notes to self don’t make sense, what if I have to duplicate rereading and planning work I did previously? If I have to then I have to, that’s not controllable so worrying about it is just wasting time, control the controllales, worrying about noncontrollables is just burning energy, wasting time, and increasing distress. Okay so now onto some work on the draft. 

Tuesday 12-17-24

    Work’s been annoying lately, really making writing time more scarce, and in a context of some family stuff as well. Family’s the priority and I’m not complaining about that but I do feel pinched right now and  writing being harder to make happen is a frustrating situation. And the longer I go between writing sessions, and the more deadlines loom, the more writing becomes itself a source of stress and less rewarding in the actual doing. Bad scene, and that’s how I’m feeling. I did make myself a very detailed work plan which helps with plugging back in after gaps/delays, so that’s good, way to go past me, thanks for being a valuable team member! I’m excited for my time opening up soon as work calms down. How do I feel about the project? Doubting it’s worth doing, doubting I have anything to say. That’s probly just an expression of other stresses and being tired but it is where I’m at. Not currently excited about the immediate projects. That’s normal for me - some phases generate heat, other phases require me to find heat elsewhere. I’m in the latter type of phase with both these projects right now. Put another way, sometimes I’m pedaling and riding downhill, sometimes I’m pedaling and riding uphill. This is an uphill phase. No big deal, been here before and know how to handle it, just don’t like it and am whining. 

Thursday 12-19-24

I’ve broken free of semester obligations and find myself in this freed condition once again both restless and tired out, two dissatisfaction the easing of which are counterpose: do more, soothe the restlessness but get more tired. Rest, sooth the tired, but feel more restless, and the restlessness makes resting harder. Sigh. Same as it ever was. Sigh again. 
A measure of my restlessness: I spent too long looking at notebooks and reading about note taking systems today, wasting already scarce time. That’s partly magical thinking - if I find the on neat trick I will regain lost time by efficiency! - and partly a pseudo-virtuous procrastination driven by bad feelings about my writing projects right now and the fear that the project will go all the worse right now given how tired I am.
Momentary weakness (Again! Still!), understandable but still it is what it is. There’s no way out but through. The context is always wrong. Writing’s just hard. Trying to evade that is just lying to myself and fostering trouble for future me. Knock it off! Stand up straight, eat your broccoli, on with the work. 
Right so there is is. Time to work, really, except one or two other things: I find myself really drawn to other projects. the lure of the other project when the current one feels especially worky is to be resisted but it might also make some sense to organize my time such that the project I’m drawn into serves the project I’m averse to. Maybe something like, work on the hard project first, read for excitement as a treat after? (Cake after dinner, kinda thing.) Two: I keep coming up w/ collaborative project ideas, reflecting a sense of relative disconnection, but that too is procrastination and I don’t want to spend the time doing the set up. Sit with that: do I want collaboration on these specific fantasy projects, or do I want any collab at all (in which case I have opportunities with less set up time), or do I really just want to crack on working solo? I think the latter mostly really, but sit with it and decide later. Maybe there’s a split the difference solution along the lines of what I said about doing the least immediately rewarding work first and then reading for fun as treat after. But enough, time to make the donuts. 
… 
…
… 
I worked a while, collating editing tasks and free write prompts and so on into a single document organized into an order that makes enough sense (if some small tasks are out of order that’s irrelevant and the time cost involved in figuring that out and fixing it would be greater than just doing them in the order listed). That’s good and useful work but unsatisfying and I’m now feeling daunted by it all. Probly a lot of it will go fast and it’s less work than it looks like on paper, and either way, just do the work, time spent having feelins about the work while not working is a waste of writing time and also needless time spent feeling bad! (If only I could just push mental buttons and feel or not feel things like that last bit implies…!) Once again no way out but through. Also feel annoyed again by the work stuff that has put me so late in the schedule of working on this, ugh. Ditto tho. That sucks but control the controllables, rather than foster negative feedback loops lamenting the uncontrollables. I know that but had to say it out loud to make that knowledge operational. 
Gonna do some of the free writes listed in the task list now, since the work has to be done and the sense of momentum will feel better than I feel now, help me get out of my own way.



Friday 12-20-24

Last night I downloaded Obsidian and spent some time setting up some note and focus/productivity/use the day well kinds of stuff. That was annoying at first and then I cracked it, basically I can use that to automate the context so to speak - tilt the playing field so I will tend to slide in the direction - of basically doing what I did like 15ish years ago when I was at peak blogging in a way I was learning from and which was enhancing what I was getting out of my reading. So that felt good, both to have figured out a way to use the thing that I think will work well (and the prospect of feeling better about how the work is going feels good, already makes the work feel a little lighter - something to reflect on I think! Part of the weight of the work is my attitude to the work and that’s partially under my control!) and to know that I actually do already know to a significant degree how to do the work well: I don’t know if I’d say best practies or not but sufficienty practices anyway, and at low time cost to identify. 
So, writing. I’ve written a bit over in Obsidian about semester and general work frustrations, feels good to have done that before thinking about writing, pulls apart a little my ‘the context could be better’ usual frustrations from thinking about writing. I’m feeling worried this article won’t be that good and/or will get rejected, and anxious about the scarce time. That said, I like that I’ve written it, what I’ve learned to write it, where it points me toward next. That all feels good and I’m proud of having done that work. Just keep rolling the rock up hill from here, try not to waste energy on feelings about doing the work and instead just do the work. And I think the actually work is objectively going well for the circumstance and again lamenting the circumstance is time wasted that thus worsens the circumstance. I’m not in favor of ‘accept your fate’ generally but in specific contexts it’s the right move and this is one. Okay onto writing now. 

Saturday 12-21-24

Weekend but one with the potential to get some writing done, not totally sure, we’ll see. I feel a bit tense about this effort/attempt because of the contending priorities and chance of interruption but there is a real window of maybe getting writing done while everyone else in my family is each doing their own thing and that will feel good so gonna try. Writing feelings: the usual, nervous, impatient, self-pity over the context, etc. Not dwelling and volume’s low on all of that. Loudest feelings are nervousness I’ll miss the deadline and nervousness the paper sucks but none of that’s operationalizable so in a spirit of controlling the controllables I acknowledge those and move on. I also continue to be excited about the subject matter and adjacent stuff, and having this paper on my mind is fostering me thinking about those themes and seeing potential connections. 
Ope, 7yo just came and said she wants to to play music together so never mind to working! 
That was fun, back now, might have some other thing pop up but everyone’s engaged in something else now so I’ma see if I can put in some writing time. 

Monday 12-23-24

I’ve changed up my reflective writing slightly, doing some planning and ‘what are my goals for the day’ kinds of stuff which so far feels good but it’s only been like a week so not sure if it’s that specific practice or just the change of pace that I’m enjoying. Anyway that has some overlap with the vent file. I’m pasting below what I wrote there, not entirely sure why: “It occurs to me that it might be good to dedicate a little reading time something longer term to help ease the condition I'll be in once these article revisions are all done. It also occurs to me once again that in the future I do not want to say yes to more than one thing at a time as the distress of this has been relatively significant, really made me hate my job sometimes. Just one primary project at a time with a second thing on the back burner and a tertiary thing, and with a workload I can control. Agreeing to multiple things like this led me to basically lose control over what my primary project was and to increase the workload/put the timeline and workload on the intellectual work out of my control such that lack of control of the demands of my job created really significant frictions. It is genuinely time for me to start saying no to things.”
How am I feeling about writing? As the above indicates, a little tense about being pulled between different priorities plus the usual worries about quality of the work, audience reception, etc. As usual, that only matters practically if it has effects on the work and it doesn’t have to. Again, control the controllables, and concerns over what’s not controllable are just wasted energy. So, I feel some distress that’s just part of the process. I also remain excited about the ideas and spending time with them on a protracted basis is good too as it means I see connections and discover other avenues I want to pursue. The delays imposed by forces out of my control annoy me but what I just said shows there’s a silver lining as well and one I like quite a bit - marinating in a subject for a long while is rewarding really. 
And how is the work actually going? Well enough, really. So now I’ll get onto it. 
 

Thursday 12-26-24 

It was nice to have xmas and xmas eve off work tho I am not rested today! How am I feeling about writing? Over all I mostly just feel fired, the coffee didn’t take, so the thought of doing writing is less scary and more like ‘ugh a task!’ Whatever! Going to do a little work on revising then non-writing tasks, hoping for a short work session today. 

Friday 12-27-24

I’m feeling frustrated about workload at work leading to me being both behind on higher value work and also having less time off to decompress and be with family. I’m in an immediate circumstance where I have obligations I feel like I have to honor so can’t just take the time off I’d like to but once I get clear of this round I’d like to rethink what I’m doing and how much and what my priorities are because this is not how I want my life to keep going. I think it’s working well enough in terms of products, I like what I’ve written and whatnot, but my life isn’t product it’s process really and right now the lived reality of the process is more unpleasant than I want it to be more often than I want it to be. To some extent this is me just saying it’s time to face facts and give in. (Dillinger Four: ‘It’s the slow decay of the day to day that say’s take your paycheck, accept your place and fade away.’)
On that happy note, time to write about the socialist left! 


Thursday 1-2-25

Wow I haven’t written in my writing diary since last year. [Badump-tish!] My neighbor made a joke like that the other day, might have been a ‘see you next year’ joke, I don’t remember but whatever. It made me smile. 
Back at it a little today. We’ll see how it goes. It was nice to be away from work a little and I could use more time away but I’m overloaded too. Too much, hard to square these different priorities. I don’t want to get this busy again. Then again I also don’t want a work life with a lower quotient of satisfying work (the non-negotiable stuff at my job is all lower quality). Oh well. I’m also feeling a mix of excitement with future possibilities and reading and frustration that current obligations get in the way of that. I think really a lot of that excitement is the 'ooh a new project' thing that happens when deep in a current project and in a frustrating phase. I do genuinely look forward to getting clear of current commitments so I can have more open-ended time and work but I think I'll then start to get impatient about the intangibility that comes with that open-endedness and wonder if I’m stagnating as a writer or something. I dunno. Writing’s just hard, it’s a high mental/emotional exertion set of tasks so distress is baked-in to parts of the activities. As ever, control the controllables and crack on with the work. On that, gonna open the document with revision plans and whanot and crack on.

Wednesday 1-8-25

Back to writing. I’ve worked some the last few days but not writing. Did some reading and some other tasks, also worked slightly less due to family obligations and I really do need a break, got to find a way to take one ASAP but also have to get clear of these writing obligations. Ugh. Frustrated by that and by the institutional disfunctions in my workplace that have worsened that. 
I’m also feeling nervous about being back after time away since it’s harder to recall the work when I’ve not touched it in a while. Oh well. No way out but through.
I did spend some time reading material for this article earlier today and I’m excited for that. The excitement for the article itself is overshadowed by nerves and frustration but excitement for where to go next - other avenues this research is calling to my attention/opening up to me - is really cool. Gonna be a nice long while of enjoyable reading once I get clear. Gonna have to remember to be disciplined about note-taking (maybe blog in that period?) to retain more from that reading but whatever. 
I got word an article was accepted for publication after revision, that was nice, I was scared it would be rejected. Should celebrate, good habit, not one that comes naturally. For now though, onto this current article. (Oh remember to avoid getting into this backed up backlog situation again, bearing in mind that you can’t trust your employer: stability right now is merely apparent and likely temporary at best, so underestimate capacity and overestimate demands on time and energy in order to in effect budget some reserve energy.) But onto the writing. First a free write on what I read today then into my notes for revising the draft. 

Friday 1-10-25

Forgot to write vent file yesterday. I’m feeling tense about being 10 days into the new year and the semester starting sooner than I’d like. God I wish I was on a year sabbatical. God I wish I could ever have a year sabbatical! Oh well. Wishing is wasting, control the controllables. What’s controllable is time I have at my disposal, so I dispose to put in some good effortful time on article revisions. Going to start with a reverse outline today, which may hurt. Whatever.

Monday 1-13-25

Over the weekend I finished proofs of an article. Pleased about that, will be pleased when it comes out. I read it again to do the proofs and it’s better than I had worried, and put more positively I actively like it. I have some ideas on future avenues following from it, so that’s nice. Good reminder that the process works as much or more write to ideas than have ideas occur and then write. I’m also a little nervous as sharing finished work is a different act and headspace than doing new work, the former tends to distract from the latter. Have to prepare for that so as to reduce frustration and also try to be deliberate about how much I let this happen: I suspect this is an area where I can exert some control and also where I can only exert *some* control. 
As for current writing, meaning doing writing not prose I previously created, I’m still on revisions of this HM article. Going to work on that in a sec. I’m scared - what if it sucks, what if I don’t finish it - and frustrated and doubting myself - maybe I shouldn’t bother to finish it, might be better to just rest and take time off - and all of that as well because after this I have to roll into another revision. Plus semester work coming (I’m also resentful). These aren’t the only feelings, I’m excited too, these are just the feelings I’m working through. Anyway, once again, control the controllables! I’m committed to doing the draft even if that means writing garbage, so just write the maybe-garbage then, the feelings are just part of the experience of the doing. Waiting to feel good before working is mistaken, the good feelings arrive during the work, so get down to it! So I’m going to work now. I don’t recall where I’m at but that’s fine, I have an extensive to-do list and notes, so onto that now. 

Tuesday 1-14-25

I am feeling the pull of other projects! Some of that is legitimate intellectual curiosity and excitement, some of that is a kind of curdled curiosity or the curiosity-equivalent of being hangry (having gone too long without enough open ended inquiry the urge is strong and it takes less to spark it), and some of it - a lot of it I think - is impatience with the phase my current main priorities are in and also anxious avoidance of that phase (it will be judged soon! Argh!) 
Must stay strong. This is controllable. Maybe I can use this is as a minor resource, microdose the curdled curiosity (fermented, it gains power!) but only microdose it, keep careful track of time spent and make decisions deliberately. This has risks, like today, where I spent too much time on stuff that is not in fact my top priority! Oh well. Onto article revisions. 

Thursday 1-16-25

I’m feeling very frustrated about some stuff related to my job and am trying to just set that aside to focus on writing. That stuff is at best going to change only in the long term with a lot of effort, so it doesn’t fall under ‘control the controllables’ at the time frame I’m currently really working on, so I’m going to just let it go right now (not letting it go is in a sense letting them win) in order to focus on writing. Well, that sort of and only sort of worked!
This article draft feels like it’s threatening to fall apart on me, which is very generative intellectually - I’m changing my mind, seeing things with new eyes, etc - but also makes me nervous and makes me further frustrated about my constrained work capacity due to problems at my job. Oh well. Onto the work now. 

friday 1-24-25

Turned in a finished/revised draft last night for a revise and resubmit. Not feeling great about it, having stuff in the review pipeline feels queasy, I should get back to retooling my impulses on that stuff. But it is good to have hit the end of the draft and have it off my desk. I also had another article come out the other day, which is cool and a little jitter-inducing in a related way. I think I have a kind of hangover from the combination of overwork, 'oh no my work is being judged' feeling from the submission, and 'ooh this is out in the world I hope people read it and like it' feelings. I also have jitters about the last of my trio of revise and resubmits that I need to revise and resubmit. Oh and classes start Monday.
I have to finish my next thing next, ASAP. I’ve been away from it long enough that I will need to refresh my memory and make a new plan I think. I may do some of that today and I may not, not sure yet, I kind of want a break from writing. Then again maybe getting this done ASAP will facilitate a break from writing sooner? Unsure. I’ve got course prep and email done so that’s good, and I have mixed feelings about having that back in my life. Being a little frazzled (not quite burned out, so that’s good) about writing is easing my relationship to that stuff a little though so that’s good too. I dunno. Not an ideal life, one’s is, we play the hand we’re dealt. I think I need to take a look at my immediate hand soon - not in an existential way, just like IDing what my obligations and opportunities are. I’ve been saying ‘control the controllables’ to myself for a while, doing so requires IDing the controllables and I’m in a bit of a fog of war situation rn so I have to unfog a little. 




Tuesday 1-28-25

I got this app called Obsidian. I don’t actually know what it’s for really but I’m using it as a sort of intentions-for-the-day/how was yesterday/what am I stoked about rn diary template and very infrequently I do some broader free writes in there like ‘I want to read some scholarly literature on curiosity’ and note taking like ‘I had a thought on this conversation with a friend…’ of a sort that doesn’t have any other home. A notebook, really. Working alright so far. Pleased that something is working well! 
Tired today - could have used a little more sleep, also start of semester is tiring and disregulating, as is the national news rn holy moly! 
Went for a walk and chat w/a colleague which was very nice but lost writing time, onto that in a sec now. Briefly: I’m tired, tense, scared this article will suck, will get rejected, etc etc. But control the controllables. Back at it now. 

Wednesday 1-29-25

I don’t have my feet under me yet for the new semester, that’s true and also exaggerated because this time is a flurry of logistical details ‘when can THIS meet when can THAT meet’ and communicative overhead ‘just checking in!’ which is good but ill-timed given the general kerfuffle. Probly a me problem for having aspirations to think during this time. Whatever. Feeling a little grumpy about it, fine. But again, control the controllables. Short window here to work on my article, so time to do that work. Rereading printed out stuff for my article draft, here goes. 

Thursday 6-26-25

Where did the time go?! What did I accomplish in it?! Ah well. This too is a phase I’ve been in and will be in again. My job isn’t to like it, it’s inhabit it dynamically and pass through it. 
It’s feeling too far into the summer already, but that can’t be helped. Control the controllables. But venting: too much of the work that is too far from freely opted into - the imposed parts, the flack and flannel so to speak - has happened this summer, at costs to the better parts. 
On the upside, I read a lot for this book prize committee. 
I don’t feel great and/but I’ve felt worse. Going to do a project identifying brain dump now, then turn to working on a book review (reading and taking some notes/doing some free writes).

Wednesday 7-30-25

Feeling some mild regrets over time usage, some of that’s out of my hands and some of that’s my choices. Over all this year has gone well enough really, I just notice the ways it could have gone better. There’s also some referred distress over the state of the world, money worries, etc, that feel like dissatisfaction with my creative and intellectual life but aren’t really, and there’s also a real dissatisfaction with my creative and intellectual life that I can’t control because the state of the world is enervating, saps my time, energy, attention. Ah well. Control the controllables, again a reminder. 
Project updates: projects really, plural. Working on article revision and having ideas for future work tied to the article. That’s good. Somewhere in process with two different collaborative writing projects. Good also. The downsides: I’m in a defined stage with the article revisions, which is good, but many of the tasks I find tedious and annoying. I’m an undefined stage with the collaborative projects, which involves a freeing open-endedness and the learning I’ll soon be doing is enriching, and at the same time I’m not yet in the middle, so to speak. Middles are when I’m most pulled forward by a project, most have momentum intellectually and emotionally so the work feels least workful, beginnings and endings are when I most need to push through so the work feels most workful in different ways (and re: endings, the fear of judgment, yikes!) 
All fine. Just have to keep going. 
Unrelated to this, I feel a degree of creative restlessness. Some of this is just how I feel when not sufficiently in the middle of projects. Some of it is related to slower paced cycles or whatever - the ways projects fit into and add up to a creative and intellectual life as whole - and some of it is related to longer term aspirations, often shelved due to other obligations (music and non-academic writing etc, drawing, woodwork, etc). I want to reflect at some point in the medium term future on this in a spirit of prioritizing, asking what I want, planning for long term fulfillment etc.     Timer’s ringing so time to stop but quickly: good to have done this. I can feel that I have more venting I need to do and I also think that only really work in small doses: when whatever it is that I let out via venting has built up it can’t be all vented in one long session, needs multiple over many days. Plus the venting helps organize the life to reduce the generation and building up of whatever it is I’m venting. So I’ve not achieved a substantially ideal situation by doing this but I’ve moved that much closer to it by doing this and that’s good, rewarding, and good to remember. 
Enough for now. Going to turn to the article revisions. 

Saturday 8-30-25

Been kind of a hard time lately. Feeling a bit down about work and writing. Typing this at the end of the day though when those feelings aren’t very prominent, mostly typing this to try to restore the habit. Also want to think a bit about something I was thinking about while driving home from work today, which is that I’ve ended up in a situation where I’m doing some high-obligation low-collaboration work, so to speak, that doesn’t feel that good (easy to feel like I’m disappointing people, easy to feel disappointed myself too), like the work is important but I’m not sure it suits me well in that I don’t like how it feels. I’d like to dial that back kind of carefully over time, to clear more time for work that involves more sense of lived intellectual collaboration - thinking together, and in open-ended relatively non-instrumental ways - and more reading. 

Wednesday, November 27, 2024

Back to the writing diary. Been a while. I don’t know how long, I’m typing this without having my old entries in front of me. How’s writing going? Well, it feels bad. That wasn’t the question though. Let’s start there though: how’s writing feeling? Bad! Why? Stressful: the phase the work is in is a phase I find anxiety-inducing. (Probly a good idea to look for some ‘I’ language in there: I respond with anxiety, I can with practice over time moderate that response and further I can respond to that response when I’m having it, also something that improves with practice over time - maybe a good idea to reread some writing books.) Frustrating: the rest of my work life conspires to eat up writing time and distract me during it. (Ditto last parenthetical.) Tense: it’s hard to juggle the various different directions in which I’m pulled; in my work life I feel set up to fail at some high value stuff (insofar as I’ve got too much on my plate which means something just will spill off, becoming inedible and staining the carpet), including writing, and the various bad feelings involved are hard to bracket. Boring: I’ve reached the end of a fair bit of the process of discovery, which is my favorite bit. This is only sort of true, what’s really happened is that the rate of discovery has fallen while the rate of anxiety-response has risen as the work gets closer to being evaluated. But it is still sort of true in that I’m in a less open-ended and lower rate of discovery phase of the work. Exciting: I like the ideas I’ve found, the future directions of inquiry they suggest. I like them more when I actually devote thought to them (read: spend time writing reflectively or just riffing about them).  All the downsides are fine really, small potatoes ultimately, outweighed by the upsides. Okay so how is the writing actually going? In fact well, in any sense and especially for the circumstances, despite how it feels. I’ve got multiple irons in the fire and am progressing.
I wonder if I’d do well to identify a main project, a side project cultivated less but still somewhat regularly, and an on-deck project that’s ready to move up to side or main project when the main project’s done? Like what do I actually want? I want to have something I can type about to find/develop/refine thoughts. I want to have something where I’m reading and learning things I don’t already know. I want to have something that lets me engage somewhat with existing conversations or interlocutors: I like when writing mediates a degree of interaction.
I also want to feel some forward motion on a project, which means I have to have some degree of focus. There’s nothing wrong and a lot right with working across so many interests that one isn’t noticeably progressing, like say reading the London Review of Books very closely each issue and thinking deeply about every article. That’s a lovely way to organize an intellectual life really - let’s call it ‘ranging’ - but it’s not exactly what I want as the progress involved in that is at least somewhat less linear and less concentrated/focused. I do also value open-ended ranging, I want some of that but only some of that. Having typed all of this it seems to me that this is ultimately a matter of organizing my time: X minutes per interval (day/week/month) spent ranging, Y minutes spent reading for one focused project (main project, say), Z minutes spent writing for that focused project, Q minutes sent reading and writing for another focused project (side project, say) and R minutes read and writing for on-deck project, plus periodic venting and reflection and brainstorming for the sake of future new projects (‘I could, if so inclined, write about...’ ‘I wonder about...’ etc). This isn’t that hard of a nut to crack really, I’ve in fact done it before. Tracking actual performance and time spent is a good idea too, mental note to find a paper notebook, I’ve got several.
Feeling better now than when I started, I knew the vent file did this but had forgotten exactly how that felt. So now what? I’m going to put a little time into revising a draft but having typed that it also occurs to me that just getting back to a regular daily routine (write daily and do the vent file daily) would go a long way to tuning up my writing life. Weird how I know this but have to rediscover it, a bit like needing to keep remembering to pay attention to posture for the sake of my back. Anyway, feeling better, going to revise now. (Oh also I should update my non-writing to-do list soon.)

Been neglectful. Posting here the few old entries from this period.

 Monday October 16, 2023

Haven’t written in the writing diary in a bit, I don’t remember when I last did and am resisting the temptation to check right now. Where am I at with my writing? Let’s see. I turned in a draft to a journal in early/mid-september that I worked on a lot over the summer, and I turned in a draft to a workshops in early october that I worked on over the summer, one that returned with new thoughts to long standing interests and some old material. I learned a lot writing both, felt excited about that (feel excited I mean, the excitement’s not over though I’m kinda tired just now so excitement’s lower intensity at the moment), had thoughts like ‘ooh this could be a book or another article could follow from this!’ which is cool and mark of the excitement. If I’m totally honest, and what’s the point of this diary if I’m not?, I also have some negative feelings related to the constraints of my job in relation to those projects. Having just typed that it occurs to me this is amplified by the timing - I got them both done in crunch times just before and during the start of the semester, so the constraints are more constrainy. That’s good to realize.
I’ve also been writing a little blog, notes and writing to think, about marxism and the covid pandemic. That’s going well though has slowed down as my reading has slowed with the semester and as my headspace available has lessened with the semester. And I’ve started a writing exercise ‘recall the day before and meander about it’ little blog. I’m eleven days in and enjoying that, it feels fun but not amazing (in a good way - it’s sustainable, if it was like ‘oh my god I LOVE this!’ I’d be tempted to put too much time into it), and it feels effortful to just the right degree - satisfying, makes me feel like it’s exertion that benefits me, building my writing muscles.
It’s funny because as I sat down to type this out I was thinking ‘well I haven’t really been writing’ but really I’ve been writing a lot. I should restart my writing tracker to have a sense of accomplishment, and should make an effort to get back to this diary.
How am I feeling about my writing? I’m pleased with what I’ve done and am a little nervous about from here forward in that I’m not sure what my main commitments are right now project-wise. The blog, I think, as I want to learn that stuff anyway and it will serve a future book on social murder. I submitted an abstract for an article in response to a call for papers, if that gets accepted I have a lot of reading to do. I’m committed to that - the piece I submitted to a journal took a lot of reading and I found that satisfying, I like learning, I like learning from reading new stuff and from processing that stuff by writing to think and writing up some proper presentable prose, it involves finding new thoughts and getting newly curious. That’s immensely rewarding, and when it’s committed to other people it’s stressful - will I meet the deadline? - but that stress helps me stay in the chair and some of it’s exciting the way that a fear of heights makes rock climbing exciting.
I have other projects I could pursue listed in Scrivener too. My mind is feeling blankish right now in response to the ‘what am I working on/what could I work on?’ question and that experience is stressful but it’s not an accurate reflection of reality - I have options, I have enough to stay busy with writing, far and away the real issues other than time, energy, resources, are just a matter of choosing priorities.
The blog and the thinking related to it - en route to a possible social murder book - is the priority. I’ve also done some more public-facing writing related to that stuff, which is rewarding and energizing, so that’s another reason to prioritize that. It occurs to me that for a while I felt like I was mostly drawing on what I already knew with only a little new learning involved on that stuff (and drawing on what I already knew in a sort of catch as catch can kind of way), and part of the goal with the blog is to both help myself be more organized in doing new learning and to maximize using (and thus learning more about and with) what I already know in a more organized fashion (really not so much organized as emergent - put in the time and a kind of organization will emerge on reflection about time spent). The blog’s also related to my wanting to read more widely and fill in gaps related to marxist theory, which also supplies some basis for future other writing, so that’s good too.
Other than blog and related stuff, I guess if I get invited to things or see a cool CFP I can do those, probably will want to, for sure, and I probably should try to cultivate a disposition to take a breath before agreeing so as not to overload myself and not to commit thoughtlessly, though I can’t really imagine saying no to much as I like writing and connecting and it’s not like I get asked constantly or whatever (I get asked I’d say about the perfect amount!)
I can also use other projects in my list, longer term future stuff, as things to dip into both in quick reading/note taking and free writes, when it makes sense, if my energy for other things flags or for some reason I need to pause or am between things (in the garden metaphor, the ideal is to at all times have something I’m seeding, some seedlings I’m watering, something more full grown that I’m tending, and something close to harvest, since I like all of the elements and activities of those stages). I’m also craving to do some more exercises on parts of my writing, which is good and I should also bound the time on that so as to keep everything sustainable.
Also - book reviews. I like doing them and will keep doing them, want to make an effort to always have that burner on a low simmer and also not more than a low simmer, with the plan being to either have a book to read to review or a finished book I need to actually write up the review of or to be waiting for a book to arrive in the mail or to have a concrete plan to get a book on its way to me (concrete plan in the sense of ‘I’ll look at the list of books that the following journals want reviewed...’). I do want to eventually get more proactive about writing up multi-book reviews and trying to do more ‘let me define the issue’ and ‘I have an essay to write about these books’ kinds of writing. I think that involves reading more first to get a handle on the form/genre, and also involves reading more (since of course a multi-work review involves reading more works than a single book review!). I want to keep this as a part of my writing life and I think I also need to be cautious to keep it sustainable in relation to other priorities as this could easily get to where I’m overcommitted and not meeting deadlines. So it’s fine if part of the plan to get a book is like ‘in two months I’ll read the list of books to review...’
I also have a lot of non-writing responsibilities I’m taking on that I care a lot about, so having typed all this out I need to rein in the impulse to now put more time into writing. I actually need to put less time into writing for a while. Part of why I wanted to write out this longer reflection was that I was having mixed feelings about the need to and decision to put less time into writing. I say mixed feelings but really it’s just anxiety - if I focus less on writing will I stop writing, stop being able to write. Of course not. That comes from worry about having writers block come back and feeling like I’ll lose capacity and momentum that’s hard won but that won’t actually happen. I’ve stayed in motion a long while and it’s working well. I’m also not really downgrading writing as a priority in terms of what’s important to me, I’m fitting writing appropriately into my commitments and keeping it sustainable. (If writing makes me do more poorly at other commitments that’s a problem in itself and also will cause issues that come back around to make me do more poorly at writing - like with the gardening metaphor, if I weed too aggressively and without being careful and the result is I hurt my hand and back, I’ll be uncomfortable, worse at other tasks, and be left with less time, energy, and disposition to garden. Same with writing. So dialing down the time spent on writing in the short term is actually preserving the commitment and means more total time in the long term.)
Alright feeling good about all of that, better than when I started. I should remember to keep this diary going and get back to the writing tracker, since it feels good and will help me be in a conducive headspace. Of course, shorter entries than this is best for the diary normally - I had ‘write on goals and aspirations for the rest of this year’ on my to do list for today though so I’ve done that, and had ‘writing diary’ too so this is a twofer! On that, I wrote out a to-do list by hand on paper. That felt good vs typing it up. I don’t know why. Something to bear in mind.
I started this diary entry with “Haven’t written in the writing diary in a bit, I don’t remember when I last did and am resisting the temptation to check right now.” I’ve now finished the entry and pasted it into Scrivener so I can see old entries by dates in the file names. Looks like I did a few entries last December before the winter break, did more in mid January before the semester started, a few in July prrobably in the transition from end of summer teaching to writing and resarch priorities and probably also in the shift from reading around to writing to think or writing to think into efforts at presentable prose, ditto a few entries in August, the last one shortly before the semester started. I’m not going to bother reading those entries, certainly not right now, but my hunch is I’ve been using the diary as a way to get my writing life back on track or restore a sense of having my writing life on track (whether it’s on track and whether I feel it’s on track being only sort of related!). I feel like that’s working, and I also feel like it it also just a best practice if I do the diary regularly. I was going to say ‘it’s like brushing my teeth’ but it’s less important than that - it’s good to do, make an effort to do it regularly - but it’s also fine if it becomes sporadic as it often does.
I just posted my prior entries to my diary site. The, I don’t know, ritual quality of doing so feels beneficial to me. This is now my only unposted entry (and it’s so long!). Having posted the entries I see I’ve written 390 of them over six years. That’s an average of 65 per year but it hasn’t been like that. Entries per year:
2018: 168
2019: 70 (entries 169-239)
2020: 45 (entries 240-285)
2021: 74 (entries 286-360)
2022: 8 (entries 361-369)
2023: 21 (entries 370-391, including this entry)
 
After the first year, it’s 218 entries, average 43 or 44 per year, last year and this year lower obviously. I dunno what that means, if anything, or if it’s worth trying to figure out what it means, if anything, though one obvious change is that I wrote diary entries a lot more while writing the book! Those entries also tended to be shorter, I think. Probly worth getting back to more short entries? Alright enough, this is already overly long but good to sort of check in and think stuff out longer periodically. I suspect I’ve shifted to doing more of that as entries have gotten fewer - periodic longer stock taking rather than daily shorter motivation kinda thing. All legitimate uses. One last thought: it would also do me well to have a writing book in my regular reading diet, I think just 5-10 minutes a day is probably optimal.

Tuesday 10-17-23

I wrote some notes on an article I read, posted that to my blog. Main focus today is reading work in progress for other people in anticipation of a full rest of the week, reading stuff on a deadline for folks. I’ll see about trying to a short input on something each of the rest of the week, maybe just read and take notes or free write, but the week might not permit that. That’s fine. I also need to get out in front of next week, as I’m anticipating being behind - I’m already behind! - on some other obligations. I should maybe review what I wrote yesterday and write a little further about (or just write up in clear bullet point form, maybe in scapple) what my main projects and priorities are, as I feel a little foggy right now and whenever that happens I get a little nervous about whether I’m putting enough time into things that will produce writerly forward motion (I think above all my intellectual work is in literature review/new learning mode, which is cool and a little disorienting and uncomfortable) but over all I’m feeling alright about my writing life. Mostly just nervous about meeting obligations - gotta figure out how to give myself small meaningful deadlines so that things that produce forward motion will become obligations, while also keeping them small enough that I only put a little time into that, so as to put enough time into other bigger obligations for the time being. Anyhow, good enough for this diary entry. Back to reading work in progress.

Thursday 10-19-23

Yesterday was a department retreat. I talked about what I’m up to as a scholar and writer in broad terms, and didn’t have time to do any writing or reading for my own stuff - I read work in progress for others and discussed it. (This is also why I didn’t write in my writing diary.) Today I was part of a workshop I attended by zoom, which was similar (it was really great!) and tomorrow it continues, with a paper by me on the agenda. It occurs to me writing that out that I’m getting a little more space between me as scholar and me as writer in this next phase - and, closely related, that this next phase of my writing life has a higher proportion of time spent not at the keyboard, i.e. more time devoted to reading - and I’m okay with that, mostly. Still slightly nervous, but to a healthy degree I think insofar as it means I want to keep making an effort to be in the chair typing even while time in the chair typing will be a small proportion of total time in my scholarly and writing lives.
In a moment I’m going to go for a run. If I can get the time before bed tonight I’d like to read something for a longer term project. Over all, feeling well. One other thought: some of the challenge is just straightforward understaffing, have to bear that in mind. As a friend said, we’re all doing one and a half to three people’s worth of jobs, so no wonder we feel like we’re not keeping up. I don’t love that, but it helps to not take it as a personal failure. And it occurs to me that part of the point of the writing diary is to try to prevent my preferences from conforming fully to that situation - we must play the hand we’re dealt but also try to not have that hand and that game become all defining and lose our other larger aspirations.



Tuesday 10-24-23

Friday was workshopping and other work, Monday’s a long teaching today, today was mostly catching up on email, not least because I was moving very slowly - worn out from last week. I decided I’d write in this diary before bed because it’s good for me. No forward writing motion so far this week, though putting that in context it’s understandable. I hit writing related stuff big style last week and have to play catch up on other stuff this week and probably next as well. Testament to the value of working sustainably, big binges lead to less writing post-binge.
I was thinking today and noticed that I feel like I’ve not been writing in a while, despite having turned in an article draft in early September and a workshop paper in early October. My sense of ‘I’ve been writing enough’ and the reality of how much I’m writing seem to have, at best, a highly mediated relationship. I should make myself a fleshed out word count tracker and whatnot in order to offset this ‘I’m not writing’ feeling, as I think I lose energy and time due to it.
One thing I did do today is set up a google form to track daily writing and reading routine, it kicks the results to a spreadsheet which will be easy to peruse, and the form is easy to fill out - mostly yes/no questions. I hope it’ll remind me to stick to good habits and best practices, like writing in this diary. I’m writing in it now before bed because of the form/spreadsheet so it’s already working some.
I should also make an effort to keep forward-motion-related or forward-motion-generative reading in my life on the regular, as that’s easy to neglect and neglecting it does impede my writing life.
Okay I counted and over the summer through the workshop paper I submitted in early October, I wrote just under 30,000 words. I wrote a little earlier this year, in January/February, before the big interruption that is the semester, but that’s not really right now, so to speak (even if I’d written a huge amount in February it’d had little bearing on right now, writing’s a ‘what have you done for me lately’ kind of thing for me). That’s plenty of writing so the ‘not writing’ self-perception is largely inaccurate. That said, the rational kernel of that perception is the state of my writing life in the immediate present. That can use a tune up, especially since I’m trying to both have an active writing life and also make it a lower priority but still a real priority. That is in some ways harder than putting writing first. It means a higher degree of choreography, so to speak, so good to be thinking about it now.
One last thought before bed, I’ve been feeling a little down lately about the differences between my job and a job that really supports and encourages making a real priority of research and scholarship. That’s just the reality and it’s not one that will change, so I have to accept it. I have really, but I have to periodically re-accept it, especially after I interact with people who have better academic jobs. (I still think that having one of those jobs would mean, for me, a worse life given family stuff and life stage and so on, so the grass may be greener on the other side of the fence but there’s also, I don’t know, wolves or something over there too, which would make it a net loss even if I were the sort of grass-eating mammal ables to get to that side of the fence, which I’m simply not.) Alright, going to log this in the writing tracker then bed. Feels good to have done this.


Wednesday 10-25-23

My list and form is working today. I did my ten minute recollection and am now doing this diary. Let’s see. I’m tired, annoyed by tasks I don’t want to do, small taxing tasks that don’t feel like rolling the rock any further up the hill. Ah well. Play the hand we’re dealt, clock’s ticking. I’m also annoyed about some stuff where I feel like someone else undermined a project I was part of and it’s going to be more hassle to get it back on track, undo the setback, and there’s no room to articulate this to anyone who will care about it. Nothing to be done but take the hit and keep going so that’s the thing to do but I’m still processing it, so am in this negative headspace to some extent - or rather, it’s a pull in a negative direction. It’ll work out, just good to vent about it here. I also figure, what goes around comes around, and as the Pansy Division song goes, ‘happiness is the best revenge.’
So, writing. Let’s see. I think I need to regroup a little, survey what’s on my list, decide what writing project is the priority, and act accordingly - while bearing in mind that I’m trying to spend less total time on writing these days until I get on top of some other obligations and also I kind of figure maybe the writing muscles need to rest. I want to do the resting in active recovery mode, so to speak, rest not by stopping altogether but by working at a low, sustainable and hopefully restorative rate - a walk in the park, so to speak. Sorting out what I’m prioritizing will help with that as the nervousness about not being sure is an energy cost against restorativeness and also clear priorities will help me keep the work sustainable. I said this the other day but could use to say it again - I think modest sustained work is more of a balancing act than binges of work and nonwork. Heh, they call it work life balance for a reason maybe. (They don’t, but in this fallen world it helps to seize onto illusions of meaning!) So that’s a task, a work/project audit and prioritization. I’ll put in on my list. Feeling a little better, not all better but improved, for having done this.

Thursday 10-26-23

Had a meeting early afternoon then talked on the phone with a journalist who wanted some broad contextualizing info then attended a colleague’s class by zoom and caught up with another colleague by phone. I’m feeling tired and also frustrated by lack of forward motion on other areas of my work, stuff where linear or built-up progress is possible (like, I can write a thing and keep writing on it and it becomes a thing, while time spent on email doesn’t ever become a thing, so to speak. This is an unpleasant headspace: overstimulated, tired out, yet also restless. Easy to have it be where an action that helps with one of those makes another one worse. Sigh. Well, I knew this was going to be a hard week. It’s made harder still by some unpleasant work news out of anyone’s control. Nothing egregious or untoward, just more challenging circumstances. Everyone has those, these are mine is all I’m saying. I will also say, a colleague is trying to get a job elsewhere, I wrote recommendation letters for them, and they’re having good luck so far in their job search and I’m very happy for them and I’m also sad knowing they’re going to leave like this. Oh well.
That’s five minutes, timer went off, I think I’m done with the kind of venting I’ve done here so far but could stand to talk about my actual writing life rather than the larger context so I’ma reset the timer.
Okay so I still haven’t done the audit of my work projects (is audit the right word? I dunno) but I did glance at them and I have a project I can focus on insofar as I’m focusing on writing, bearing in mind I’m also trying to dial down total writing time compared to the not-too-distant past yet to do so without dialing down all the way to zero. I free wrote yesterday for that project, marxism stuff, that felt good. Not sure I have anything else to say today for that. I think I’ll glance at my project list again then try to free write on that project and if I come up short, free write for something else. I still think that fundamentally I need to learn more in order to have more to write about - as in, this isn’t a time where the number one need of my writing life is time spent typing, it’s time spent reading, but time spent typing is still *a* need.
Come to think of it I’m not totally sure it’s a need for my writing life specifically, in the sense of the thing that makes finished work most likely to exist, but it is a need of mine personally. I was saying to a friend today that I think of this as sort of like playing a music. Of course it’s good if a musician puts out records and all and I do like to put out writing but fundamentally I want to play my instrument more (and not only figuratively but literally, I want to get back to playing music more often too), as in, I want a life with some time in the chair typing/trying to write on a regular basis however short that time may be. I guess that is also part of my writing life so when I said maybe this isn’t a need for my writing life, that’s wrong, it is, it’s just not something my current writing projects need. I think what I’m fumbling for is that I feel a little pulled between serving my writing projects, which I do genuinely care a lot about, and writing for me, writing just to write, which I also do genuinely care a lot about too. When the projects are at a certain stage those two things harmonize. Right now they don’t. This isn’t super complicated though, really, it’s just a matter of time spent and organization: put in some time writing for me, writing to think, and put in some time serving a project which means reading more. Gotta make some plans and lists for that I think, haven’t organized that part of the work process for the current projects though I do know some steps I need to take - got some specific books to read, not complicated. Harder to do when tired and pulled in different directions is all. Not every hard problem is complicated. Alright well I feel a lil clearer on that. Going on too long here, time went off again a bit ago, but one last thing: how am I feeling about writing? Frustrated, tense, restless. But also excited to get into it and I do feel a real sense of possibility - the work feels hard and like the ratio of immediately rewarding to preparatory work that pays off later is not idea, but that’s just another way to say the context isn’t ideal and the context is never ideal. The problems are tractable, is what I’m saying. Gotta just keep putting one foot in front of the other, roll the rock up hill. Okay better mood now. Going to glance at project list and do a free write now.

Tuesday 10-31-23

I can’t remember Friday. Oh I went to a zoom event at work and did some household stuff and some tasky stuff for work. Yesterday was an intense teaching day. Today’s been mostly spent in the hangover of that. The worst part is that the worst crunch of the semester hasn’t even hit yet. I’m teaching basically three new preps - two really new and one that I haven’t done in a few years and to which I added a book I haven’t read before. That’s really hard, tiring. This explains why no diary entry friday or monday. This week’s going to have to be mostly reading and preparing for class I think, unfortunately. I’m also behind on other serious obligations, I have to figure out when to catch up, blech. Having listed all that out I guess I do feel a little better as it makes the tiredness make more sense but I also feel daunted by the tasks involved. Oh well.
On an upnote I did list out projects and whatnot in scapple the other day (and I remembered I had three meetings on Thursday! No wonder I’m tired!). I’m pleased about the scapple project listing as that will help me to make decisions and stay focused. The top priority scholarly project involves reading some slow stuff that demands a lot of concentration, I have to start putting that work earlier in the day as doing it later in the day involves a real cost in quality of work, doing it when tired vs when alert. I’ve also been losing some energy lately fretting about some work stuff, some hassles with support for our faculty writing group. The support is small enough and the hassles frustrating enough that I’m tempted to stop putting energy into the group, but I also do like everyone involved in the group itself so I don’t know. I think I’m also sad about how people keep leaving (understandably, leaving is smart!) and that’s coming out as amplification of the frustrations and increasing the energy loss. Part of what’s hard is that I know people aren’t going to stop leaving - the institution is signaling to them that leaving is a good idea, including by hiring people on as contingent faculty - and it gets hard after a while building relationships that will end when people go, and knowing that’s going to happen sooner rather than later. Oh well. Bit of a sad note to end on here! On a more up note, I’m going to go on a run in a bit, after 15 minutes of email triage with a timer.

Monday 11-6-23

I’m frustrated that I only managed to write in this writing diary once last week. Lots of teaching, email, meetings… I did read some work in progress for two colleagues though, one tied to writing group and one a journal review. That’s good. I also sort of saw this coming, having had a high productivity summer and september and start of october, I didn’t get on an even sustainable schedule to stay on top of non-writing non-reading tasks. I do still resent the proportion of such tasks in my working life. A colleague calls them ‘chaff.’ Oh well. Play the hand we’re dealt and all.
I called a friend about a book review we’re cowriting and we also just chatted more generally. That was nice. Friend’s busy so the review’s back on my desk for the time being. That’s lovely in that it means I have something immediate I can type on. We talked on the phone about what irons we have in the fire and also the need for more irons and more fire, good to talk about.
I think I need to get more disciplined in a serious way about doing preparatory work to have something to work on longer term. There’s much longer term reading, then project-mediated reading of the ‘I need to do the lit review’ type and of the easier ‘I know most of this, I’m filling a small gap now’ type, and then there’s writing based on what I currently know. Today I’m thinking of it in terms of puzzle pieces - there’s taking puzzle pieces currently in my possession and moving them around, and then there’s acquiring new puzzle pieces, those being two different priorities. I’d like to have a little of each - long term acquisition not necessarily linked to projects, short term acquisition clearly linked to projects where I’m doing a mix of acquiring and moving pieces around, and moving around acquired pieces from a relatively large collection. Maybe I should try to chop the week up that way in terms of units of time, like syllabi for three classes I’m enrolled in? Something to percolate on anyway. I’m going to read for ten minutes now then free write then I have to go teach. I don’t think I’m really feeling better right now in the sense of different feelings so much as I’m feeling the same way but more calmly, so that’s an improvement. Also the feelings are reasonable, grounded in the reality of the situation, and at the same time are basically irrelevant to the actual work - focus on the feelings just enough to stop focusing on them and get back to cracking on with the work.

Tuesday 11-7-23

Today I read some of a book for a possible project. It was better today than before and also still slow going, a little boring. Just gotta keep plugging away. Feels good to have put in some time. Lots of stuff taking my time lately that feels like administrative burdens, time cost being distracted by frustration over those burdens, and time and energy cost due to bad news in the larger world. (Someone on twitter suggested that the word for tired out from living in a hellscape could be ‘hellworn.’ That works!) I went for a run today, that was good. Gotta think long term and just keep putting one foot in front of the other literally as part of keeping running and metaphorically in doing the work. It’s understandable to wish for better progress and more ideal context to operate in but actually expending energy on that wish, getting frustrated by it not coming to fruition, is just further taxing myself in response to being taxed by the situation. That’s not entirely easy to avoid doing but I can avoid it and it’s best for me to avoid doing so - no one else is punished by me taxing myself and I’m not benefitted from it.
How am I feeling about writing at the moment? Okay. I’m early enough in the reading for the article idea that I don’t know if it will work and I’m a little nevous about that but it’s so far from done, far from even genuinely started, that I’m not hugely concerned. I should also put time into the jointly written book review, and remember that writing and research  is a secondary priority right now relative to other work. Have to cultivate a habit of looking at my priorities list regularly to align practice with goals.


Monday 8-5-24

I haven’t written in my writing diary in a while and I haven’t had the habit of consistently writing in my writing diary in a very long while. I’ve got some localized unhappiness related to that - dissatisfied with my intellectual/scholarly/writerly life - in ways that are partly but only partly related to the lack of writing the diary. Ultimately the problem is the actual situation I’m in - I’d like more time and resources - but writing the diary can help me to better deal with the situation emotionally so I should try to rekindle the habit.
How do I feel about my writing life? Mixed. Tempted to say lousy. I’m not writing consistently, and I lack a project to sustain that writing. It’d be good to develop multiple writable projects. I have multiple projects but some aren’t in writable shape, need to read more instead. I should figure out how to track that and recognize it, to feel more success in (which requires more awareness of) what I’m actually doing. I think ultimately I’d like to read a little more than I currently am and for the time being would like reading to outrank writing on my list of priorities, and I also do want to write a little more often/regularly, gotta think about what that could be, just to anchor myself. Having written all that out here I think I should underline for myself that I have written a fair bit. I turned in 3 peer reviewed things last year, plus an op-ed, and I’m writing-to-think at my blog/newsletter.
Maybe I should write out current and potential projects on butcher paper again, back when I did that it felt good and I feel like the good feeling of that lasted a while. I also think I probably need to work on being more patient with the pace at which I traverse learning curves and try to better appreciate the early stage of the process. I like what I’d call just before the exact middle, where I’m captivated and can get lost in an enjoyable way in the material, lost in the sense of flow states and excitedly noticing connections and wanting to learn more. I’m not entirely sure but I think that’s a time of many known unknowns and also where I’m converting a lot of known unknowns into just learning new stuff (so they’re not unknowns at all anymore). Whereas later I have to finish work and it gets judged and I also am less excited because the main discoveries are done, and earlier I feel lost in the sense of confused, which makes flow states harder to enter and sustain. This probably means rereading some writing books, maybe Boyce and Jensen’s books. We’ll see. Going to stop here and read a while.



Thursday 10-24-24

I haven’t written in the vent file in a while now. Probably not coincidentally, I’ve not felt like my writing life has either been going well or made sense in a long while. Am I writing? I honestly don’t know. Sometimes, for sure, because there are objects, pieces of writing that exist. Am I writing regularly, getting in the chair, being in the zone, on a regular basis? No, definitely not. The context is bad for lots of reasons, and feels worse than has been usual in my life, but the context is always at least kinda bad, that’s invariable: the people who get good writing contexts are vanishingly few, and the periods in my life when I’ve been in a good writing context have been few, if that’s ever happened in my life at all. So while I do think the context matters - I feel way more frayed and afraid these days, lower energy, tired etc etc - I think the context is not the only thing that matters and just focusing on the context is leaving out the choices I’m making, even (or especially) the ones that don’t feel like I made choices.
How am I feeling about writing? Straight up bad for the most part. I’m scared of revising these essays and procrastinating as a result, which won’t lead in a good direction. I’m remembering now I felt this same way in drafting them in the first place, so no real change there. Gotta just keep going. Also gotta return to a ‘this is not optional’ mentality. The more writing feels discretionary, the more reasonable and tempting it is to decide to stop doing it because it’s uncomfortable. My commitment to writing needs to not feel optional. And it’s really not, because if I quit writing I won’t feel better really, I’ll just have less experience of one kind of distress but with other unpleasantness replacing it and without the good writing brings to my life (and it does bring real good! I do actively want to do it, I miss it when I’m not doing it, I’d miss it if I quit). So on the one hand, commitment means it’s not optional and on the other hand to commit is a verb and a choice and I think I do need to/would benefit from recommitting/renewing my commitment. This is wonky but because commitment isn’t optional, committing isn’t an optional action. Brushing my teeth isn’t optional either, I’m committed to it and I also do it as an action I undertake. Gotta make writing like brushing my teeth I guess, in a real way.

Posting on October 16, 2023. I wrote an entry today, not posting it for now, thought I'd post all prior unposted entries - didn't write in the diary August 25 through October 15 so that's a natural breakpoint for posting the entries. This post is the last couple entries from 2022 and all 2023 post prior to early/mid-fall.

Friday 12-9-22

I’m in the virtual meeting of our faculty writing group, which is starting off with 20 minutes of quietly writing before we discuss. This is a good idea and I don’t find myself wanting or even particularly open to writing. I’m feeling a bit under the weather (run down from end of semester tiredness) and have a bit of an annoyance hangover about some hassles yesterday. So I figure I’ll take this as an opportunity to do my writing diary as part of getting back to the writing routine that enhances my writing life.
I looked at my list of writing tasks and projects and most of what I need to be doing is read, so that will be my focus for today and over the break.

Monday, December 12th, 2022

I was thinking today that maybe in the past I thought of writing as having something to say, and more recently I’ve begun to think of it as saying something well - and I was going to say that reading and research was a matter of finding something to say, becoming someone with something to say - but that’s all wrong. I’ve often thought of writing as speaking out loud without having something to say, though that’s not write either. It’s more like, I don’t know, digestion. (I originally typoed that word as “digrestion” which I think is a good word for some of how I think, thinking laterally, or in a spiral, with the digressions being a way to get somewhere unexpected - and often in my efforts they’ve been a bit of play and I recently watched an interview with John Cleese where he talked about creativity as a matter of drawing, via play, on the unconscious; he’s got an old talk on this in relation to what he calls ‘the open mode’, meaning more playful and less linear, with laughter being a sign of inhabiting it and a way to enter into it. Digresstion then would be a way of digesting unprocessed thoughts further, on the way to excreting steaming piles of ideas I suppose, specifically through digressing - seriousness as constipation, play, even if in the dry [fiber-rich?] form of the digression, facilitating a kind of unblocking. I’m part way to seriously convincing myself of something in this parenthetical… I digress.) That is to say, if I’m honest I’ve often thought of writing as a way to move from ‘I don’t know how to say this but it’s on my mind’ to having something to say. Writing is thinking, not news, but I forget it sometimes.

I’ve lately been preoccupied at some level with the idea that I don’t have anything to think about or enough to think with - that I’m not ready to start yet, at least not on the things I really want to think about. Having said this, this is clearly a mistake though perhaps there’s a penny of truth in that shitty error. (Oof.) The mistake is in thinking that I can’t type. For me I’m basically typing in response to things I’ve read, or less often, heard, and to some extent hearing is just reading with my ears. At some level then perhaps there is some minor degree of precondition in that I need to have something to respond to or be in dialog with or be confused about, as distinct from just having my mind be blank, but then, just read something and bing bang boom, done, which is to say, ready to start typing, which also is to say, nothing is ever done so much as documented and abandoned. (That’s partly a Stewart Lee-ism.) I’ve not read as much as I wish I’d read off of some specific notional reading lists, that is genuinely true, but it’s not like I need to read the list top to bottom before typing. I’ve typed over 500 words here having read very little that I’m responding to.

I think part of what’s going on is that I want to have not only things to say but to say things well, which is another matter and to some extent premature, though also on the flip side not going far enough - immature? - in that I could work on things like craft, with some focus and discipline, anyway: look at something I think is well crafted, analyze it, try to copy some of the elements I like, for the sake of being a better writer later when it’s not just an exercise. Hmm.  

Perhaps part of the issue is a version of that old Irish joke (a man is on his way to Dublin and gets lost in the countryside and wanders into a pub, tells the bartender “I’m lost, please help me, what’s the best way to Dublin” and the bartender replies “well you don’t want to start from here”) of judging my starting place and so wasting time and energy not just cracking on from here. Much better to adopt an attitude of here I stand I can do no other than to have feelings about not standing elsewhere and specifically having those feelings in lieu of getting moving toward anywhere else.

Giving myself a bit of a meta-level peptalk here in a way I suppose, fine and good, I wonder if this means I can buy bill myself for a therapy session and so buy some more records, though if I pay for that therapy session then I’ll have less money to spend on records. Strikes and gutters, I suppose.

Not wanting to diminish a moment of pep, pep being on the rarer side these days (A Man Of Rare Pep: My Story), I do think that in addition to just having a bit of a pick me up I would also do well with some greater focus. I can write about whatever’s on my mind and so can respond to whatever’s going in through my eyes and ears - I could, for instance, type a lot about Angus Deayton as panel show host - but my internal critic does have some level of point, or rather, there is a bit of truth that lets the critic’s criticisms have a point of purchase, inasmuch as my time and energy are finite and the payoffs of specifically reading inputs take some time to show up. That last point is poorly posed; trying again, what I mean to say is I find some subcomponents of the learning curve more enjoyable to occupy than others and of the various curves I am currently traversing I am on each/all of them not yet in the most optimal subcomponent. (I intially typoed that as “moist” optimal subcomponent, unfortunate, best not to even mention it.) And I am at present a bit dispersed across a few different reading streams, so to speak, which is to say, traversing multiple arcs in such a way that means a longer duration in pre-optimal for all of them. If I want to remain a multiple-arc pursuer (channel surfer?) like this and it has its upsides, then I need to accept that it will mean some tradeoffs. Alternatively I might decide to do a bit more of a deep dive into one arc, get further into the optimal region of the learning curve, then slow down more on that reading in the hopes that the good feelings from it transfer into other learning curves?

Typing that I realize I’ve fallen back to conceptualizing learning as the result of reading, rather than of writing. I think something worth experimenting with in response to these thoughts might be to make an effort at a somewhat disciplined writing practice again, writing with some regularity on one of the areas of research I’m pursuing, writing in the spirit I talked about above of thinking out loud - not pressuring myself to have things to say let alone say them well. Having typed that, the benefit to be had seems obviously to be a real one, i.e. this is clearly a good idea. I can do other kinds of writing - vent file, reflection like this, trying to work on craft and/or play around - as well if I want to, that’s a decision to make later. But writing more often on a thing I’m learning about seems an obviously good idea so I should resolve to do so. Given the benefits of this kind of writing, a bit more of this is likely a good idea as well. Maybe I should be a blogger again. Alright enough, it’s late, sleep’s a good idea too.




Monday January 9, 2023

Back it. Am I perpetually resetting my writing habits? I don’t know. Feels like it but then part of the point of the writing diary is that my feelings aren’t always information or useful to the work. Five minute timer started by the way, trying to keep this disciplined - time away tends to lead to indisciplined diarying on return, maybe evidence of the value of the practice, in that with time away I have pent up stuff to diary? Unsure, likely yes. Random thought: what’s the point of the work, in terms of feelings? To feel a certain kind of good, in a way, or that feeling’s tied to the point anyway - the work is the point to some extent, like artistically (still feel uncomfortable using that word, though less so, is this progress or pretension? Both?) and that is a long term phenomenon - again hence the diary, to help navigate the disconnect between short term/minute-by-minute feelings and experiences and the longer term, as it’s out of the longer term process and successes (and in a way, really, sustaining processes long term is the real success) that the most desired feelings emerge from, though again that good feeling isn’t so much the goal as something woven into the goal, the goal being the work itself. Hmm. None of this was anticipated when I started to type, maybe have to extend the clock a little. (Is the passive voice meaningful here? I think so in that I don’t experience this as my choices and agency so much as my having latitude in navigating some givens.) Okay clock reset to another 5 minutes, taking a moment’s satisfaction in the word count for those 5 minutes being around 270 words.
Been a hard while now, for too long of a while. Some deaths in the extended family, worry about some other relatives, and less intense but still discombobulating life stuff - family travel, holidays, work stuff. I’m cautiously optimistic about the prospects for re- and sustained combobulation for the spring though. I spent part of this afternoon making myself a set of planning and priority documents, much of it recreating what I already know - work on what matters most when energy is highest, tune energy/acuity to tasks, etc - but sometimes I need those reminders, the reminders are valuable, the time spent is valuable time.
I’d like to stick to the diary routine again more and to use the documents I wrote up, if I do I think my combobulation will be less dis- prone. (Ha. But also seriously.)
I know what my priorities work-wise are for the next little while, that’s a good start, the clarity will be helpful. Next task along the lines of clarity and organization will be some more mundane task listing and deadline setting/calendarizing, but I can let that go for today and get onto more intellectually contentful work now. Going to revise a book review. Oh before I do (and times up, okay 2 more minutes, feels like a genuinely good use of time right now, and again pleased to see 500 words here in these ten minutes, happy to find any satisfaction available right now), I want to just do what I think of as the more class vent file thing. I’m a little afraid the review I’m working on next sucks and the audience, who is unfamiliar to me, will hate or dismiss or laugh at it. Also afraid my review essay, next writing priority, also sucks. Afraid a piece I have coming out soonish in print sucks too. And worried I’m not spending my time well and advancing my (time’s up!) main projects. Going to pack this on now, I haven’t diaried those feelings away but I suppose good to state them clearly. Anyway feeling good about the writing or not feeling good about the writing isn’t what determines if I do the work. Maybe I’m just writing shitty stuff. Fine then. I’d rather write shitty stuff than not write.
I pasted this into my diary folder and saw the date again, holy moly 2023! [Shrug]
Tempted to play on the internet now, going to work on my top priority writing task instead.

Tuesday 1-10-23

    I spent a while yesterday making some planning documents then set up some stuff in Scrivener to track vent file performance. That’s good. That said, late start today. Discombobulation continues, and I’m tired, should probably make a cup of coffee and have a snack. I got a review submitted yesterday, that felt good. Tempted now to check my email to see if they got back to me. That’s understandable but I have other work I can do and that project is proceeding apace. I think I also got proofs on another thing, I should work on that as well, I happened to check email earlier in the day. It’d be good to get more disciplined and organized about email as well, ideally without having it take any more time. Hmm. I think the urge to check about the review comes from my being nervous (a bit afield from my comfort zone in the work reviewed and audience/what journal I sent it to - actually come to think of it, do I have a comfort zone…?) and also my being a bit lonely. Ah well.
I’m going to get coffee and a snack then work on my current writing priority project a while, then do some smaller inputs as per my recent plans. This project too I’m a little nervous about - again a review, all feels a bit afield and I think the draft I sent was in weird shape, both over and underwritten but I couldn’t see that, I really thought it was done when I sent it in, not a pleasant realization to find it wasn’t. Then again the realizations as information just serve the work, and as feelings they’re irrelevant to the work. Good to keep in mind in terms of effects on me, but not relevant to facilitating the work - acknowledging them here for the sake of refocusing; the flow state once I’m into the writing will feel good, all of this is largely about clearing my throat/getting out of my own way to facilitate entry to the flow state. (I think that may be also why I don’t find external reward/achievement as motivating, the primary rewards far and away are in the content of the doing, not in the recognition of the done. Obviously the latter feels nice but not in the same way, not in a way I find motivating, not in the way I’m pursuing in doing this work. That feels negatively posed, I mean it positively, being in the zone feels good and actually I’m in the zone a fair amount really. I don’t track it because part of the nature of flow states is a relative lack of sense of time; all the products are measures of time spent in those states, the discomfort involved notwithstanding.) Anyway, enough, onto the next part of the plan.
Today went off track, ugh.
Going to do a little writing now.
Okay it got kinda back on track, finished a round of revisions on the review essay. Going to let that sit a few days then reread it with fresh eyes.

Wednesday 1-11-23

I’m a little tired, not enough sleep and I had some stuff I had to do earlier in the day than I planned. I think I also didn’t rest enough over the holiday break if I’m honest. Not ideal to start the semester tired. That said I think less tired than I’ve been at the start of any semester since the pandemic started, and I’m the most cautiously optimistic about the semester since the start of spring 2020. (Can’t help the thought ‘oh no, so what will go wrong this time then…?!’ Not going to water that one, just going to let it sit.)
I talked with a colleague today, we’re going to meet up next week. That will be nice.
I may have overcommitted myself - I filled out my annual review today and was like ‘uhhh, wow, okay.’ It’s all good stuff though at least.
Next priority for a writing project isn’t mostly writing but rather reading and whatnot. Gotta figure that out. Priority below that is exploratory and also involves some new reading etc. All of that’s good really, I like to learn, happy to read. At the moment anyway I think I’ve written enough that I can be confident that if I dial down my time spent writing in order to further dial up research time it will go fine, probly go best really. I am a little nervous still though that if I write less then I will have a harder time writing eventually. I think that’s wrongheaded and actually the reading work will lay the groundwork for more writing really, not less. Okay that’s five minutes. What am I doing? I’m going to work on the top writing priority and go down my list. I do also need to get more of a handle on non-writing responsibilities for their own sake and because if those don’t go well it will erode time and energy for writing. Alright onto the rest of the work.

Thursday 1-12-23

Headache today, dehydrated I think. Feeling a little stressed about the upcoming semester as well. Distracted, tired, hard to be productive, conference call later in the day so I need to set expectations realistically. I think maybe I should downgrade writing in my list of priorities, tie off existing projects and shoot for just like vent file and free writes for a while, and focus on reading - though in a planned way, use the free writes to intellectually process what I’m reading and to help plan. I’ll consider it. I did a more open ended free write last night about some stuff that’s been on my mind, that felt nice, just writing to think where the thinking is its own reward. Alright well for now, on with the day.
Day went okay, fully middling, that’s fine. Out of an embarassing curiosity I tallied the academic words I wrote in 2022 and including public facing pieces and book reviews it was between 55,000 and 58,000 (not 100% sure about two or three thousand of them that might be from early this year). I’m pleased about that, I can’t say anymore that I haven’t been writing, whatever else there is to say.

Friday 1-13-23

Late in the day and tired! Up too late, indisciplined. Two conference calls today, both good, left without a lot in the tank after all of the above. One call was about a co-writing project, I have research instructions for it so that’s cool. Feeling excited about that, might see about reading more around that project as well, or maybe setting that as an eventual goal, stick to the current reading plan for now. I’m a little stressed and sad about the semester starting soon but am over all feeling good, cautiously optimistic to a degree that’s been rare in this pre-semester time for the last few years. I’m also sleeping on the idea of dialing writing down in my priorities for a bit, finish out existing commitments, respond to any new asks that come in, but not push myself writing-wise for a little while otherwise, see how that feels. My current thought on the matter: focus on learning and exploration, embed writing in that, see where that goes for a while, and pursue it with some discipline but enjoyably, sustainably. We’ll see. I mentioned this to a friend who said it sounded like a good idea and one I may have some more feelings about later, which I thought was well put.

Monday 1-16-23

Let’s see. I had a nice call today with someone about trying to do something for someone else, which feels nice. I’m not as tired as I have been and not as alert as I’d like to be. What else. I got a nice note about my recent/nearly finished book chapter, a note with serious engagement with the contents. That felt really good. I wrote a reply, nice to think more about those contents. I keep waffling but I really would like to turn that into a book. I’m a little tempted to just start writing and see what happens. Hmm.
I’ve got some notes for two other things I’m genuinely intellectually excited about, one for a journal where someone’s asked me to write it up and see what happens, and another that’s just my interest driven, also in the ‘just write it up and see’ category. I don’t know what exactly it is but there’s something that happens when the work is connected to a sense of interpersonal context/relationships/ongoing conversation that feels different, in a good way.
I wish the semester wasn’t starting so soon. Oh well.
This week looks to be full of more tasky things, deprioritizing writing and reading will be smart for various reasons, including staying on top of and feeling good about other commitments (neglecting those for the sake of reading and writing would only be a short term benefit and would in the long run cost more reading and writing time). I’ve yet to crack the nut of how to organize my time and energy. I may be pulled in too many directions, I also may be just in an less than ideal context (as ever! The context is never ideal!) in various ways. Just keep in motion, try to keep anything from falling apart. I can afford, so to speak, to make my priorities be sustainable and balanced work like really. Part of the challenge is a pull between intrinsic and extrinsic motivations and related differences in what my current obligations are. Hmm.
All that aside, how am I feeling? Is tired a feeling? I’m mostly low key optimistic. Boice has a phrase here, I forget what it is, it’s not ‘calm alert’ but something like that - basically means ‘chilled out and pleasant’, a lightish mood, cheerful with the volume knob low so to speak. That’s how I am, with a small note of worry or concern, again low volume, in the background about artistic/intellectual aspiration. But I like all my current projects. I think there’s also something going on here about self-sufficiency and interdependence, wanting connection but also having some extrinsic and less substantive elements get in my head a little. Irvine Welsh says James Kelman told him after Trainspotting, ‘just crack on with the work.’ That’s what I need to keep doing, just crack on. To the degree I’m doing so, I feel good about it. The nervousness is partly a matter of worry that I’ll stop, but I won’t really. There’s no evidence that will happen and if anything I’ve cracked on unsustainably, dialing it down for the sake of the long term will be smart. I think the trick will be figure out a sufficient distribution of small inputs to feel good and also keep them small. More tracking can’t hurt, I think.

Monday 7-17-23

Had a plumber in today for a repair project. They came early and got done faster than expected. Good things, and afterward I find myself with time available that I didn’t expect to be available and no idea on how to use it. Not a big deal but I thought to myself that the sense of being thrown like this and the lack of plan both suggested I’d be well served by returning to this diary. Been sporadic since finishing the book I think, and that’s ages ago now really. I looked now and I have eight entries not previously posted, two from December and the others from January of this year, the last one six months ago to the day. I don’t know why I bother to count like that, passes the time I guess, and the time spent typing up that info is time spent typing, building up a bit of a head of steam which can then be applied elsewhere, that’s the hope.
I’ve been working this summer, I’m not sure how productively but with satisfaction and that counts far more at this point, working on a project for an article out of my wheelhouse, on the UK new left. I’m nervous about the object/product but have enjoyed the learning a great deal, which again counts far more. I also have a sense that I’ve not done much this year over all though that’s massively offset by the satisfaction of the reading and learning I’ve done for this new thing. I will eventually have to make some choices about if I keep diving down rabbit holes in this warren - it’s fun! - Or if I pick new ones, but for now I don’t have to choose that and I enjoy the sense of having lots of appealing options, and that with each option I’m a little bit on the way already too. To change the metaphor, I’ve stepped into the shallow end and have acclimated somewhat to the water, and can now head out to wherever in the deep end if I want to.
I was wondering what I’d done this year, if anything, so I checked and I have four relatively short form and public facing pieces that came out this year, I can’t recall when I did the actual work on them. Two of them I did the bulk or maybe all of last year, one I know I did this year, and the other I think was this year but I don’t recall for sure. Fair enough! And I’ve done enough work to lay the groundwork for future pieces of writing - this new left thing, a literature review on depoliticization, and a thing on industrial physicians for a work in progress workshop. I have some notes and scraps for other stuff as well. That’s all good. I think this is really where I should be at, maybe just slightly more finishing occasionally? I dunno though because more finishing would mean less inquiry. Hmm. I’m putting about as much time in as is possible in my life. Thinking back to that gardening metaphor - preparing the ground, planting, watering and fertiziling, thinning and pruning and harvesting, sharing. I think recently I’ve been more in the early stages and that’s fine. I’d probably do well to redo some of this on butcher paper again, for the sake of seeing if I can organize my writing life for even more satisfaction.
Alright then. Any other thoughts? Well one is that I have now like 4 or 6 book ideas and clearly can’t write all those books! Going to have to let some cool ideas go. It occurred to me that in that garden metaphor weeding is dialing down non-writing commitments and obligations that enervate writing. I like that and want to think more about that. I feel a little frustrated at the persistent weeds, so to speak. I don’t mean to say all non-writing commitments are weeds: a gardner must eat and sleep or lose the ability to garden, say, and there are many non-gardening satisfactions as well! I mean rather that some makework and hassle kinds of things crowd out writing time or make it lower quality and enjoyment. Anyway, too many books to write especially in my job and life. That’s just the reality, play the hand we’re dealt, garden the plot we actually have, have to feel whatever I feel about that but dwelling is just another weed.
Anything else? I suppose another thought is that getting myself a list of project seeds, so to speak, would be good to help with choices and organization - kinds of projects by interest and intrinsic satisfaction and what community to be in by virtue of (or, maybe the same thing, what relationships are built or sustained through the mediation of) doing the project. Aspiration-setting (and remembering!) in part, and facilitating staying in motion satisfactorily - less a matter of wanting to work more and more a matter of wanting to work happily. That’s going relatively well right now actually, I just think that future me might benefit from a little more planning and whatnot so as to have fewer hiccups along the way. Alright enough of all that.
What about now, today? I’m going to see about putting some time into a piece for Organizing Work, do some reading, work on a book review, and put some time into the new left essay. Maybe too much for one day, we’ll see. Should tend some work stuff that’s not writing-related too - a slow drip of that stuff prevents it from building up to a degree that impedes writing.

Alright I wrote a draft for OW and went for a run. Hoping to read a little before bed.



Tuesday 7-18-23

I submitted my draft to OW and wrote and submitted a draft to Peste, wrote that before bed last night. I was mad, I guess, and this is a place to put those feelings! Also does feel good to write something. So how am I feeling over all about writing and my writing life? I’m a little anxious about finishing the article and workshop piece in time for the early fall deadlines. I think some of that is also feelings displaced (or referred or whatever the term is) from the start of the semester and about my job in general. I don’t look forward to the resumption of normal duties for the academic year and my relationship to the place is not as good as it was before conditions got worse and so many dear colleagues left. I think I’ve processed some of that but only some of it, I think I’d do well to process more of it as the current discomfort and ways I cope are not benefitting me. Anyhow, feeling nervous about those piece of writing and the timeline. I’m also excited about the ideas in each, and about the book review I’m supposed to work on soon with a friend. I think after I finish these two pieces for the early fall I might say that for a while I will have a writing life consisting of a) book reviews, b) short pieces like the Peste and OW one when the spirit so moves me or I am invited, c) articles I’m interested in writing (like the depoliticization piece) but at my own pace and not comitting to timelines until the piece is drafted, and d) a book project and/or reading around broadly in the general direction of a book project with that involving some degree of disciplined writing to think about what I read so that even if the result is not prose I can put into a book it’s still time in the chair, so to speak. I’m going to marinate on this, that sounds good to me. It’s most of what I’ve been doing anyway though I’ve done more medium-sized, medium-term work and on deadlines involving some hurrying and overwork on those projects in a way that has sometimes felt like it’s at the expense of a long term project rather than advancing one. (The more short form writing I’ve done has felt like it’s advancing a long term project.)
So how am I feeling? A little nervous, some tweaks to be made, but over all good, I like the things I’m learning and working on and the interactions with people that these projects facilitate.
And now today? Going to do 20 minutes with a timer on the new left essay then same on a book review, then same on non-writing-related work obglitations, then work out and cook. I’m thinking weighted carries in the yard if the temp is amenable. Might cook first, wanna make lasagna! Alright enough.
Okay I did work on the essay (went over 20 min) and the review (aimed for 15 min this time, went over that). The going over is fine for now, will need to be more disciplined once the school year gets closer or begins. Didn’t work on syllabi, that’s fine. Might try to do so before bed or just punt. Feeling good about what I did get done. Onto cooking, exercise, etc.

Wednesday 7-19-23

How am I feeling today about writing? Harried and inadequate! At least that’s some of the feelings. I slept poorly last night, have not spent the day especially well, have an errand to run later in the afternoon which will constrict work time so I worry I won’t get the writing in today that I would like to. I think I respond to that worry by procrastinating, which just worsens things. I think I also procrastinate in ways that provide things I crave - sense of connection and accomplishment - but not as effectively as if I really chose to focus on those needs. Anyway. So that’s harried. Inadequate: partly I’m just tired today, partly I’m thinking for some reason about things I don’t know, gaps and shortcomings, things I wish I was better at. “For some reason” - part of the reason anyway is just being tired, I think it’s like posture: when sleepy, easy to physically slouch, and easy to do the mental/emotional equivalent of slouching. Maybe also a bit of jealousy of people who know more stuff, have more time to learn and think? Unfairness is real and resentment is understandable but it’s a waste of energy to dwell on, burning already scarce time, so better to just acknowledge that I wish I had more time and resources for the things I care more about and had less obligations to things I care less about, work through that a little, like here, and move on.
Alright the pep talk is already working, and I think the coffee is kicking in as well. Going to do like yesterday, 20 min each on the new left piece and the book review. Feeling a little nervous about each of those (will they be good?!) and also excited, I enjoy the doing of each, and what could be better than doing something I enjoy? Alright onto it, music’s on, setting the timer and will get started.

Thursday 7-20-23

How am I feeling about writing? The usual! Mix of positive and negative, and some of the negative is referred/displaced feelings about other stuff. I think I should go back to tracking words generated. I did a quick look now and the op-ed sort of stuff plus free writing for academic work puts me at around 7,000 words this month and I suspect I’ve forgotten something. So quantity’s there, writing is happening. The rational kernel of the ‘I’m not writing’ feeling is being unfocused, not moving toward a single big project like the book was. So I should think about how to get progress in that sense into the mix as well. I could track over all words and words toward a book too. That means choosing a specific book project out of all the ideas I’m contemplating. I think at some level I’m enjoying contemplating and am using it as a way to procrastinate. In any case, this is a fine place to be really, not a perfect stopping place but a hard won place to be and a good place, in motion and equipped. I will make a mental note to set up a word count tracker again and to commit to writing the social murder book, and to doing research on analogues to that book to take as models, and mostly I’ll stay the course, keeping on doing as I’m doing.
So today? Short input on the new left piece, then input on review, then deal with edits I got in my email, then some reading and some other tasks, hoping to get a workout in as well. Going to make a note elsewhere to flesh out to-do list more, I like to keep non-writing stuff out of this diary, the point of this being to focus on writing. Ok did that and it amped up temptation to not write! I shoukd get on top of planning non-writing tasks as a way to plan to keep writing on top of other tasks in my priorities and especially my lived/actually practiced priorities, and not have stuff like this where I remember I have something else to do and write it down and that distracts from writing. Not a big deal, just noticing it. Got the music on, time for 20min each on the new left piece and review.


Friday July 21-23

Writing the diary late in the day. I did a work call for a talk, prepped the talk in writing, read around. All of that’s good and is writing-related, maybe is writing, and is also adjacent to the stuff that feels most like writing and by which I most measure success. Maybe the metric’s need a tune up. Yes, I think that’s true, they do. And also I think the rational kernel to the unease I have is what I was saying in here the other day about advancing a single specific project, a book in particular. I am also in part just impatient with marinating, fermenting, and at the same time I am I think being reasonable when I say that I’m not putting enough in the jar, so to speak, to marinate and ferment. This is all fine, it will work out, but is something to think about and figure out sooner rather than later. Which book am I writing next? Or am I writing two books at once? Choose, act accordingly. And in the meantime don’t undervalue what I’m doing now, which I am pleased with and satisfied about. Like, say I somehow found an extra four hours a week and all of those 4 went to a new book in addition to everything else I’m doing, that sounds really wonderful to me, perfect really. (Inhabiting I’d likely find fault, being a fault-finder by habit!) Good to reflect like this - and while I don’t think I can find another 4 hours a week, I bet I can find about 90 minutes a week, approximately 20 minutes a day m-f. Anyway, quick accounting: got a short op-ed type piece finished revising and out the door, plus the prep for upcoming talk that I mentioned, and I heard back from another editor on another shortish op-ed type piece. Going to leave the latter for another day and now do a quick input into the two articles. Going to shoot for some syllabus time before bed, to save future me some hassle, but not committing to that. Right now I’m enjoying the freedom from semester obligations and any input into them I want to make sure is short and either compresses total work time or increases satisfaction in work.
Alright onto the writing work I just mentioned.
I wrote this in Bean then pasted it into Scrivener before turning to doing the writing work, and felt strong temptation to do something else, read the news etc. Resistance, I guess, facilitated by the context switching from Bean to here, however minor it is, plus by having the option. I’m listening to music online but should probly shut off the wifi and listen to music that’s housed on the laptop. Good to remember this for future best practices. Oh and related, I think not choosing what exactly to work on also opened up the context for that temptation to operate, the pause to collect my thoughts let the temptation creep in. So, 20 min on new left piece, skeletonizing and reverse outlining and freewriting, then 20min free writing and note taking for the book review.
Went over 20 minutes on the new left essay but got through the current phase of doing pass throughs to skeletonize, assigning free writes to different sections. I now have a single document again, just under 7700 words I think. Shitty first draft but a draft exists so that’s something for sure!
Hoping to do a brief input of time on the book review now then exercise, family stuff, some non-writing work before bed, over the weekend read some more for the thing on Monday

Thursday 8-3-23

Diary entries for a week, then none for a week and none for this week until today. I think doing those entries helped me then writing was going better and I stopped feeling an immediate need for them, stopped doing them. I like to write these entries with a timer, remembered I hadn’t set one this time and thought I’d try a stopwatch rn instead of a timer. Starting nnnnnow.
So what’s on my mind. Not feeling great about writing. The draft of the new left article seems bad? I’d like it to be good? Obviously I just need to keep going. This is my normal distress and worry while mid-process. I don’t like how it feels and that’s okay. What’s the cliche, if you’re going through hell keep on going? This isn’t hell of course, just discomfort. Part of it is also that I really don’t know this material as well as I would like to and that feels funny. I spent a long while on things I do know, maybe too long, and it’s very rewarding and good to come to know new things, and feels different. What else.
I had a pair of essays come out, one last week and one this week. I’m pleased with the essays and it’s also a weird feeling and experience whenever something actually comes out. Remembering Irvine Welsh saying he tried to do as James Kelman told him, just crack on with the work. Not that I’m on their level at all of course. (Speaking of which, I need to read more fiction.) Just crack on. I think I’m a little hungry for community in the cracking on, in the doing. I don’t know if that’s feasible as the writing is largely done alone, always done alone maybe? Part of the distraction and time lost - and I do lose time - after a piece comes out and in some other times as well is in pursuing more intellectual community, trying to be less alone in the doing. Ah well. Normal stresses, all well within the optimal range.
So now what? I’m going to do some work with a timer on the new left essay then timed free write on an editorial/essay trying to find what’s a new idea in it for me. I’ve written three op/eds this summer that I sent out, one published and two not. I don’t know if that’s a good ratio and don’t know if the op/eds are any good. I don’t like any of the pre-writing inquiry stuff, lazy on my part I suppose but I didn’t want to be a writer because I liked to write office emails. I’d like to do more of that kind of writing and to get better at it, just at the level of craft. I’m tempted to start a substack but it feels unsavory. I also don’t want to get into the habit of mind of thinking writing matters in the world, at least not my writing, aside from the benefits of thinking new thoughts - sort of art type writing rather than something with an instrumental value or that makes something happen.
Anyway, going to crack on now with working on the new left essay and the free write, then will do non-writing-related tasks. Stop watch says ten minutes, maybe too long, better to set a timer and a stop watch, reign this in, devote the time to other writing? Unsure, fine to be unsure.


Monday 8-7-23

No diary friday. Why? Can’t remember. What did I do Friday? Can’t remember! Some writing work of some kind I know, maybe some reading as well? Unsure!
Late start today, family obligations - fun ones though, glad for it, not complaining, just trying to make the mental gear change now.
The impending semester is distracting, feels like walking toward the highway, the noise and lights increasing little by little, the anticipation of having to walk across increasing as well. I talked to someone I know the other day who is a former school teacher. They said they remembered when they faced the new school year with excitement, and when that went away - overwork and understaffing, which are management behaviors but mediated ones, mostly it was more direct management behaviors that did it. I relate, didn’t want to.
This isn’t for that, that already takes too much, I’m not here now for that, I’m here now for writing, the above is good insofar as it helps push that away, clear space for writing. Must remember that. Allow the presence of other matters here to the degree that that presence helps me step around those matters mentally and into the writing headspace. I’m in the writing headspace, this is writing, but not the kind I want to be in. I suppose that’s how it works: begin from a nonwriting headspace immersed in nonwriting matters, begin writing still so immersed, gradually shift into a writing headspace then change what I’m immersed in. And so, what’s the plan, get immersed in what?
I wrote out a to do list on paper, too much chaff on it - nonwriting and not stuff I want - but fine, whatever, we play the hand we’re dealt, and there are some good nonwriting bits as well, it’s just the highway noise getting in my head I think. Onto the first writing task on the list. Oh wait before I do so - the list today includes maximum times spent as well. This will get more important as the semester gets closer then begins. Part of what’s great about the summer is I can stretch out longer in writing times - and be less disciplined about starting with precision - but in the  teaching year if I go too long then other obligations get neglected in ways that form new and more time consuming obligations (the chaff becomes food for new obligations to grow - I don’t know if that metaphor actually bears scrutiny but it doesn’t have to here), so practicing this discipline before the semester starts will be doing myself a favor, as one does well to have a skill and habit in place before one needs it.
One last thought, randomly about the year - I am feeling some frustration at the institutionally-generated difficulties and lack of greater support for my efforts at forming and sustaining writing community, including some of the modes of subjectivity that are generated by institutional conditions such that the soil is less hospitable, so to speak, and weedy. Slightly less vaguely: it becomes reasonable under the circumstances to guard time in the short term when there’s some degree of internally-generated writing energy but doing so in ways that are penny wise and pound foolish - less community and relationships with writers leading to an environment less conducive to writing which becomes more of a problem when people’s internally-generated writing energy gives out. A shame and one I find dispiriting.
A very monday sorst of diary entry here! Anyway, onto the first task, inputting time on the new left piece.
Work on that piece went very well and I was undisciplined about how much time it took, and with my time otherwise. Not much day left, unsure what I’ll do next.


Tuesday 8-8-23

Late start again, up too late and spent some of the day distracted by having work come out into the world, some reception of that work. I’m honored and grateful for all of that, just still learning to manage my time and energy - need to crack on with the work before indulding in that stuff rather than after. It’s fine, just a day or two here and there won’t matter really, the long term trends and patterns are what matter and those indicators are fine (in my writing life I mean, certainly not in the world as a whole, yowza!)
Gotta figure out when I can take some days off, need that for myself and for family. Also the noise of the semester impending is still there, must see if I can do anything to manage that.
For now, remains of the day, doing what? Short inputs each on the new left piece and Jha piece then going to see about to-do listing. How do I feel about those? Content-wise, object-wise, neither is as I wish it were yet, unsure if either will end up as I’d like. Both clear the bar for success though, as objects, and both have been tremendously rewarding experiences, on that front no regrets at all and much I actively embrace! I think reception of the work encourages me to overemphasize the object and underemphasize the experience, must remember to inhabit the experience above all, all of this as moments in my intellectual doing rather than instances of an intellectual done, in Holloway terms. I will say I do think writing this diary is helping and I’m pleased to be back onto that, the benefits feel good and it’s nice to feel proactive as well. Alright onto the writing.


Wednesday 8-9-23

Music on, that’s a start! Feeling slow, sleepy today. Also feeling more contented than the recent usual so that’s good. Reading a novel, Young Mungo, very bleak and sad but lovely too. My kids did the public library reading challenge this summer and I decided I’d set my own for the month, 20min of fiction reading each day. Odd that doing something I like and care a lot about should take effort like that but either way, it’s good, glad to have realized I should do this.
Agenda for writing today is short, mostly have non-writing obligations to focus on but that’s mostly a choice I’m making - I agreed to those obligations and I’ve decided to prioritize them today, and it’s a good call that protects future writing time.
How am I feeling about current writing projects? Good, pretty good anyway. Reminding myself that the projects are really a means to have a certain kind of life - learning, discussion, time spent concentrating - helps offset the worries that come from my aspirations for the work as object and fear of people judging the work. I’m still a little adrift, unsettled about future book projects, partly still fermenting and partly needing to commit I think. I’ve started a folder for one of the book projects so that’s something, and the small projects move the bigger ones along, keep them alive - feeding the fermentation so to speak. Okay onto today’s writing.

Thursday 8-10-23

Woke up thirst, headachey - slightly hungover, basically, except I’d had no alcohol. Dehydration from taking a kind of long walk late in the day yesterday while talking on the phone with a friend followed by another walk with one of my kids and then not drinking enough water given the heat and humidity. I got some ‘rehydrate fast!’ powdered sports drink as a free sample, I forget where, came with an order of something, so I had that plus a fair bit of water and it helped but not fully. That’s all to say I’ve been feeling a little dragged out today. Had a bit of enervating work news and work tasks but they all ended up fine, one very good actually so that I got a boost from it. Now late in the day with getting to writing tasks though I did plan for that this time - a choice rather than disorganization, that’s good, feels alright - so that’s for the better. I  had another thing come out which is nice as well though again time spent dwelling in the reception of my work is not a good use of time relative to the priority of doing writing. I did reduce that time spent dwelling though, so that’s good as well. It’s less a matter of the individual day’s evaluation and more a matter of what’s the arc of the line on which the day is one point. I think the arc is good really and I’m taking steps to maintain that, so I’m pleased.
How am I feeling about writing? Nothing new to add here - a little nervous about the product, pleased about performance on process while aware of the need to keep up effort to sustain that, and pleased with the intellectual life all of this is facilitating. Having just typed that I think I am feeling more patient than I usually do, perhaps growing more patient as a writer. I like to think so anyway.
Alright so plan for writing session: I’m going to do ten minutes, no more, on the socialist humanist piece, ten minutes free writing for an idea I just had, and ten minutes reviewing feedback on another piece then call it a day. Going to be strict with those time limits and report performance to that effect here.  Ten min on first piece done, didn’t want to stop when the timer went off, am stopping!
By the way my process on this piece is going well - diagonistic read to generate prompts for myself plus leaving small bits as bracketed [work this out later] parts and the continuing to write the next thing I can write. I’m going through all those prompts one at a time and it’s pretty easy and kind of fun really. I’m putting all the responses to the prompts into one document and I’ll figure out how to integrate the responses into the rest of the document later when I’m done answering all the prompts. This lets me concentrate on just answering the prompt, generating the info and idea and a serviceable expression thereof without having to deal with the details of how that prose fits w/ the prose and organization of the section where I think that content will go. And presumably later when I do that integrating it will also go better since I don’t have to be trying to come up with an idea while also figuring out how to express it in a way integrated into the existing passage.
Onto the next 10 min. I started that without setting the timer, at most did so for 5 minutes, probly more like 2-3, so I set the timer for five. I got 300 words toward a new idea for a piece that I’m genuinely very excited about so that’s cool. Onto the last ten minute session.


Saturday 8-12-23

Took the day largely off yesterday, other than a work meeting and some email, didn’t write as far as I can recall. Today I got proofs for my social murder chapter and got them all turned around, so that’s good. Going to put a quick bit into the socialist humanism essay before bed because I want to - will enjoy it, and want to keep up some momentum a bit as I will have a few more days off later, and as I’m a little concerned about meeting the deadline. I’d like to avoid requesting an extension, and want to be able get it done as fast as possible if granted an extension both for the sake of being timely with people I work with and for the sake of getting it off my desk so I can focus on other obligations and my next writing deadline some time in late september or early october (need to check that date actually as it may come earlier than I thought!)


Monday 8-14-23

Took today mostly off work, we’re going camping tomorrow and the next day. Not sure when I’ll be back at it. I’m looking forward to the trip but feeling a little nervous about deadlines and sort of pre-resenting the semester. I’m excited to teach, I like meeting the students and the stuff we’re reading this fall is cool, though it’s going to be a heavy reading load. I’m annoyed by all the meetings though, I’ve already got two scheduled for the first week, and I know email will be kicking into higher gear soon too. Oh well. Have to have a job and all.
I’m hoping to put a little time into writing on the socialist humanism/new left essay tonight before bed, though I’m pretty tired so who knows.
Let’s see, how am I feeling about the writing itself, rather than the context? Well the context keeps looming large, I’m pretty worried I can’t meet the deadline for this. But the writing itself, I’m enjoying it, learning a lot, getting curious about a lot more, which is very satisfying. Okay I’m going to start doing some work on it now, might get interrupted, we’ll see.

Thursday 8-18-23

Took off the last few days for camping trip and today decompressing - came home very tired out. Not sure if I’ll work tomorrow. Next week I have to be back at it properly, get the semester set up and all, and I need to get this article wrapped up and out the door or else ask for an extension. Yikes. Feeling generally good despite being tired out. It was good to get away from work for a few days, the work of writing and the rest, especially the basket of work I find annoying. One bit of good news is that I feel like my intellectual curiosity is back in a pretty serious way. This new project, I have lots of ideass for offshoots, whether or not I ever do them it’s just satisfying to have the impulse. And then as I have more of a habit of thinking of new projects then I just think of new possible things related to whatever’s on my mind work-wise, for a lot of it anyway. So that’s cool. At some point I should do some goalsetting for the fall through the start of the spring semester, given what all I have on my plate right no and expect to have on. Not right now though. Right now the goal is to just put in a session on this article so that when I’m fully back to it I can hit the ground running. Other than deadline nerves I’m overall feeling excited about this project.

Thursday 8-24-23

Took Friday off to round out the week off, this week’s been focused on prepping for the fall. Syllabi and course web sites are done. At some point I’ll prep course lessons/sessions but that can wait. It’s a little frustrating to not have been engaged with writing for a few days because of other work responsibilities but I guess that’s just the reality of the situation.
I had an idea for an essay today, just took a moment to write that down so I won’t forget it. That felt good, not sure exactly why or how but something to that feeling good, speaks to something that’s going well and that I could attend to more, spend more time dwelling in/on what’s going well. The curiosity is fun and sets me up for other future positives.
I need to take a break and eat and drink some water - very hot today - then am going to spend time on the new left piece, that will likely be most of the day, and after that some triage and whatnot to save future me some time so as to preserve writing time and energy.
How am I feeling about the writing? A little nervous about having been away from it and about the combination of deadlines and other obligations. I remain excited about the thinking and where it’s led and continues to lead me, so that’s good. If the piece falls short of my aspirations, it’s still worth the work I’ve done (the work has felt good, been work in the way going to the gym is work, not so instrumental and more intrinsically important to me, which is great) and if that happens I can still figure out how to make something worthwhile from the piece. In a good spot and having normal ‘I’m in the thick of doing the thing’ kind of headspace. Alright, enough of that, quick break then down to writing properly.

Posting these on 12-7-22, did an entry today, at the bottom of this post.

wednesday 12-1-21

I had other work I had to before writing today, real deadline stuff with consequences for other people, then I taught and now am very tired. Right after teaching I put some time into my draft in progress. It has stuff in it that I know I need to work on still but I sent it to some readers to check if the rest of it is okay. I’m feeling nervous about it but I’m also glad I worked on it today. I know worrying about it is a waste of energy, that’s a hard habit to shake. I guess if it sucks and they hate it, well, I’m still glad I wrote it, just for the sheer expenditure of time and energry and also because I have really learned things by writing it and I’m pleased about that as well, it’s good to think, really. I also put a little time today into planning out other projects and time management and stuff. That’s a longer term thing to think about and I’m going to talk with Alex and some other colleagues and friends about this. For now, I want to start treating the new reading projects as classes I’m enrolled in, commit to doing some work on them each week at specific times. The truth is I’m intimidated to learn new stuff which is one reason why I’m not prioritiziing doing that new reading enough.

thursday 12-2-21

For a moment I was in the wrong folder and thought I hadn’t written in here yesterday when I actually had, had a bigger emotional response to that than I would have expected. I guess the routine is more of an emotional anchor/I’m more invested in it than I realized.
Been a bit of a week, slow day today partly as a result, and I just didn’t make that great of choices today. One thing I did do today is a brain dump of tasks and whatnot, which reduced some anxiety I’ve been having about whether I was forgetting things. I sent my draft article for the symposium to some readers, so that’s good. It has some indentifiable tasks left to work on it, which I can still work on for now as they’re marked in the draft I sent people. If I finished the draft and then sent it there wouldn’t be time for them to read it before the deadline (13th!) so I feel like this was a good call on my part.
I’m feeling nervous about the draft, some of that’s referred anxiety because I’m generally kind of nervous these days, and some of that’s my habit of anticipating reception, judging the product early and inappropriately, etc. Reminding myself I like the piece and am glad I wrote it: worst case scenario, I’m collecting rejection notices like real writers do, plus I still learned something and had new ideas. Okay short free write then work session on that.

Saturday 12-4-21
Friday, yesterday, got away from me and I don’t remember why anymore. It was a disappointing, upsetting day. Today I’ve done family and house stuff and that’s been nice, and I’ve done work-related reading in ways that I’ve enjoyed as well, which is cool. Nice to enjoy the work. Have to make more emphasis on dwelling in that headspace. Curiosity, energy, relationships, that’s the place to be really, and not in an instrumental or audience-oriented headspace. I need to go to bed soon but I’m going to put in a little time on the disability and law article. I will say, doing this now, and doing the bits of work I did today, feels nice in that it feels like I own in, chose it.
Okay onto a short session writing.

Thursday 2-10-22

I set up a playlist trying to automate my daily routine and whatnot, trying to get back on track. It’s been a hard and disrupted time. That said I did get some work done in that time, no need to waste energy kicking myself. I’m back to teaching f2f and need the routine more now so I’m re-establishing it. What am I working on? How am I feeling? Kinda tired and grumpy over all but trying to find good things to focus on. Students are good so far, that’s nice, got a nice thank you note from one who got into law school w/ a scholarship. Writing feelings: a little discombobulated, short projects on my mind more than long term, really need to sort that out. Tempted to change long projects again and write a short synthetic book, but also intimidated. Lots of unknowns with funding and covid and whatnot, makes that sound like a better idea for now, but it’s a lot to cover. Idk. Just stay in motion.
For today: editing chapter, doing daily routine, putting in the time, that’s all. Option paralysis and dithering wastes energy. Plus everything I’m doing is good, I’m learning from it and building relationships, this is what I should be doing, I’m just feeling the stress of the situation and the ordinary hard work feelings and that feels like something’s gone wrong but nothing has. My tune up of my routine is good, the self-reflection’s a good skill, good problem solving and will pay off in the long term. Okay time’s about up, going to do the next bit of the routine!

Friday 2-11-22

Vent file again. I haven’t last done this regularly since early december or late november, I guess that’s not that long of a time away really, I’ve had longer bouts anyway. Working to get back into a routine and get my equilibrium back. I’m tired today, slept poorly. Frustrated with the decision-makers at work but actually pretty happy with my corners, wish the decisionmakers could just leave me alone in my corners. Fantasies again of lottery winnings, being independently wealthy. How am I feeling about my actual writing? I want more time to devote to it. I want to be further into a longer project. I need to either commit to one or commit to this preparatory phase with multiple options and then pursue that directly.
If the pandemic was over what would I do? I think I’d write the potentially archivally-based project. Can I do the project without archives? Yes, but maybe not as well. Then maybe just pursue that project anyway, and really by the time I have time to go to archives, the pandemic will likely have calmed down. Alternatively split time betweren both projects. Really either is fine. Don’t spend energy choosing between the two, though, that’s time and energy better spent on doing the actual work for either or both projects. That seems sensible.
I’ll note I’ve been doing shorter things as well and enjoying that. Do I want to keep doing that? I guess so, yes, but I also want to learn new things rather than write short things on what I already know. How to integrate those goals? Enough venting for today, time’s up.

Tuesday 2-15-22

I don’t like the concentration of my teaching on a couple days, or rather, the amount of time and energy that takes leaves me worn out afterward and it’s hard to get anything else done on those days and for at least some of the day on the days after. I suppose I could get more exercise and be more diligent about getting more sleep and that’d likely offset some of the hit I take from teaching but over all it’s just a lot of work and I’m feeling the weight in other areas of my life including my scholarly life. One facet of this is that I’ve not managed to write on Monday or Wednesday since the semester has started. Oh well. We play the hand we’re dealt.
That said, I’ve remained a productive writer, more short and medium form. I’m pleased about that and also not fully satisfied as I want to be further along in writing a book. How do you even write a book though?! Maybe I should read a how to write a dissertation book, since my book was based on my dissertation Oh well. It will work out. I’m creating the habits and context that the book will emerge from, I’m just impatient because I don’t have a fully worked out plan and I’m not at point in the learning/doing curve that I prefer to be at.
I set up a playlist for my daily routine and some other playlists for getting other work done. It’s a new effort/device, part of getting back to how I want to work and laying some foundation for the results I want to see in the long term. So far so good. I might tweak it to add ‘read from a writing book’ to it, that might help me. But over all, so far so good for the week or so I’ve been doing it. I’m also trying trackign performance visually with color blocks in a spreadsheet. Ope, time’s up, moving on.

Thursday 2-17-22

I continue to feel erratic in my performance. Tired, undermotivated, etc etc. Conditions remain poor. On an upnote, I am less miserable than previously, burn out is slowly reversing, so that’s good. I remain amid moral distress and institutional betrayal, which is less good. I am cautiously optimistic that in the long term of my own life it will all work out well though.
Long week and unexpectedly hectic, virtual conference tomorrow and saturday as well. I’m excited about that but not quite ready and need to get fired up for the last push today, and also need to be prepared for the lull/crash after. Some other vent pieces: I’m intellectually kind of lonely, especially related to my new long term scholarly interests, and I need to make those new interests more of a lived/practical priority. Part of why I don’t is sheer intimidation as well. Ah well. Little by little.
I am excited about this conference presentation I’m finishing and everything else I’m currently part of, so that’s good. Just keep going, do that stuff, find time for the other longer term stuff, it’ll all work out. I’m also stoked about some of the planning and organization for productivity stuff that I’ve been doing.

8-30-21 (forgot to post this at the time, I think I put it in the wrong folder by mistake, posted here out of order)

I’m under a tree on campus, my first class of the semester starts in half an hours. My writing routine has fallen apart in recent times, I want to re-establish it. Most of pressures under which my routine crumbled come from The Semester, which really means how poorly run my employer’s response to the pandemic is and the resulting stresses. Handling all this disgust and outrage has been hard though obviously that ranks low in the list of pandemic evils. I would like to win the lottery and never work again. I used to say if I won the lottery I’d do this part time. I might still, but not at this institution.
What am I writing? I need to refresh my memory. An essay on disability for a law review. Anything else? I’m not sure. I have a book project to work on, more in the reading than writing stage.
My commitment to writing is embattled. I do actually want to write, and I want to want to write, I want a greater drive to write than I currently have. How to cultivate that? One thing is to try to cabin off management and those frustrations from my writing life. Another is to try to find or build more community, and sort of related to look for work to be in dialog with as a writer.
Sources of community: exchanging a page with Alex, asking friends to read, bringing work to senior seminar. Related: reading for others, I have a list. I think more mutuality will help - do something for someone else to feel better about I’m doing also.
I’m going to free write for five minutes on the disability essay.

Wednesday 9-14-22

First writing diary entry in a long time, using the Sprinter web app thing. Boy where even am I as a writer these days? Since I last wrote one of these I think I've written a fair number of pieces that are out in the world, which is good, and yet I also feel discombobulated in my writing life (and not just my writing life!) I like the writing I've been doing and I also think I would benefit from more disciplining of my time, some time kept for the kinds of writing and shorter pieces I've been doing and more time held for the kind of long project I'm sort of hungering for, really a new book. I suppose then this means the issue isn't so much my writing - in the sense of being at the keyboard typing and revising or in the sense of what the results and quality thereof are - but rather the organization of my intellectual, creative, and professional life and how I feel about/what I get from that. I like the thoughts I'm having by writing these pieces and the pieces themselves, and I like having stuff to share, the relative sense of feedback loop with friends and audience. I also miss the sense of being caught up in a larger project, the sustained inquiry and curiosity of it. I also just want more regularity of inhabiting a flow state. Okay well that's a diagnosis. From here, organize my time better. On an upnote I can tell that I'm recovering from burnout (and less upnote, that I'm not fully recovered yet). That's good news, hopeful, nice to have something optimistic and positive going on.

I like Sprinter and this makes me want to do more with the alphasmart, makes me more tempted to get one of the new ones or one of the more expensive (even more, the new ones are pretty pricey, unduly so imho) adjacent models, the freewrite I mean. I like this relatively low distraction writing headspace. Music on and typing, feels good man.

Probably would be a good idea to do another project dump then chunk them into consistencies - projects and interests really, like finishing through Clarke's work, reading around in the international political economy literature influenced by Peter Burnham. Also good to think about how that kind of thing relates to being a writer - can I find projects in it in the shorter term or am I reading this for my long term edification alone? Either answer is fine but good to clarify and to be ambitious. I think I also have likely been flitting between projects (something like taking multiple classes at the same time) when I might be better served by picking one and doing a deeper more focused dive. That sounds in tension with my 'hold time for short projects, hold time for a long project' thing above but I don't think it is, really what I'm doing with reading specifically is in my minimal reading time I'm flitting across and that makes it harder to see progress. To be clear I am making progress but I'm doing a little across multiple interests, again without a ton of over all reading time devoted, which has some nice qualities but is also a recipe for spending more time feeling my current sense of stasis.

Somewhere I have notes and maybe even some audio files for daily routine, focus, and organization. I should revisit those in adition to the larger scale planning I mentioned. All of that will give me some kind of tune up and lead to more productive and enjoyable results, even if I don't hit 100% of my expectations/aspirations. Alright well I feel good about all this. Going to stop there. I'm teaching soon, I'll read a bit of my current book (labor history reading) before teaching. Will aim to do the above self-clarification and improving routine in the next couple days. I should do more in Sprinter like this too, might not even really need the Alphasmart if I'm disciplined about doing this.


Wednesday 12-7-22

Back to writing diary again. Routine fell apart at some point - I guess my routine was more organic to/interwoven with the projects I was doing than I realized - and I've yet to put it back together. I checked my Scrivener folder of unposted diary entries and I think the last one was in September, it's early December now, and entries in 2022 are thin on the ground. It's not like I get points per entry or whatever, but I do think I've stopped the diary and have not replaced it with something else that provides for at least some of the needs that the diary met.

I should do a stock-taking on here of my writing this year. I think I've actually had a productive writing year but I don't *feel* productive.

Of course how the work feels and how the work is in fact going are not the same by any means. In the last few days or week I finished revisions on a short-ish public facing article and a medium-short book review and I immediately felt unproductive, I got no 'I'm productive' feeling. I think that feeling may be more generated by writing routine than the output or content of the writing? I do think that I feel more productive when I'm covering more ground intellectually - learning new stuff, basically, becoming different so to speak, developing. And a working routine that keeps me on an even keel also provides that feeling, or maybe it's multiple feelings and I apply an overly broad label to them, I dunno. Anyhow, good to be doing this again, reminder that it's a good idea.

I'm using the Sprinter app again, I think this does aid concentration. I need to check on my money situation, I might buy an electric typewriter thing for the sake of doing more of this reduced distraction writing. Okay so that's a bit of venting about the state of my writing life. A bit more is in order I think: I've been writing reactively, in response to people reaching out to me (for which I am so grateful!), more than I've been actively pursuing an ongoing project. This is working insofar as I'm getting writing done and am in community. I think I want a bit more control though in that an ongoing project I'm pursuing is one that unfolds at the pace I put in time, whereas waiting for people to contact me means less control on my part. I don't know that this is a problem but at a gut level, hmm, no I think control is the wrong term. It's really that between contacts with people I'm not totally sure what to do, and also while working on pieces in response to contact I tend to shelve longer term pursuits/projects.

So really all I need to do (not to say it's easy, if it's easy I'd have done it already) is to carve out some active regular time for those longer term projects and not shelve them when something else comes along - probly fine to reduce time on the longer term stuff when a new thing comes along, but not reduce to zero. Yeah I think that's it. This speaks again to the value of restoring routine. I will say also I'm just very intimidated by my longer term projects. Learning is hard and scary, not knowing yet - this early phase I'm in on new stuff is one of the most intimidating to me, I'm not in the middle yet, and large-scale projects make the early stage last a long time. No way out but through, though. So how am I doing? Scared and a little tired. As per...! But fundamentally well and those are just how it feels to be a writer, to me (not to say that's all of the feelings, by any means). I've listed out all my projects in a document to help organize myself in terms of work logistics. Might be worth doing some reflection on aspirations as well, in terms of craft, say, and bucket list as well. Alright that's enough for now,real quick what am I going to do? I think I'll post all the unposted diary entries so that's up to date, makes me feel a bit more accountable and on top of things to do that, and then I'm going to briefly free write then read for a project.

wednesday 11-10-21

Holy moly I’m tired and low energy today. Thanksgiving break can’t come fast enough. But oh the grading catch up work I have to do…!
Alright, so, what’s going on with my writing? I’m a little nervous this article will suck or at least won’t be what the people involved want, and am nervous I’m going to miss the deadline, which I don’t even remember rn. That’s mostly just wasted energy. I want to write the thing and am glad for the invitation to discuss my work. Still hard to get started though, ugh!
Okay free writing on a new thing then putting some time into this project.

thursday 11-11-21

Late to writing again today! I want to get more ironclad in my rule about writing related stuff before other uses of the computer. (I did some email before writing and that was a mistake, poor use of energy, wasteful.) Up-notes though: I had conversations with two colleagues about their stuff, one more process-focused and one about the ideas and structure of a work. I like those conversations a lot, felt good. I walked a long while during the conversation (phone call>zoom etc) so that was a bonus too, good to move around.
I’m feeling a little nervous about this article still - anticipating future audiences and judgment - but I’m glad I’m writing it, I’m learning things, developing my ideas, and I feel good about the process actually. I’m going to do a quick free write then work on the article.

friday 11-12-21

Feeling alright. Low key tired but not too bad, and pretty calm. Yesterday was a good day. I got done a day’s worth of work for a day’s worth of time, and work I care about, so that’s nice. For some reason I just want to type about how nice a hot shower is on a cold day, so, well, there’s something nice about hot shower at this time of year! Light snow today, not enough to stick, just winter shouting hello from down the street. Nice to see more evidence of time passing and I’m glad to know the semester’s nearly done. Covid complicates that feeling, because winter’s looking like another surge and the peope who should be responsible for responding are irresponsible. I am looking forward to more low key times away from regular interactions with job stuff and getting to chill out more with my family. I’m starting to think about errands and obligations now - I remember reading something about productivity and it talked about how open tasks, unticked boxes so to speak, are a distraction especially when they’re not written down; that fits with my experience I think, so many small drains on time and on attention so that the remaining time is lower quality. Since those thoughts are starting to sound I think it’s time to free write a litte then work on this paper draft. It will feel good to lock in and focus.

second entry 11-12-21

One of the items in my daily routine is to read a bit of a writing book. One of the books I’m reading is Helen Sword’s Air and Light and Space and Time. Looking at the self-assessment in the beginning of that book feels helpful. Having just taken it (I ranked myself moderate/6-8 in all habits but emotional, which I ranked 3-5) I think I should focus on improving my emotional habits, then my behavioral habits then my social habits, as my ranking was less confident in those and I just sort of feel at a gut level that that’s where I should work at mostly. (I’ve done some work to improve my prose and I enjoy that, I feel alright about where I am at that in the contexts I work in and for me that’s something to keep working on but to not make top priority until the other pieces are in place. I do want to make that the top priority some day though.) I want to also recognize some success here, which is that on the behavioral, artisanal, and social I’ve taken active steps to improve for a while in multiple ways and those steps have significantly paid off. I’ve not really taken active steps on emotional habits in a while, though I did do some work drawing on the Boice book a while ago and that did help - that’s reason to be optimistic. On that, I’ll note two or three further elements of progress, one, I really do believe I can improve my emotional disposition to writing, which for a long time I did not believe; two, my emotional habits have genuinely improved, and three, what I’m doing here of recognizing success and progress is itself an example of that progress.
In order to work on this I think I’ll read the sections in each part of Sword’s book on that set of habits, and read Boice and maybe Jensen, and free write on the relevant stuff, do the exercises, etc.

monday 11-15-21

Monday. Again. Feeling like Garfield, then laughing unpleasantly at myself for feeling like a cartoon. The way my employer is handling the pandemic has created more work and burnout and has also reduced my respect and trust for institutional decisions. That in turn makes monday worse, burdens my morale. As does the anger at being required to be in a classroom when I requested to teach online and when the pandemic is raging hard. Knowing they’re willing to put my kids at risk of covid, or that they’re just uninformed about the risks (and if that’s the case there’s no excuse, it’d be a willful ignorance), is a further burden. Some version of these thoughts is humming away constantly in my mind these days, and far more so on teaching days. I will say I enjoy the students and I look forward to a time when I look forward to teaching again regularly, when I’m excited to teach. What happens now is I’m awash with bad feelings until I walk in the door of the classroom, when I have a spike of anger at covid policy that subsides as I click into teaching mode and enjoy the time with students. I’m proud that I’m a good teacher and am staying relational and empathetic in my teaching right now despite the adverse circumstances, and I also think I’m being taken advantage of by the institution, my better nature set to work against me.
Anyway. Writing diary, not teaching diary, but that stuff gets in the way of the writing sometimes, good to set it down here to vent. The cost to doing though is that while I’ve minimized an obstacle to writing I’ve created some distance between the writing because I’ve been thinking about other things. Gotta walk back toward the writing, return focus to where it belongs.
I read a bit more of Helen Sword’s book over the weekend, made some notes. I think I’ll reread the whole book and mark it up further then go through my annotations bit by bit while at a keyboard for further journaling and reflection. I think that will be beneficial. On second thought, I’ll reread the current section on emotional habits then read the related parts of Boice then go through my annotations of this part of Sword and those bits of Boice, and continue to bounce between the two books in their areas of overlap. Over the weekend I also sent some emails to book review editors at journals, saying I like book reviewing and would love to be on their list as a reviewer. I don’t know that anything will come of it but good to try. Better to make the effort than not. I believe that intellectually but at a gut level I’m often pre-discouraged, as if it’s better to not make the effort since I suspect the effort won’t pan out anyway. That’s a bad mental habit, and one I apply to my writing to some extent as well. Thinking a bit now with the Sword book, I think I’m better at controlling my external behavior than my emotional responses - I wrote those emails despite how I felt about them. Changing both is part of the current plan, long term, with rereading the Sword and the Boice books.
So today’s writing. How am I feeling? A little sleepy yet but not too bad, and no loud emotional response to the article. A little nervous about future reception, will it work or not, will I finish it, etc. I will finish it, I know how, and it’s already been well received in seed form by the small handful of people who I’ve talked about it with and shown bits of the drafts to. It may not succeed in the venue I want it to succeed in but I can’t control that, focus on controlling the controllables, and that venue isn’t the arbiter of the value of the piece, they’re just the arbiter of their own tastes and preferences. So I’ll find a home for it somewhere else eventually. And I remain excited about the connections I’m making and ideas I’m coming up with.
Today’s writing work is the usual. This diary, a free write, a short session on this piece, a little reading of a writing book, then onto other responsibilities. The diary’s gone a bit long today but I think I needed some extra throat clearing today. Off to free write now.


tuesday 11-16-21

Man the hangover after teaching is so intense this semester, and moreso each week. My god. Today I had other commitments in the morning, which were nice, stuff I enjoyed, and helped me power through the post-teaching-day fog but also now it’s late in the day and I’ve not written and am sitting down to write even foggier. Too late in the day for another cup of coffee too. Oh well. We play the hand we’re dealt, and on an up-note, no particularly big feelings today. The usual low grade nerves in anticipation of judgment, but quieter today, and I like this piece and will be glad I wrote it even if it should not be received as I wish it to be. Going to free write now then short writing session, the usual.

wednesday 11-17-21

I’m near to boiling over with anger and disgust about the pandemic and the handling of it by my employer and other institutional authorities, including all the gaslighting. Hard to set all that down and think about anything else, in part because it’s in the neighborhood of what I work on. I should consider making it even more proximate to what I work on, since it’s hard to stop thinking about it anyway, at least then this would be productive thinking. Ugh. Anyway.
Short on time, teaching in not too long. How am I feeling about writing? I’m having a little bit of ‘what’s the point’ and some other anxieties. I think those get louder when my baseline emotional state is more upset. Underneath and simultaneous with those feelings, I like the work I’m doing, I think it’s interesting, I’m learning things, I look forward to seeing this piece unfold and to doing other work after this piece. I’m going to do a quick free write for my shoebox-of-future-ideas file then a quick writing session on this project then off to teach.



thursday 11-18-21

Disrupted morning. Neighbor was getting internet installed, led to a mistaken disconnection of our internet, had to spent a long time on the phone w/ the company to get it restored. I came off that on the back foot and used my time poorly, compounded by the usual teaching hangover. Later in the day now than I would like. Oh well. More is more, better late than never, imperfect performance of routine on the way to improved performance - even more will be even more. So now today’s work…? Usual nerves about reception and deadline (deadline’s in just under a month, longer than I though so that’s good, though it’ll be a busy time w/ the semester wrapping up), usual reassurances: I’m glad I’m writing this thing, will be glad to have the object in some capacity regardless of immediate reception, the learning is its own reward, and worst case scenario I will be able to repurpose the object to put it in front of readers: this piece is worth writing and contains good ideas, and I have a supportive community that can help me deal with any curve balls that may occur.
Here’s a thought: I feel uncomfortable with wanting people to read my stuff, but I do want people to read my stuff. I do care about having an audience. I’m not particularly prestige oriented but I do want to put my stuff out there. It’s a bit like being in a band rather than just being a bedroom/basement musician: performing to an audience is its own thing and I do like that and want to do it (both metaphorically as a writer and literally as a musician), and that’s alright, not something to be ashamed of. Ambivalence about this is understandable but it’s genuine ambivalence in that I have negative feelings associated with it and yet I also genuinely want to put my stuff out there, not only for the sake of the doing (though that is a big part of it) but also for the sake of putting stuff in front of audiences.
Alright time to get into writing. Usual plan, shoe box free write quickly, then a session on this article.

friday 11-19-21

Disrupted day. Smoke alarm went off early morning whent it was still dark out - false alarm, luckily, but hard to get back to sleep after, then I was up earlier than I’d prefer anyway for a work meeting, and the news is so dispiriting today. Upsides: faculty writing group was good, talking about colleagues with their work, and had two similar conversations afterward as well. It’s very late in the day now and I don’t think I’m going to get any quality writing done but I’ll but in a little time for the sake a better writing session Monday.


tuesday 11-23-21

Yesterday went poorly. I checked my email early in the day and that sent everything sideways. I’m also worn out from the semester, accumulated overwork and burnout, and the world’s extra distracting today - fighty kids at home, covid news is bad, my employer’s response is bad. Ugh. I put on some uplifting music to try to turn my mood around - get this out of my system and replace it with a sense of possibility.
How am I feeling about this article project? A little nervous about the deadline and content again, once again anticipating reception. I’m also dreading having to go back through and put in footnotes since I’m summarizing things I have in my head and read a while ago, but that’s just part of the work and not a big deal, just a bit dull, my reaction to it reflects my impatience. What am I in a hurry to get to with that impatience? I think I want to get out of this phase where I feel nervous and I want to get into my longer term project (and also don’t want to, I’m procrastinating on that!). Anyway. It’ll work out, just gotta be in the chair.
One other thought: I recently finished Irvine Welsh’s novel Dead Men’s Trousers, which concludes the Trainspotting stories. I’ve been watching some interviews with him in the evenings when I’m doing dishes. He made some comment about enjoying the writing but not enjoying the selling and whatnot that he has to do after he has a finished work. I think there are elements of the ‘selling’ - the reception and gatekeeping - woven into the writing process and into our minds for at least some academic writers, I think that’s part of socialization/professionalizing due to grad school training. So it’s hard to be alone with the work and just work and hard to feel a sense of ownership and autonomy in the work, hard to get into a flow state, which is the best bit of the work I think. I think that stuff can be pushed out of my head though, at least to some extent. Alright enough, time to get down to it.

wednesday 11-24-21

Monday I was really unproductive then yesterday I had trouble getting started but then overworked, finished the day feeling worn out, woke up today with a fever! Covid test came back negative, so that’s good at least. I’m working a little this afternoon after taking it easy, just plugging in a little for the sake of enjoying the work and having an easier time later. I’m a little nervous about this draft as I’ve cut the final section from the outline and am now like ‘maybe that was the pay off and the rest isn’t any good?’ plus I’m worried it will come in short. Oh well. Plug away, do what we can, then move on!
I’m going to do a short free write then a work session on the article, then read a little.

tuesday 11-30-21

I took a few days off over the thanksgiving holiday. That was nice but I ended up spending Sunday doing a lot of home maintenance projects which it was good to get done but I was very tired out at the end. Then I was back to teaching yesterday, feeling tired from Sunday plus a bit of stress from the mounting end of semester, worrying about when I’ll get all the grading done, thinking of the work I didn’t do over the break, etc. Again that’s a waste of energy. As a result, plus some poor time management, I just got teaching and email done yesterday. I’m getting a bit of late start today so today won’t be a day I really catch up. I’m okay with that. My middle kid got her second vaccine shot today! Hurray! I think over all my goal between now and end of the semester is mostly to get organized and put in small inputs of time so I’m set up to use then holiday break well and prepared to have a better spring semester.
On an up note, it was really good to be off for a few days and I’m excited to be off again in the not too distant future. I also looked at a project management sheet I made in May and hadn’t looked at much and I’ve made subsantial progress on lots of things actually.
Onto freewriting etc.

Tuesday 11-2-21

I’m a little down that I missed friday and yesterday. Friday I used my time poorly in the morning before other commitments kicked in. Yesterday I set my alarm wrong so missed the window for morning work before an overcommitted day. Today I’m tired, overwork hangover. I’m hoping the caffeine kicks in.
My mind was going blank about what my symposium essay was really about beyond very vague ‘law! disability!’ so I reread my free write from last thursday to refresh my memory. I revised it very slightly and I think it now can stand as an intro and provides a good map for where to plant all the ideas. I think that’s the next step, to sift the free writes into the organization of the map then start planting those bits into their likely homes. I’m feeling very tired right now so I may wait until I wake up a little more (or maybe try a coffee nap!) before doing that.

Wednesday 11-3-21

Today got away from me. I used my time poorly, didn’t help that I started the day worn out. I think I overdid it some yesterday finishing up some comments on colleagues’ work. Felt good to do and under the circumstances I’d do it again, but good to remember that overwork has costs and sets up days where it’s harder to work.
Part of why I didn’t write this morning is that I was tired and brainfogged from yesterday and the day before and I thought I’d wait until I woke up more and now here it is late in the day and after teaching and I am tired so it’s an even less than ideal time. That said I’m not sure I’m actually less awake than I was this morning. I wonder if I should try to find some task to do before writing before I wake up fully and which helps me to wake up. Hmm.

Thursday 11-4-21

Early-midafternoon and down to writing. A walk, two cups of tea and a power nap got me feeling alert enough and broke the oomphlessness. So. How am I feeling about the writing project? Scared. Scared it’ll suck. Scared I’ll miss the deadline. Amid a cloud of being angry, resigned, harried, burnt out about other work stuff. That said I am excited about the idea of a regular writing practice and having ideas and so on. The image of a writing life, so to speak, still compels me, and moreso than it has in the not too distant past. I’m going to do a quick free write about this article then dig in to the mapping and planting.
Oof I just noticed I’ve not really written on this article in a week. That hurts. I did tweak the intro draft a little maybe? And I did some other writing in response to colleagues’ work. But yeah, that hurts. And it builds up, in that part of why I’m scared is because of this lack of contact with the project. Gotta remember that. On an up-note, I’ve been here before and pushed through, I can do so again. Okay onto it now.
Alright I have an outline now. Whew. Short break then I’m going to work on planting ideas within the outline.

Friday 11-5-21

Kinda feeling it all today. Tired, irritable, having impulses - to be grumpy, for instance - in a direction that aren’t in line with who I like to be. Ugh. It’s that time of the semester, amid the pandemic of course, and ongoing understaffing and poor management at work. Oh well. Hard to start writing in that context, though to be fair it’s always hard to start writing! The context is never ideal. Gotta focus on controlling the controllables and not spending energy on what’s out of my control.
We got new coffee, had been out for a while other than some old and low quality stuff that was the backup coffee. The new coffee is delicious, cup of that then a shower have been nice parts of my day. (I did some work email earlier in the day, can’t remember why, that was a mistake, amped up the bad mood, the shower helped partially reset, using this diary entry to further that reset.)
This is day four in a row of writing in here, so that’s nice. Four days last as well. Before that two weeks of two days each and before that a long break from July through early October. Can’t remember why that break, maybe just life stuff and overwork? Did I write anything in that time? I can’t recall, memory’s all janky. Doesn’t really matter anyway, past work is dead labor what matters is creating the context for living labor and performing that - getting and staying in the chair. And that’s getting better again I think, little by little (for now, heh… which is fine too, it’s a long term commitment and an ongoing effort, not a short term thing or something fully accomplished once and for all; it’s like in a comic my friend Tom drew, Garfield the cat working out, saying “every day you have to choose again”). Okay feeling better now. Going to free write. Current article/paper project has a pretty clear task list, I’ll free on something else for ten minutes then do a session on the tasks for this article then on to other responsibilities.

Monday 11-8-21

Blue monday, ugh. Really not feeling it. Or, really, really feeling it, ha. So close to thanksgiving break, but also so far. Just gotta hold on and power through.
I’m burning energy having emotional responses to choices my employer is making that I don’t agree with, and IMHO isn’t being particularly honest about. Burning that energy is a loss for me with no consequences for anyone who deserves them. I’m trying to refocus but it’s hard, in part because this is pretty directly related to what I work on as a scholar.
I got a call from a colleague, calling to share good professional news, took a walk while we talked. That improved my day and mood. I’m going to free write now then plug in to the current writing project.
274 words, like pulling teeth, damn. Just worn out I think, and so many invitations to leak energy, damn.

Tuesday 11-9-21

Low energy again, averse to writing again, the usual! I would like this to stop being the usual and I am pulled between thinking I should devote time to changing my immediate emotional responses and state so that I am motivated to write, on the one hand, and trying to cultivate discipline to write regardless of motivation on the other. Both appeal, both feel at a gut level impossible! I think the latter is the smarter course of action for now. It’s worked before. Cultivate a discipline and routine, then use that to carve out space for changing my dispositions. I’ll note that my dispositions are in part a response to totally fucked up world circumstances and unethical behavior by management across the industry, but vibrating with unpleasant feelings about those realities doesn’t do any good. Gotta keep the assessment but try to feel it less I guess. Anyway.
I talked with Alex today and went through a bit of the plan for how to work on this essay I’m drafting. That felt good, I finished the conversation feeling confident in the sense that I do know how to generate a piece of writing. Anticipating its reception etc is energy wasted, and I do think this work is intrinsically valuable anyway so there’s no real losing outcome, it’s just that some outcomes are bigger wins than others and ‘small win’ feels like ‘losing’ at a gut level. But it’s not a competition and the notion of bigger win that I have in mind is largely or entirely instrumentally defined, gotta push all that away, out of my head, dwell in the intrinsic value of the work. I’m learning things, I’m working hard and honing my craft as a writer, I’m participating (via the mediation of my writing) in intellectual communities that I value. That’s all good fortune and I’m pleased to be fortunate in this way. That’s been tarnished a bit by its institutional setting and by my exhaustion and exasperation with other things - the volume is louder on other, more negative elements than on the appreciation - but the appreciation is still there. I suspect that with practice I can adjust the respective volumes on all of those - that’s the bit about changing my dispositions, I suppose, though I think for me anyway dispositions are second order and arise from disciplined practice, and (only) then form a feedback loop reinforcing the disciplined practice. Enough for now.
I’ve got a meeting with a student advisee in 20 minutes. I’m going to read till then, then coffee after, then a free write and writing on this article. For the article work, it’ll be continuing my sift within the buckets of this piece.
Meeting done, coffeenap, re-awake, onto writing.

10-28-21 garden metaphor

At some point I read this blog post - https://www.thrive-phd.com/blog/2021/3/14/writing-for-all-seasons-a-march-madness-post - arguing for replacing the metaphor of scholarly pipeline with the metaphor of gardening. I never really thought in terms of pipeline but the metaphor struck me anyway. I’m an occasional gardener, pretty avid about the bits I do and aspiring to do more of it over time. I like the idea of being avid about writing in that same way - I like the idea of feeling about writing like I feel about gardening. I also find the subcategories - seed catalogs, planting, harvesting, etc - helpful for onceptualizing different phases of the writing process. I like that the metaphor emphasizes finding intrinsic value in each piece of the work (that’s what I like best, I want more of that feeling in my writing life), that each step is relatively low stakes (ditto, I want my writing life to feel lower stakes), and that the metaphor can fit distinct phases of writing life/of the life of writing projects.
I thought of it again today because I was doing some writing and I’m a stage that I call skeletonizing. Skeletonizing is something I do as a kind of junction between prewriting, where I’m figuring out my ideas, and structuring. Once I have some sense of my ideas, I write a summary/abstract/intro paragraph. Then I turn that into a numbered outline, usually each sentence gets a number. Then I go through my prewriting and I sift it by number and I copy it under that number in the outline document. That activity of sifting and copying I call skeletonizing and once I have all my notes organized into that document, I have a skeleton. This is a tremendously useful activity for me. That said, I want to change the name away from skeleton and into a garden-based term. The skeleton metaphor and the ways I talk and think about freewriting imply some judgments: what use is a partial skeleton? And the point of the skeletonizing as I currently think of it is instrumental rather than intrinsically valuable, even though I do enjoy the activity to an extent. I say ‘to an extent’ because I also find this phase stressful, at least in part because of the judgment in the back of my mind (or sometimes, front of my mind, if the judgment gets loud enough). I also think of the free writing for ideas from a kind of negative starting place: I have a lack of ideas and I’m trying to move past that lack. That’s not really accurate though because what I’m going in the free writing is really going back through what I’ve learned and reconsidering it anew, seeing what I notice about it in a new light, and considering different possible directions I could go and decisions I could make. It’s not really creating from nothing or acquiring new information that fills a previously empty spot, it’s really a matter of sifting what I already know and watering some of it.
So the free writing as an activity is going through the seeds and seedlings I already have, which is in part a process of remembering (in my actual gardening life I regualrly forget what seeds I have in packets, what plants from last year have seed pods that I could gather up), and considering them, watering them, giving them light, etc.
I originally started that last paragraph “so the free writing stage is going through…” but free writing is an activity, not a stage. There is a phase of the work where free writing is my main activity, but I often continue to free write some throughout. It’s not that free-writing is a stage, it’s that there’s a free-writing-centered stage of gathering and considering. I genuinely enjoy this stage, though I get anxious about deadlines and wondering whether this stage will work out as I hope it will. Again here I think I’m doing some judging about the activity instead of just doing the activity, and that generates stress. (To be fair, I’m doing that judging in a less than ideal larger environment that promotes that judging.)
As I move from the stage of gathering and considering my seeds and seedlings, I begin to shift from idea-centered prewriting into structuring. This a matter of mapping/planning out where to plant what within my actual garden. Here too this is a matter of both activities and stages. I will often return to mapping and planning in various ways over the project but there’s a mapping/planning-centered stage as well. That stage is planning, preparing, and planting. The abstract is a map/plan. Turning the abstract into an outline is preparing the planting sites. Copying material from the free writes into the outline is seeding and transplanting, taking the seeds and seedlings I gathered in the gathering and considering stage and putting them in the ground in the specific spots that make sense for this area, within the context of this garden, over all priorities, etc.
I often find that after I’ve put all my notes and free writes into the outline I start to have new ideas, in part because there are bits that I’m tempted to see as gaps, lacks, etc. - in two ways: first, outline items 2 and 4 have lots of words under them, item 5 has only a few words, and 3 has none, and second, I notice a logically leap from outline item 3 and 4 and I actually need an outline item 3.5 as a bridge between them. I want to stop thinking lack and gap and instead think prompt. The headspace of gap promotes anxiety - I find what I think of as a gap and I feel stressed. The headspace of prompt promotes excitement: part of my process is to take those bits and write them up as tasks for myself and then I feel some excitement to learn that stuff and I enjoy a sense of certainty or clarity in a known task - just do this task, that’s the thing to do. That promotes getting into a flow state while writing, in my experience, which is part of where it’s fun.
Often when I finish the outline and have new ideas I feel nervous. This is in part because I wonder if the outline’s any good, are the ideas any good - how good can it be when it’s so preliminary, and when it has gaps? - and it’s in part because I feel like I’m spinning my wheels since I have in effect returned to prewriting. The fact is that this is a different phase even though it’s an activity I’ve done before: pre-writing after or amid structuring is different from pre-writing before structuring. It’s a different pre-writing-centered stage. I sometimes miss that it’s different because it’s also pre-writing-centered.
This post-structuring pre-writing-centered phase after planning, preparing, and planting is the surveying and companion planting stage. I take a look at this bit of the garden and consider it, and I look over my seeds and seedlings again to see how to complement what I’ve got already in this bit. Sometimes this means going back to seed catalogs as well to get new and different seeds and seedlings - i.e. I might get more materials, do more research in order to generate new ideas. I often plant some of the seeds and seedlings (whether newly acquired by new research or ones I realized - via freewriting - that I already had) within the existing bit of the garden. This is similar to the prior freewriting and structuring but it’s not the same because the project has more shape now. That makes surveying and companion planting distinct.
Here too I genuinely enjoy the actual activity of this phase - I like learning new things, I like free writing and finding new ideas or new uses for old ideas, etc - and I also stress about the external deadlines etc and worry because of judgment (what if I never figure it out… and similar sorts of self-talk). Remembering that this is actually a distinct stage - such that I have in fact made progress, the project continues to unfold in its lifecycle - despite the similarity of some of this stage’s work to the work prior stages is helpful for me, as I find the sense of walking in place frustrating, despiriting, and it amplifies anxieties. And that sense is just inaccurate - it comes of not recognizing the new stage for what it is.
After the surveying and companion planting stage comes drafting and finalizing. Once again there’s the stage and there’s the work. I don’t have any particular thoughts on drafting and finalizing right now - not least because the writing project I’m working on right now is somewhere toward the end of the the gathering and considering stage and the beginning of the planning, preparing, and planting stage (I think it’s probably early in the overlap between the two) and I know the next stage upcoming will be the surveying and companion planting stage. So that’s far as I’ve really thought about for this piece right now, and I’ve not really done much drafting and finalizing recently.
Here are some things I want to remember as I move through the rest of this piece of writing and that I want to pay attention to more generally in the longer term. First, I actually do enjoy something about each step. The bits I don’t enjoy are at least in part a matter of external context and in part a matter of internal framing and judgment. I’m trying to get away from judgment and mental framing that promotes stress, hence my trying to replace ‘skeletonize’ with ‘mapping, preparing the site, then seeding and transplanting into the site.’ Second, as a project unfolds over its lifecycle there are stages that involve work similar to prior stages. In the past I’ve tended to notice the similarity between the work in the new stage and old stage and think “oh, I’m back to the old stage” as if I made no progress. But the reality the new stage is the result of prorgress and is also productive of further progress. When a stage opens where I do kinds of work that I did a lot in a prior stage, it’s not at all that I’m back to square one. It’s that the project has advanced and has new needs appropriate to its current development stage, and I successfully meet those needs with tools and techniques that I’ve used before. So the ‘oh no, I’m back to square one, no progress!’ is actually me mistakenly perceiving a success - that I have the tools and techniques necessary to advance the project and I’m using the appropriately - as if it meant something had done wrong. This mistake is due to a combination of mental habits of judgment and not having as clear a grasp as I could have of what the stages of the project (and the work appropriate to the stage) are. I think I’ve actually been good on this intuitively - I’ve gotten the work done - despite having some disconnects with my (at least partially) conscious mind. I’m going to think more about that. Anyway, new phase with work like an old phase is still a new phase, and doing work like I did before means I know how to do the work. Those are actually successes, not failing. I’ll add that I don’t want to think ‘success’ and ‘failure’ in a way that encourages me to get judgey, so much as I mean ‘I want to work to set aside worrying about failure, i.e. set aside judging the work’ and ‘success’ really just means ‘finding value in and appreciating the actual doing of the work in each step.’ Because like I said I really do enjoy and value it, it’s just that sometimes gets clouded over by additional negative feelings which obscure the positive feelings. Like I said my hope is that embracing this garden metaphor can help me start to unlearn habits of judgment and have more of that appreciation and enjoyment (and just getting in the zone being in a flow state).
One last thought. Kel Weinhold says we benefit by replacing “I need to get this done for…” with “I want to write this because…” Thinking about reception of the product - external perspective - instead of thinking about the work, the creative process - internal perspective. That speaks to me and I think a lot of where I enjoy the work is when I’m in the latter mentally, the creative process and “I want to do this because…” internal and process-focused perspective, and where I really don’t is when I’m in the (institutionally cultivated, sometimes almost mandatory!) external, instrumental, reception and product-focused perspective. Again part of why I vibe with the garden metaphor is for how it facilitates the better of those headspaces and trying to cultivate habitual appreciation and valuing the intrinsic goods of this work.

One entry in June, a few in July, then more regularly in the second half of October. Why so sporadic, what did I do in the remaining times? I don't remember and speculating wouldn't be helpful right now!  I've dusted off the diary and this site for now and that's working well enough, so I'm trying to stay mostly present-directed, maybe mildly future directed, not get too hung up on past practice. Anyway, those entries.

Thursday 6-17-21
Tired today, slept poorly and too few hours in bed, sluggish this morning. I have to make more effort to get the dishes done earlier, they take so long to do after the kids go to bed, and watching a video or listening to music while washing the dishes makes for temptations to do other things on the computer afterward instead of going straight to bed after. A bit disappointing and distressing to have June halfway gone! I’ve got some more clarity on the goals of the rest of the summer though, due to a very good conversation with a friend. I found a ton of material I want to read, all secondary sources. That’s exciting and it feels good to feel curious intellectually again. I’m going to read around in that material, knowing I’ll learn things and have ideas on the way. I should figure out some primary sources I can look at ASAP as well for the sake of progress on the project long term. This is going to take a long time, I have to stay patient and also make it a priority. My current plan is some work on this project every work day, followed by some other work for less time. I’d like to still have some other irons in the fire for the sake of what they facilitate in my life - conference presentations, say, and the odd blog post - but remain clear that the real intellectual priority is the new eventual book. That feels a little challenging but doable.



Monday July 5
I took a week off work. I think I feel better than I did before the week off but I definitely do not all better. I read something saying burnout is work-induced depression and that it tends to dissipate only temporarily with rest because work arrangements create it. That felt freeing. It’s not me and it means I need to work differently, organize my life differently. That feels challenging but doable. I want to return to focusing on what’s exciting in my work and I think that may take some effort to set that as a habit. Joli Jensen use a phrase like ‘listen for the lilt in the voice.’ I am genuinely excited to know more about miners and law in the 19th century. I should try to spend as much time in that excitement as I can and try to not devote attention to things that sap that excitement or the energy it generates.
I don’t remember much of my plans and so on prior to my week off. I have a big stack of books to read around in for the new project, and it’d be good to think about primary sources as well.
I set a deadline for some drafting, that’s good. I should look into electronic co-working as well. I also want to work less per day from here on out, start setting up a sustainable worklife. Okay that’s 5 minutes, enough for now.

Tuesday 7-6-11
Back to being back at it today. I was on a podcast today, that was nice. Late in the day now and unsure about writing and other work. I think I’m averse to how long this will take and I have transferred bad feelings about top level management to my writing, I need to make contact again with the cool parts of scholarship. I had a thought on a walk that I’m going to capture now.

Wednesday 7-7-21
Disrupted day, slept poorly and tired after waking, did grocery pick up mid day. Good phone calls with two friends about work stuff. The gist is to move away from the stick-driven approach to getting work done pre-tenure and toward a carrot-driven approach (the stick was threat of tenure denial). I think this means cultivating more appreciation for the positives of the work, and even more than that to get into an intrinsically motivated emphasis. I’m burnt out in my job but being a scholar isn’t just my job, and honestly it’s only part of my job - in many respects I’m a scholar despite my job. So that’s something to cultivate, place more emphasis on intellectual curiosity and excitement. And I am genuinely curious and excited about new projects. I want to cultivate protecting that curiosity and excitement by trying to minimize my contact with the enervating parts of the job and saying no more often, borrowing a friend’s phrase - “I’d love to but I’m afraid I’m already overcommitted and I have to decline at this time.”
Those conversations are all I got done today but they were real work and that’s alright. I might see about reading and free writing a little before bed.

Thursday 7-8-21

I’ve been in a negative headspace lately but I think I’m working things out. I think the negativity is accumulated exhaustion and reasonable response to unreasoanble conditions. Having hit some clarity on this, I want to take steps to avoid dwelling on these issues. I want to start saying no more at work to anything I don’t unambiguously have to do or really actively want to do. I’d like it if I could work less over all, have a higher proportion of my work be on scholarship, and if I could begin to do other kinds of writing to improve my skills and portfolio, so to speak. I aspire to have that other kind of writing become paid side-writing eventually. Having written than I feel a double spike of anxiety, one in that maybe I’ll just never be a good writer (that’s ABSURD but I feel it strongly at a gut level) and one in that this is arrogant, fancy, putting on airs, etc. I think there’s a third element which is that it’s hard to believe anything could genuinely go well money-wise... the idea of success in a somewhat remunerative career that’s also remotely enjoyable is hard to wrap my head around.
Alright good to get that off my chest. Now what? I’m going to read and write and so on. I need to have a summer calendar check in. I should set some personal non-work goals as well.

Friday 7-9-21
I’m writing this before bed. Did I do one of these earlier today? Did I write today? I don’t think so for either but I could be wrong. I’ve got a headache, for one thing. I’ve been in the overlap in a venn diagram of multiple malaises. I don’t like the summer part of the job - too isolated - and I’m burnt out on the rest of the job - too much work and hassle, and I don’t agree with some decisions management made. Pandemic life is intense, overly inward, and anxiety-inducing. I’m between projects, the lull or valley after my first book (which, crazily, I finished the first draft of almost three years ago now, and the revised version two years ago) plus post-book projects in the book’s wake, and now when I’m really in the space of new stuff that I need to plant. To plan before planting, really. The garden metaphor gets complicated, the point is I’m at multiple lulls and lows, little momentum, need to break into motion from a dead stop. I am more in motion than that implies really, in that I am reading a little etc, but I’m not in my preferred phases and negativity is easy right now in a way that is just leaking energy that I need instead to conserve, gather in order to break into motion again eventually - as quick as I can, I hope, but not likely to be soon.
Ideally I would like to have something I can always be writing on, to have some piece of writing that has some momentum (momentum can carry me forward and I crave to be carried right now). I’ve had that thought many times and I think I once had thoughts on how to operationalize it, I’m unsure now. (I think the imposed amplification of disorganization from working at home isn’t doing me any favors, among other things.) I also have some worries about my new book project - is it a good idea? is it the best idea out of the possible projects to hand? can I pull it off? will it be any good? will it take too long? will I hate it, will it hurt? will my writing life always feel like it does right now? Some of that is my usual headspace, some of that’s typical to me at loose ends, and some of it’s reflecting the situation. I think I also impatient and want to fast forward through parts of the process, which is impossible and lamenting reality just leaks energy.
I suppose one piece of the solution is to anchor myself again in routine. Write in the diary. Free write about what I’ve been reading and what’s been on my mind. Do the reading. Repeat. I will say, I am excited to learn the things this project means I will learn and it’s exciting to feel my intellectual curiosity and excitement coming back as I read and think about the project. I think some of the issue I have is just a sense of intimidation because the project is big and I’m so small. Little by little is all I can do though.

Tuesday 10-12-21

I had an idea for this thing I’m slowly working on and then I read instead thinking that would help and now my mind is blank. Oof. Lesson learned I suppose. It’s been a bad few days, sick with some digest tract issues, really under the weather and thrown off by that. Regaining equilibrium and purpose and whatnot coming off that is its own set of challenges. Over all I feel weighed down by what I think is my justifiable negativity about the genuine shitfulness of so much of the world right now (and I think it weighs more heavily when there’s messages denying the shitfulness). I’m working on suspending that weight - I imagine something like coathooks that I can hang this backpack of critical thoughts on for a while, where I’m not setting it down exactly but I’m not carrying it for a while.
On this particular piece of writing, I’m intimidated by the audience and about the subject matter, feels like I don’t know the material as well as I’d like and I also feel like I don’t have any ideas on it that I didn’t already say in the book, and better than I can say now. Oh well. Like, fuck it, my job is to say something, not to say something amazing. So I should just repeat myself and if it sucks, I’ll live. And it’s only ever been the case that my route to saying anything that doesn’t such has been by spending a lot of time saying stuff that sucks. The usual stay the course back in the saddle speech to myself, I suppose!
Now I’m going to free write and see if I can remember that idea I had, or find some other idea.

Thursday 10-14-21

Where did yesterday go, my god. Teaching and the continued creep of student services work into teaching work I think. I am so tired.
Late in the day today due to tiredness and errands (we need a new roof after a big hail storm!), low energy, inopportune. I think I should try to get more disciplined about my writing tracker and daily habits. That’s how I got the book done, it’s how I’ll get other work done.
This is not ideal time to think or write or read because I’m so tired but whatever, gotta do it. I did manage to write 1100 words on tuesday, free writing toward this symposium piece. I haven’t cracked that piece yet, gotta keep writing to figure it out. To be fair to myself I was pretty seriously ill thursday through sunday and Monday was a hangover from the illness, plus catching up, so using Tuesday well was an accomplishment really. I’m just out of sorts because of lack of established routine that I enjoy and not in motion in the way I prefer to be. Okay onto this symposium piece.

Monday 10-18-21

I feel worn out and burnt out. Once again getting to writing late in the day and tired. Oh well. I’ve been through this, there’s no trick to it, I just have to keep trying and reset my habits. I’m also nervous about this piece of writing - this is why the habits matter: sometimes the work is exciting and feels good and that sustains me and routines and habits are less important. Other times, the work doesn’t do that and I need routines and habits to help me push through. I feel nervous this piece sucks, won’t end up good, I’ll embarass myself, etc. Oh well. I committed to it, so I committed to the risk of failing at it. Gotta write it all down so it has a fair chance to fail. Going to write on it now.

Wednesday 10-20-21

I’m having some stomach pain today, maybe a holdover from the other week when I got dehydrated, maybe a food allergy, maybe not eating and drinking enough yesterday, hard to know. It’s unpleasant, distracting, worrying. I forgot to do inktober yesterday, a bit disappointed about that. I’ve been enjoying drawing like that. I should try to make a habit of drawing more often in general. I think over all I need daily routine a lot more than I have right now. Time’s all mushed together and I spend it poorly.
I’m speaking today on my book at a graduate labor history class, via teleconference. That’s cool. It was nice to have monday off teaching from fall break, and today one of my classes is canceled because of the speaking engagement. I’m hoping to get through the remainder of the semester with minimal pain and suffering. (I found out I’m getting a raise, if the budget comes through anyway, so that’s nice. Money’s alright to have.)
I’ve free written the last two days on this essay I’m struggling with so that’s good. I’m tired and low energy today and I think I’m leaking some energy on dreading face to face teaching again on Monday, worrying if this essay is any good, regretting getting a late start today, etc. I’m going to do a quick free write now. Little by little.

Monday 10-25-21

The weather took a turn so I can’t teach outside anymore. I’m frustrated to have to add the risk to my life and doubly frustrated that my employer won’t admit that’s what they’re forcing - order me to do a thing but also declare a loud subtext that I have to pretend it’s not an order. I’m feeling the general additional mental work of pandemic life. Tired, brain’s slow, etc. Ugh. Oh well. Odds are, it’ll work out, just gotta keep on trucking.
Scant on time this morning, dealing with household stuff, phone problems, etc. Quick diary check in and free write, snack, email check, off to campus.
Writing didn’t go! Ugh. Too little time, too distracted, can’t remember the project! I wrote a twitter thread on it that I’m copying here because I wanna remember this.
kind of a crap day so far and partly as a result and partly as a cause my attempt at writing has not worked out and I realized a thing I used to do but haven't done recently is leave myself some notes for where to pick up next time. My writing practice (and results) has been erratic and unsatisfying for a while and it occurs to me now that I haven't done this thing - a friend calls it 'parking down hill' - in a while either. I'm gonna print out my notes and whatnot for this thing I'm current struggling with so I can sift thru them later. Idk if this makes sense but I think my draft sort of has momentum, in the sense that it's starting to take shape and it has ideas and isn't just wheel spinning and yet I as the writer do not have momentum and am doing a lot of wheel spinning. If I'm right then reading thru what all I have should help me clarify what to do next and reduce this 'the page and my mind are both completely blank' thing. And I'ma make more of an effort to park down hill, which should help at least somewhat.

Tuesday 10-26-21

End of October already, holy moly. I’m sitting down to this writing diary right after breakfast (write after breakfast will be the title of my bestselling amazon kindle snake oil for writers book), proud of myself for getting in the chair diligently like this. Honestly it might be a little too early as the caffeine hasn’t kicked in yet, I’m still yawning. Much better than end of the day depletion as a writing time. I was tempted to do other stuff instead but I thought I’d follow my own advice to make writing the first thing I do on a device and first thing for my job. I’m going to try free writing for this essay. I’m nervous about it because it didn’t work yesterday, small moment of writers block maybe, I was tired, pressed for time, and didn’t remember what I was working on at all. Today I have all the time I want for this, and I’m only putting in a small unit of time too so I don’t have to feel trapped with the writing. What an emotional minefield, eh? I looked at the beginning of Helen Sword’s book Air and Space etc and I want to retake her diagnostic, and dig out the Boice Professors as Writers book, see about retooling my emotional habits, move away from all these pitfalls and nervous states. For now I’m feeling alright, just a little jittery. If I run into trouble again today my plan is to pivot to a free write on a different possible piece of writing. And either way after free writing I’ll read my printed free writes for this afterward and make some more notes, parking down hill. So I suppose this is a two short session writing day.
In other news, I might be on someone’s dissertation committee, and I’m commenting on a conference panel (remotely, not in person), I’m excited about both of those as they’re firsts for me, feels like cool milestones and ones that are intellectually substantive as well. Going to work on the latter and some other reading for friends later today.
Suddenly beset by doubts that this essay is stupid, just out of nowhere. Wow. Time write!
15 min, 417 words. Alright.

Wednesday 10-27-21

Headphones in, music on, time for the writing diary. I didn’t do this first thing, I had to send a timely work email and that was a good decision. I then squandered time doing other stuff with the computer, which was a poor decision. It also underlines how the job is often aligned against writing, it proliferates distractions, harms focus. Gotta continue to work on protecting my writing time and energy. Feeling grumpy today - back to the classroom indoors, too cold to meet outside, and the ventilation’s poor in my building, no social distancing despite CDC and OSHA recommendations. Above all I’m offended. Anyway. Doesn’t do any good to just vibrate with anger and get nothing else done that I value, gotta channel this into choices that benefit me - focus on my writing and my scholarship-related relationships.
I spent some time last night setting up some apps and whatnot, I’m a bit of a tech skeptic but I’ll try them and see. I’ve got a reminder that tells me to do this work first - diary, free write, read, etc. So let’s get down to it. Free write for the ongoing project in a moment but I want to say I made some notes to self about finding the writing books I’ve found helpful in the past, I want to return to working with those. I feel like I’ve squandered some of this semester, which is a bummer, but I’ve still managed to get some work done that I value and it’s also not a huge chunk of time lost (and the circumstances are so bad, so I’m proud of I have pulled off amid all of this). Never too late to turn things around, and I have successfully turned around before when my writing life’s gone wonky. Pleased about all of that, greater sense of clarity, purpose, drive. That said I’m nervous about this current piece - what if it never coheres, what if it ends up lousy, etc. That’s all judgment, I’m looking at or tasting the raw potato worrying the cooked final dish won’t be any good: the current information I have is just not sufficient to make the judgment I’m making. Set it aside, back to work. So, now I’ll free write for this piece.
Wrote 796 words.

*

Later in the day, reading about writing, watching a video about writing. Thought: track when I experience anxiety or other discomfort in writing, and it sounds and feels like. Boice is good on this, work on that and how to disperse it, eventually how to avoid it.


Thursday 10-28-21

In the chair. I ate, took a quick walk (to the library to pick up holds for my kids), and had a cup of coffee (hasn’t kicked in yet!) and now here I am. Still in the brainfog not fully awake yet part of the day, weird to be typing in this state. I guess I’m succeeding so well now at doing the writing diary first that I’m a victim of my own success. Funny.
So far the apps I set up seem to be working, I’m thinking about getting writing done etc, in a low key ‘I want to do this’ way and I’m doing writing before other stuff now. Of course it’s only been like a day or two, we’ll see if it lasts. I hope so.
What am I writing on? This symposium essay. I’m going to free write on it again maybe attempt a summary/abstract that could serve as some kind of outline? I don’t know if I’ve found all the ideas yet but I’ve found some at least and it might be time to start thinking about structure. I expect that thinking about structure and/or moving into actual drafting will lead to finding gaps and jumping back to the prewriting/big ideas stage. We’ll see! I’m still feeling nervous - what if it doesn’t come together, what if it does and they don’t like it, what if it comes out and I’m wrong, etc. Those are just the risks of writing any time and they’re not really that high stakes, it’s fine, the worst that can happen is I will feel embarrassed and sad and my time won’t have been spent in a way that led to publication. That would be unpleasant but I’ve had all of those things happen before and it was okay. And I am genuinely learning things by writing this piece, so that’s good, and either way, there’s no way out but through, so I have to write anyway despite those worries. And I am excited about some of the ideas I’m having in doing the writing, feels like I’m clarifying my thoughts on stuff, which is cool. Okay I’m going to free write now.
176 words that could be an abstract/intro and so an outline. That’s cool. Took maybe 20, 25 minutes? I set the time for 15 but kept going when it went off because the writing was going well I think. That feels good. Now I *really* want to mess around instead of stay disciplined to my (new, aspirational) routine. Might make sense to figure out a resistance journal, idk. Maybe I’ll take a walk and call a friend, or read a bit? Oh - parking down hill, tasks for next time!

thursday 4-1-21

April first, feeling foolish. It’s late in the day, late in the week, struggling with low productivity, tiredness, demotivation - actively averse to work and not just lacking drive, and frustration. Oh well. I think this is widespread right now. I did spend some time this morning writing on paper about writing routine and aspirations, goals, plans, on the way to setting more firm deadlines and clearer maps from here to better writing results and practices. I also rounded up some writing books to have something to look through. Going back to reading that kind of thing a little on most days will be beneficial I think. Also going to set up my writing tracker again right now, I meant to do that yesterday and did not.

 

Tuesday 4-6-21

I am very tired. Too little sleep and poor quality as well. The work hangovers from Mondays are getting worse as well as the semester grinds on. I just looked and there are 38 days left until the final day of the semester, so that’s the very most amount of work left for this term, which is good. Not even 40 days, just over a month, not even 6 weeks. I can hang on for that. It will also climb down a little when registration ends for my students. What am I going to work on in the remaining work time today? The usual intellectual routine - reading, free writing, writing/editing - then onto email and related drudgery. Oh I just remembered I got response papers from students from the Minnesota Legal History Workshop that I spoke at on Friday, I’ll read those as well.
I worked for a long time on my chapter, got it to another revision and sent it out. That feels good though I also over- and binge-worked on it. I will pay for that in tiredness later and in being behind on other work. I think right now my working and writing life is really a choice between different ways of not feeling that good. This was the best choice under the circumstances so I’ll own it. Tomorrow: vaccination, a short free write, and then lots of non-writing work.

Thursday 4-8-21

I am slow again today, tired, low energy. Glad the semester’s ending relatively soon, hopeful for fewer disruption over the summer, more control over what I work on and more time not working, hopefully some rest and more sleep, and more of the satisfying parts of the work. I got vaccinated yesterday, my first shot, so that’s good. It was a long drive out of town to a rural area for the appointment but the countryside was pretty. I wish I’d gotten more done but good to get the shot and the change of pace was nice in a way.
Looking at the dates of entries here I see the last few weeks have been kind of disrupted - two entries last week, three the week before that, this is my second for this week. I think the cumulative stress and workload for so long is a lot, plus the time of the semester it is. Won’t be long till summer, looking forward to that. Today I have to focus on other obligations (same reason the last few weeks have been like they’ve been!) but I want to just do my routine. This diary is one piece. Going to open my spreadsheet, try to do more tracking, that will help I think.
Wrote a while on a book review.

Friday 4-9-21

I’m in the writing group (19:18) and our final 20 minutes is writing so I’m doing 5 minutes of writing diary to start. I’m in the usual headspace and general condition as the last couple writing diary entries but I am wearing it more lightly due to being in the writing group telemeeting. That’s really nice for the immediate experience and I’m also proud of this group I’ve helped create and the role I’ve played in making and sustaining it and helping people benefit each other in this way. Intellectual community is cool and good, heh, and I think it’s good for me to pause and recognize both the work I put in and the accomplishment - ie the working life of the group and the benefits its had/is having - resulting from that work. So that feels good.
Earlier this week I finished a draft of a chapter for an edited volume and sent it in.  Yesterday I got an email about saying basically that it’s very good and that the word limit is 6k words when the limits is 15k words! Oops! I’m a little embarrassed but also amused, this is a very me mistake and a high quality issue to have really. I’m going to make revising that thing be my top writing priority and think about what else to do with the remainders. I will also benefit from thinking about writing planning broadly - upping my planning and project management skills - and doing more concrete planning of my writing life and projects as well. This reminds me, one thing I have noticed as a success of our writing group is a sharing of tips and practices that help when facing writing challenges and that is gratifying. I can see it in my own life and I hear about it in others’ lives and I’m very pleased about that. Okay this is over 5 minutes so I’m going to stop in a moment. Briefly: in the remaining writing time of the day I will work on a quick free write on something else, read a little about writing, work on editing my chapter, and maybe do an exercise. Okay going to free write now in the remaining 12 minutes.

Monday 4-12-21

Slow day. I woke up tired, don’t remember anything off the top of my head about the weekend - no particular thing I did this weekend should mean I am this worn out so I assume it’s just cumulative exhaustion. I was distressed when I realized it was Monday. Been a slow day since, a little in a good way - played with my kids more than usual some - and mostly in a bad way - puttering unproductively. I think the reality is I have not recovered from the burn out of overwork - which makes sense, when would I have done so? the intense overwork has let up but it’s dialed down to merely normal work, which doesn’t allow any recovery, it just stops the deepening of the burnout. Oh well. Not going to meaningfully challenge the house so play the hand I’m dealt - this is the trick of the thing, I think, to become just resigned enough, like the barest touch of numbness from having just a little to drink, so as to be free of the burden and energy loss of dwelling in my anger and disappointment and frustration, without encouraging a deeper and more thoroughgoing resignation as a real way of being. Make “oh well” a temporary and small thought rather than an existential condition. I think I’m walking that line alright so far. Timer’s up. What now? I’m going to free write a little for a new project, read a little, edit my chapter, maybe look at a book for a book review, then onto other responsibilities. All those tasks I’ll take in short timed sessions, more about staying somewhat limber and in motion than about big results on the day to day.

Tuesday 4-13-21

Earlier start today and I was more disciplined - read a little about writing then a little out of a book I’m reading for its contents and am now doing this diary. I feel a little more calm and less frustrated than I’d felt lately. I think that’s evidence those goals of what to do in what order are good ones, ones that foster writing. What’s on my mind today? I haven’t had any caffeine so I don’t feel fully awake yet, my mind feels relatively blank. I watched a video before bed about setting writing goals and about project management. It suggested thinking of writing as gardening multiple crops, and breaking the work into types of activity by analogy with gathering seeds and tools, planting, tending and watering and pruning, harvesting, and sharing. I like that and want to think a little more about what the concrete phases are for me, and have something in each phase so my process can be relatively gapless. Another thing I like about the garden metaphor is the mixture of thinking of myself as an active agent - I choose what to plant and when and the phases are me choosing to respond to different phenomena - but it also treats the timeline as determined by the object: write this piece until it’s read, rather than being externally deadline driven. I also like the emphasis on sharing, making the work pro-social and integrated into intellectual community.

Wednesday 4-14-21

Today has been off track. No one’s hurt but my youngest daughter and I had a neighbor’s pit bull get loose and charge at us barking aggressively. I was pretty shaken and spent time on the phone with animal control and whatnot. I remained upset and angry about it last night (still am today, though at a lower volume) and it made it hard to sleep, putting me off my game today. I am trying to refocus now. I feel disappointed because yesterday had been a good day work-wise and I had hoped to have turned a corner. Oh well. I need to not waste energy by judging my work etc, just focus on the work and the future. Also good to recognize the challenges in the context. I spoke with a friend the other day who said writing is harder now and I said for me that is true but harder still is reading. I can type out thoughts more easily than I can take in thoughts. They said that they thought being open to ideas and taking in new thoughts requires a level of security and whatever the opposite of anxiety is - placidity? - which I thought helpful for contextualizing these challenges. I think I am also lonely as well as feeling the weight of all this year’s various weights am using distraction to cope, as a kind of palliative and limited sense of camaraderie. Good to recognize some of that. Seeing the situation is part of learning to make choices within and about it.
What am I doing today? I’m going to do my usual routine briefly then put a lot of time into other obligations that I’m behind on.
I read a few pages of Jensen - I set the timer for ten minutes, finished the chapter in 8, thought I’d come back here as I had some thoughts (timer’s set for 5 minutes now). Jensen uses the phrase “detaching from your anxiety,” accomplished through specific techniques. What jumps out at me in that is that she’s referring to actions that shape my headspace, rather than taking that headspace as a given. I’ve often thought of myself as working my way up to working despite how I feel, leaving the feelings as relatively fixed. What I often experience is that the feelings shift as I write, the diary first turns down the volume knob then when quieter the feelings start to morph, all of which is different than I tend to think of it as. That’s cool. My anxiety level isn’t fixed or just given, it’s something I can influence by actions. That makes me feel good to know. Also, I think of this diary as a version of Jensen’s ventilation file and it is but I think Jensen emphasizes writing about specific writing projects a little more. I’ve been writing about how I feel and about writing in general. That’s working for me so I’ll keep it but I’m going to experiment with a bit of venting about specific projects as well. I think this is a good idea for a few reasons. One is just that Jensen recommends it and I trust her. Another is that I think it’s good to experiment because I can discover new things that work and also sometimes a new thing (timer popped, 5 more minutes, hard deadline) just by virtue of its novelty has an effect on my writing life - a friend said once ‘part of my method as a writer is that I change my method periodically and that change helps.’ Another is that contact with a writing project is beneficial just for getting me thinking about it so if I add a bit of venting about one or more specific projects to this then that increases a bit of that project contact. Okay, so what projects am I focused on? I’m unsure, I don’t feel especially focused! Book chapter draft’s turned in - a little nervous about that (I’m worried they’ll demand big revisions that I won’t be able to carry out, or that it sucks, and I’m happy to have it off my desk). I have outtakes from that which I’d like to make more of, maybe that adds up to a new book project? Multiple articles? (I’m scared of peer review having had bad experiences with it.) I have a new book and and and. Too much, too many, I need to focus.
For today I’m going to work on my paper for the june conference and on a book review. I think I should devote some time sooner rather than later to a) reimagining my writing life - garden/pipeline - and b) laying out projects chronologically, might be good to write it out on butcher paper and see if that pays dividends. Okay time’s up.

Thursday 4-15-21

This week is worsening. I am tired, underproductive, kind of unhappy. Terrible stories in the news about police killing more people, more universities planning on being back face to face and not requiring students to vaccinate. Ugh. I can’t wait for the semester to be over. I am struggling this week with discipline and productivity, sleeping poorly as well. That makes me more easily disrupted by other things. My kids were fighty this morning, that helped me start the day on the wrong foot. Oh well. On an up note last night I did some project planning and I’m pleased about that. I laid out different irons in the fire and irons I might place in the fire. That will help me longer term. And while this week has had three bad days in it, Tuesday was a very good day and it’s just one off week. I’ve had some other off weeks but on balance my performance this semester and this whole year has been good, despite not being set up to succeed. The reason I feel like this is because I’m understandably worn out from an unfair and excessive set of demands, at a time when the world is genuinely very upsetting.
Alright, going to do some other work. I read a few more pages of Jensen’s book and it occurred to me I really should get a lot more strict with myself about my old rule that I write as the very first thing I do on a device and the first work thing I do each day. I’d like to modify it to 15 minutes of reading - 5 of reading about writing and 10 of reading for content, followed by 15-30 min of writing.

Friday 4-16-21

Holy moly April’s half gone! Time’s scrambled. Anyhow, this morning I’ve worked according to plan so far - read a little on writing, then read a little for content, now this writing diary. I can tell this is a good plan as I feel better. I don’t feel entirely better, which is good to note but also important to contextualize: this is still work and may always feel like work, for one, there’s a lot of big feelings and exhaustion that I’ve got pent up which may hang around a while, for two, and the social context is still fairly imperfect to put it excessively mildly, for three. But anyway I can feel that working this way really is a beneficial best practice. So what’s on my mind? Less than on prior days, and less energetically and with less tiredness and frustration - part of why doing this in the morning is a better idea. Later today it will be announced that my book won the honorable mention for intellectual history for the OAH for 2020 and I will be at an event for my and two other colleagues’ books as well, which is exciting and I’m pleased that people at work care about what I’m doing. Alright I’m going to move on to the other morning routine and then other responsibilities. Shooting for short sessions of time across the different pieces of the puzzle, and going to make an effort to stay task and best practice focused, with a break later in the day, maybe a walk or some exercise.
I free wrote for 17 minutes on the Rehmann book and some questions and challenges it raises, some limits to how I’ve been thinking about some issues around ideology and conflict, as reflected in some recent writing of mine. That feels like a productive line of inquiry to keep following over time at a slow pace. That’s good.
I free wrote about 45 minutes for the paper for the Buffalo conference and I’m really excited about the ideas I have. One quick process note: I forgot to check the time when I started then realized I was somewhere around 20 minutes in and set a stop watch in my browser. I should get a stopwatch app for these more open ended free writes. I often tell students I only like to write with timers and not with stop watches but that’s only really true of certain phases of the writing process. Timers help me when I need the help. Stop watches don’t, but what stop watches do is help me - at times when the writing is going well - to document information that will be useful to have later when the writing isn’t going well. Each of those kinds of moments requires its own sorts of discipline and tools. Anyway, I feel good, kind of energized. (I was just reading Jensen on this, about how it’s possible to arrange a writing and academic life so the pieces aren’t just obligations and burdens but sources of renewal and energy. I was skeptical but today was definitely energizing writing-wise, been a while since I felt that, very pleased.)

Monday 4-19-21

It snowed. I’m a little worried about the peach tree, might mean no peaches despite all those flowers. Is that a metaphor? Gotta enjoy what’s enjoyable and not hang it on an expected future? I suppose. But also I will be kind of sad if we get no peaches this year. Up late washing dishes last night and up early this morning because the kids got up early and were fighting. Going to be a long day, tired in acute way in addition to the chronic built up burnt out tiredness. I couldn’t find the Jensen book, I’d been back to that and enjoying it, wanted to read it first thing, so I opened up Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath diary again instead. That was nice. He’s at a point where he says he has a month left and vacillates by the day between the book good and the book potentially falling apart. I did a book talk on Friday, a group of three of us at work who have written books talked about our books, hosted by the Humanities Center. It was really nice, good to feel some real intellectual community. Leah is leaving for a job elsewhere. I’m happy for her and sad as her friend and colleague. She did a great job running the event. I’m worried the Center will worsen with her gone. I suppose my baseline expectation is most things worsen over time. Today’s a big teaching day. The semester’s nearly over and I’m holding onto that. I’m looking forward to the easier workload of the summer, and taking some real time off. I have to keep that a motivating expectation rather than a demotivating or distressing one - mustn’t get impatient. Alright looking at the time and knowing what I have to get ready to do teaching-wise today I think I have an hour and a half of work time today other teaching, give or take, plus maybe some email at the end of the day. I started this in the living room while my family was occupied and now they’re not occupied and are talking to me, I’m going to head upstairs where I can think more. That sounds terrible - I liked talking with them, and now upstairs the remaining sleeping child woke up, gave me a hug, told me about her dream last night about a film adaptation of a favorite book of hers - I just mean that splitting time or brain power between work and family is a bad practice. A colleague once said they didn’t want to wish their life away by complaining. I think about in terms of playing the hand we’re dealt, stay in the life we actually have, rather than playing worse out of frustration and resentment. Anyway, I was about to say I have around 90 minutes give or take in which I might reasonably expect to get decent work done, what to do with it? I have my usual routine - I call it that to make it seem less new and more habitual than it is at the moment...! Is that all of it for this morning’s work? Potentially. I’m going to get down to it but some last thoughts quick before I do: I think I am avoiding the ‘project planning’ item on my to do list because I’m intimidated about planning itself as an activity and because I’m anxious about my projects. I’m nervous that tomorrow’s my middle child’s big dentist appointment. I need to check my calendar and be sure I have meetings and appointments in, so that I don’t miss any, including my talk at a colleague’s class. Alright going to continue with the routine for today. Next is a free write for a project.
    What a stupid bunch of time sucks computers and the internet are! I wanted a stopwatch and to get one I had to reset my App Store password which is more involved than I want to do right now, then I started looking at other timer apps etc. A waste in so many ways and I forget the thoughts I was beginning to have for my project free writing! Ugh. These devices are about productivity for the employer and employee control, and my interests as a writer are at best a square peg in relation to those. I wish it wasn’t like this. Anyway, back to the writing. Going to set a timer so I write at least ten minutes and going to set the stop watch so I can write longer and track the time if I want to.

Tuesday 4-20-21

Today went badly off track. I slept very poorly and too little last night then one of my girls had a dentist appointment today. They referred us to another dentist - poor dear has multiple cavities, they referred us to a pediatric dentist - so that was some phone time. I also have a work hangover from yesterday. And it’s police killing trial verdict day. Deeply inauspicious combination. I am trying, as my dear friend Alex often says, to give myself some grace today. I’m going to make brief contact with my work, and will see if I can perhaps do some more planning before bed. I will say, I can feel that I did not follow my best practices today...! This reminds me, I talked to Alex about recording work and I may want to set up multiple forms for recording, one for each phase of the work, rather than a generic form. I think the one I have is best tuned to free writing and fits that pretty well but works less well otherwise. I will add that I am tired, burnt out, anxious, my head hurts, I am also sad and lonely. I don’t like feeling this way. On the plus side, I am in relationships of intellectual and artistic mutuality, and that’s exciting. I’m going to message a friend related to that then do a bit of other work.

Thursday 4-22-21

    I started the day a little late because of family stuff but once I started, I started well. I decided to try a five minute morning focus guided meditation - that feels hokey to me but I thought I’d try being open minded. It did set me on the right footing to start, so I should keep experimenting with that. Then I read a book for a while and took notes, typed up some notes. I’m noticing - in part from all the underlining in this book, Simon Clarke’s Keynesianism book - that I don’t remember what I read that well if I don’t write about it. Probly being in a discussion helps too. I decided to write some notes on it and that felt good - hopefully it helps with retention as well - and was also thought provoking. I got a bit off track after that then back on track, read from Jensen’s writing book for five minutes and now this diary entry. I notice I’m more receptive than ever to her ‘writing myths’ stuff. Earlier I think I was in the mode of buckle down and get the book done according to the deadline, and probly also stuffing down emotions to keep going and worried about feeling that stuff. That was my response to Boice’s book at first as well, the self-talk stuff didn’t interest me at all. I later came around on that part of Boice and am doing similar on the Jensen now. I think it’s that I don’t need to be on nearly as much of an artificial external timetable anymore, that’s driven by punishment/threat of losing my job. I can be on an internal and intellectual community one. Which means I can now work to make writing less distressing and more enjoyable. I should work further on that, I like that. One part will be, I think, examining and working on the sources of distress, and another, I think, will be finding and honoring or amplifying the parts of the work I find meaningful/satisfying/enjoyable.
    For now, I think I’m sometimes procrastinating because I want to escape feeling lonely and sometimes because I’m scared about my writing, and the two combine because feeling a sense of connection to people dials down being afraid. But the thing is I should amplify kinds of connection that don’t come at the expense of writing but rather enhance it. Specifically writing community, I suppose.
    I would probly also benefit from doing more recognition of skills and progress. Like today when I got off track I turned it back around, got back on track, responded reasonably and appropriately - didn’t waste any energy, gave myself some grace - and got back down to work. So that’s good. I have a list of goals for the day, right now I’m still in the routine part. (I should also note that I’m acquiring/building this routine still, so I should be realistic about that and not expect instant opting into at 100% level to the new routine.) Also, it’s a good routine that works, improves the day and my week, so good on me for finding it and I should keep it up. Alright, moving on. Going to free write next then work on a piece of writing that’s live. Also going to remember to use my ‘right now I am...?’ file in scrivener.
    One last quick note: looking at the scrivener folder here with these diary entries I see I didn’t have entries for Tuesday or Wednesday and I felt a twinge on that. But then I thought maybe I had written on for Tuesday so I checked in Bean and there was one, so that’s good. I put that in. Then I remembered two other things. One, I got news earlier this week that another old friend I’d fallen out of touch with had died. That took the wind out of my sails, to put it mildly, so I should again give myself some grace here. Also, I remembered that last night before bed I wrote up something on moral harm that I’d been meaning to write up and sent it to some colleagues and friends for a read over. So I have remained focused on my craft more than I immediately recognized. Alright onto the free writing.
    Quick thought: I like to say ‘free write’ rather than other terms like Boice’s various ‘generative writing’ or ‘writing to think.’ Why? Partly just habit and inertia. Partly I like the idea that it’s open ended - even though they’re often very focused compared to, say, morning pages or Peter Elbow’s version of free writing. I think I like the idea of a small open-ended space within a lager project - open up a moment of a project - and also to feel free in the doing, maybe?

Friday 4-23-21

Another disrupted work day, though this time for some good reason: I got tenure! That’s nice, a relief, and I think it comes with a raise. People have been telling me they’re happy for me as well, which is cool. Other disruptions include just being tired - slept poorly and was not in bed enough hours - and having some unexpected events. It’ll work out though. I did get a column drafted this week that friends like and I hope to finish soon-ish and send out into the world. I like doing that of writing. I’d like to do more of it. Then again, I like cake as well, and it’s not necessarily the best choice for my life over all. I’m going to reflect on this, slowly and calmly. I’ll add that I notice today I did not stick to my routine and did other stuff on the computer first - including checking email to get the tenure news. Under the circumstances, I’d replay the day the same way but it is further confirmation that generally speaking on normal days the routine works, is effective, powerful, and I should continue it. Alright, onto other tasks.


Monday 4-26-21

I got more sleep last night than usual, worked hard to have all the dishes done before the kids went to bed so I wouldn’t be up so much later. I expected to wake up feeling energetic and restored but I am still tired! I think my accumulated tiredness requires more nights of good sleep than just one. I also had a big workout on Saturday and a walk yesterday (I don’t walk enough these days) so my body is physically tired. Still I’m pleased about these priorities. I’ve done, am doing, my morning routine - a little reading and note taking then this diary. As I read Jensen again I find myself more open to her discussions of writing myths and I also notice some of them are more charged for me than others, because I hold those more…!
I am looking forward to the semester being over. I wish I had less to do between now and then, and I am feeling the gap between how I wish the semester went and how it actually went. I’m a little nervous about course evaluations even though they’re not really consequential for me this year. (Mental note to add evals to my moral harm column.)
I am feeling excited about summer intellectual opportunities. I read a little about doing less email, I forget the author, Cal Winslow maybe? I have it written down somewhere. It talked about the value of deep and sustained concentration. I also watched a video by John Cleese about play and creativity. Cleese would take 90 minutes to work on creative projects on the theory that the first half an hour was basically throat clearing, warming up, and letting distractions bubble up and away, then leaving about 60 minutes of time to work energetically. He also stressed that this work was open ended and like play, not instrumental or in a hurry, just being amid the openness of an issue or idea or problem and considering it from lots of angles, even if apparent solutions and conclusions had already appeared. That activity without a need to be or seem decisive, he argued (and he said there was some scientific research to back this up) led to the most creative activity. Its also a kind of freedom. I think some of what I’ve tried to do as a writer has been to practice sort of bubbles of that freedom (and that’s part of why tenure etc pressures are anti-creativity and anti-intellectuals, making the work stop or making it hurt, or both), and I’m excited to have more of it, especially over the summer and, if I’m lucky, over the next few years as I get my covid-overwork repayment schedule. We’ll see. Anyway, I’m getting excited about summer and a little nervous too as there’s always the ambition/aspiration vs capacity/reality gap. Gotta be in the right mindframe, and get a plan further fleshed out. Ultimately though just stay in motion. On that, today’s plan in the remainder before teaching: free write, work on a project, writing craft work, some time on a book review. Then prep fast, and come up with a task list of non writing obligations.



Tuesday 4-27-21

Later start again today and tired - too hot last night, slept badly, and I have a teaching hangover. I got distracted today, used the morning in a mixed way. That said: I watched a talk by John Cleese about business/management and creativity, arguing businesses/management often stifle creativity in various ways (resisting the urge to edit that sentence) and one of things he talked about was what he called an open mode, basically of play and a suspension of instrumental approaches and a different sense of time. It’s not identical to but it resonates with ideas of flow. I think sometimes I have intellectual conversations or do writing on twitter because it’s a version of that some of the time and I’m hungry for that. I think it’s often an imperfect way to organize and conduct that activity - I’d rather do that for my next book etc - but it’s also a form of intellectual community, community in play and flow, which is part of the attraction. I like that because then it’s not just that I’m jittery and playing a video game or whatever. Of course, since I like that assessments, I’m biased toward it. Whatever. One nice bit of today I read a chapter of Jensen’s book while walking up and down the stairs, nice to move around. My family are outside so I could do that easily. I wish I had a better space and I also am not excited to be back on campus in the fall with the pandemic not yet over! Oh well. Jensen’s chapter today was on fear of hostile writers. She makes the point that hostile writers are more destructive when they say things that press on our internal self-talk, harder to shrug them off. I think also they can sometimes lead over time to people taking up bad self-talk. I might eventually go through the Jensen again and write a response or notes on it just for the experience. In any case I’m liking reading a little on academic writing each day, that was a good call. Alright enough of this. I’m going to free write for a project now.

Wed 4-28-21

Tired again, too hot again last night. A friend called to talk and turned out she was randomly in the area so we talked a little outside, which was nice, then there was some event with firefighters training and I took my kids to watch and they came out and explained a bunch of stuff about their activities and gear and training to us. That was very cool and also more social contact than I’ve had in I don’t know how long and I feel super wiped out now! Holy moly! Post-pandemic life is gonna be an adjustment I think.
I have a student presentation to attend online in about 15 minutes. After that’s done, I’ll do a short free write for my talk in June, then another writing session for a book review, then I’m going to map out my time for the next few work days, trying to script the day so I can reduce decisions, just follow the times and activity prompts, so to speak. I think that will help me get more done that I feel good about and reduce both fatigue and procrastination. That’s the goal and hope anyway.
How am I feeling about writing? Okay. Good. I like where I’m at in the projects I’m at right now and am proud to be in this place despite unfavorable circumstances, and I’m excited to get to unwind some in the not too distant future. I am a little antsy to start getting some headway on the pre-work for my new book project as well. I’ve not really started that and should do so. I’ve also been putting off some grant proposal work which I should really jump on, and some reading for others. I think I’m a little more averse to hypothetical judgmental readers right now, as per Jensen’s chapter on that. I should think more about that. But later, not now. For now, going to get some tea, go to this student presentation, then follow the plan for the rest of today.

Thursday 4-29-21

The day got away from me. Tired, undisciplined, neck sore from sleeping wrong. I did some reading earlier, that was good. In my reading about writing I noticed I have a little more response to the ‘don’t compare yourself to others that’s a bad writing myth’ bit of Jensen. I think the tenure and book process made me more open to how others think of me, they’ve socialized me into that writing myth. I gotta think more about that and try to have that percolate out. Only a little of the day left, I have student honors thesis thing to get to. I think I am worn out and need some time away. I should focus on this paper for the Buffalo conference and get that done then unwind a while and mostly just read, or maybe do like 10 min writing craft and 10 min free writing a day? I dunno. Gotta ponder and plan a little more.

Friday 4-30-21

In the faculty writing group right now, final 20 minutes is dedicated to writing. I’m spending my first 5 on this diary. I am tired out today, little sleep and low quality as well. It’s nice to be in the group though, good to see everybody and hear how they’re doing, and to make contact with a group of writers thinking about writing. Someone suggested a project visualization activity like a more permanent version of what I did with cutting up slips of paper - a sheet of butcher paper with categories and post it notes with projects, so they can be moved through the different phases and can be taken in visually quickly. That’s appealing to me, I want to try that. That plus more calendar work. One thing that came up for me in the conversation is what the indicators are of being in motion and doing the work. I’ve sometimes felt like I’m only working if I’m sweating, whereas I want to get to thinking of it more like a step counter, just logging my time and knowing that those steps really do add up.
Alright so for now, what’s on my mind writing-wise? I’m excited about this paper for the June workshop and I feel like I have plenty of time to move from big idea brainstorm phase into more focused phase where I know what the object really is, and I’m enjoying the current phase. What else. I should write out my summer aspirations and my aspirations for the following academic year, in process/routine and in products, and maybe also in intellectual excitement - what do I want to dwell in, so to speak, like what am I excited to learn about and explore. I also would like to set some goals for myself artistically, so to speak, like reading a craft book or two and identifying some other modes to work in and portfolios to build up for the sake of improving. I will also admit I’ve begun to want more readers sometimes. I care about these ideas and want people to read them. That feels unseemly to say! I think my felt lack of intellectual community and general loneliness - I want to see people face to face! - has intensified that impulse to want readers. I have to think more about that. If I think of this as a whole, analogous to musical and visual art and athletic aspirations that might help a little to help me develop a sustainable and varied but still coherent set of aspirations and then a plan to follow those aspirations in an organized way. Above all I really want my days and weeks to feel a certain way - I want to be in certain headspaces, like a flow state and learning and intellectually curious and excited - and I want to make progress skill-wise as a writer and thinker, and I do want to have a second book. The object really does matter to me - like in the way I’d like to put out an LP musically someday when the time is right, and do a zine again, I also want to have the object of a second book, to have made it. I should write these out on post its and have a think as well about how they relate to priorities and then make sure my priorities are reflected in inputs of time. Going on too long here going to stop, free write about a project now. a

Thursday 5-6-21

Haven’t written in a few days, been a very full time - I finished my final teaching of the semester and my wife and I both got our second vaccine doses. In that time I also was sleeping poorly. It all made for days when I didn’t write, probably could have if I had made more effort, been more disciplined, but it’s also nice to get a little time away from the writing. We have a family trip coming up in a little while, just over a week from now, I’m excited about that. We haven’t had one in a few years and I think haven’t had one that wasn’t tied to visiting extended family since we left Minneapolis. I think it will also be our first since we had kids where there’s not a baby in diapers. I’m going to bring a book and no laptop.
Oh, I got tenure recently. I can’t recall if I said that in here. I’m relieved. I expected to get it but it’s nice to have it a certainty now. I feel a bit of a disconnect from some of the trappings. There’s an air of celebration and it feels like a subtext that I should say thank you, when it’s fundamentally a matter of my having re-applied, at great length and stress, for the job I already had and am good at, and upon re-applying I got the job security everyone in the world deserves in the first place, and which was withheld from me only because of budget-and-status driven institutional preferences for more inhumane labor practices. Anyway. I am relieved and it’s nice that people I know are happy for me.
I had a long conversation with Alex yesterday on my drive and we were talking about the shift to not being junior anymore, being tenured and all. One thing he said that struck me is that up until now we’ve been forced to grind under someone else’s decisions about what the grind is. Now we can choose what the grind is and how to do it and how much, to a significant degree. That’s cool. I was thinking about that in relation to what a colleague said in our writing group the other day as well. In that conversation we talked about summer work where you have to sweat a lot because tenure pressure and whatnot. I am looking to work this summer but I don’t want to do more than just break a sweat. I want to finish the summer with renewed morale and work capacity, having had a summer of enjoyable low-pressure intellectual activity, and with as much preparatory work done as I can get done for an intellectually productive academic year. That’s my main outlook right now for the summer. Concretely that means some shorter work days and more exercise I think.
I made a chart on butcher paper with projects on it and columns by project status/stages, things like ‘looking for materials’, ‘reading/lit review’, ‘free writing’, ‘drafting’, etc, including a final column “celebrate.” I want to make an effort to get better at that! Anyway, my thought is to look over the chart some more and use it to set some summer outcome goals (one such goal is to make a light summer workload’s worth of progress on my next book). I also want to use it to do some day and week planning: I’m craving reading and learning even though I’m intimidated by it, and I like the free write stage. So I want to think about getting different projects into those different stages so I can always have something ready to hand to work on in that stage. I also want to think about what’s a daily activity - reading a little? Free writing? Definitely the writing diary and definitely reading about writing! - and what’s a weekly activity done on only one or some days but not daily - maybe long stretches of reading? One long session of freewriting, and/or of drafting? Oh and I also plan to take my project list and put into a calendar for deadline purposes, and I should plan to schedule some sociality/intellectual community.
Well that’s where I’m at now. I have a call I have to get on soon. After the fall for the rest of the day my aspirations are to go through the rest of my current daily routine, spend a little more time on this planning stuff, and then other obligations.

Monday 5-10-21

A few days away from writing, missed Friday I think and then it was the weekend. I read longer today which was nice but now it’s late in the day and I’m feeling behind. I have done some side project writing work recently though. I’ve got a book review and two column-y type pieces in the works, off to readers, so that’s nice. I am feeling tense about the responsibilities I have for tying off the semester and also that work is dull so I am procrastinating on that, which just delays then amplifies anxiety, it doesn’t alleviate it. So I should buckle down and grind out that work. But I also do want to do writing work and keep that in my life so it’s hard to know what to prioritize. I need to get more strict with myself about doing my routine and all earlier in the day before other work and others uses of a computer. Well given the time what am I going to do for the rest of this work day? I’m going to touch my June conference talk for the sake of being warmed up tomorrow, maybe free write a little as well, and then a bit of time on other responsibilities. I need to buckle in to reading projects as well, the reviews I committed to doing, and I should spend real time on planning. I think I’ll do the conference paper and free write then make a plan for tomorrow, then a bit of other work and call it a day.

Tuesday 5-11-21

I ended up not writing yesterday! I don’t remember what I did instead. I am a wreck of indiscipline. In the past I’ve dealt with this phase of the semester by having my boundaries between work and not-work totally break down and having basically very inefficient and very, very long work days, facilitated by my family going to visit extended family at semesters’ end. Those visits are off limits because of the pandemic so I have to confine my work time to more normal-ish hours and my old work habits are not serving me well in this context. Those habits are unhealthy and I need to change them. Bit by bit I suppose. I will say to be fair I have written some column type things for some blogs recently so I am still doing some writing. That’s good. Also have had some good conversations with Alex recently about plans and organization for the summer, need to keep working at that. Okay I’m going to free write for a project for ten minutes, draft for ten minutes, then do other work.

Wednesday 5-12-21

Poor habits persist though reduced today, and that’s progress. The struggle is real but occurring, I suppose. I’m feeling generally calm and relatively alert. Yesterday I had two blog posts/columns come out. I absolutely enjoyed writing them and am pleased that people I respect like them and want more people to read them. That said, the headspace I get in during those moments is not a writing conducive one. I want to reflect more on this and talk to MK about it. I want to do more short-ish form and public writing and I also want to be aware that it generates this response in me that I have to manage. It’s a bit like when I weight lifted more my muscles got tighter so I needed to also do more stretching and mobility work, and when I lifted heavy I had neural fatigue on the day after. Again, one to reflect on and calmly assess how to manage.
How am I feeling about writing projects today? I’m unsure. I am procrastinating on planning my summer, I think in part because I don’t want to face summer’s finitude and in part because I’m scared of substantially new projects. I had a good talk with Alex about this and am going to follow up with him as per our plans to make plans and be accountable. I think I should aim for a high contact high accountability summer. (And a low work high rest summer!)
Alright for the next part of my day I’m going to take a walk, then immediately do my next bits of routine - free write and draft - for short inputs then some time reading for reviews I committed to, then some serious time on grading and paperwork.

Tuesday 6-15-21

Can it really be a month since my last entry? How odd. In that month I have done some writing still. I accidentally deleted my tracking file, that’s unfortunate, not that was I keeping it up anyway! What might I have gotten done in the last month? Draft of a talk for a workshop, maybe a book review (did I write that earlier? I don’t recall), and two manuscript reviews for others. That’s not writing but it’s part of my writing life.
I am sad that it’s so far into the summer already and I resent how much work I still have to do right now, especially since I’m not paid for it.
The pandemic has me down, which feels selfish to say. That’s not at all to say I’m the real victim or whatever, just that part of the point of writing these is a personal stock taking, and such a stock taking would not be accurate if it didn’t include that reality.
I have some thoughts on daily routines for the summer in light of projects and aspirations. There’s the work that my impatience opposes and there’s the work my perfectionism opposes. That’s a mix of boring logistics and early learning, when I’m figuring out I know less than I thought. Then there’s the work I’m excited by, the having of ideas. And then there’s the work I crave for distracting reasons - writing out pieces based on what I’ve already learned and ideas I’ve already had. I want to have a little of each on each day.
I’m not sure if the learning and idea-having can all come from the new book project. I’m going to commit to 45-60 minutes of work per day on the new project. I’d like to get to where that’s about 30 minutes of reading and 30 minutes of note taking/free writing, but the specifics are less important: form should follow function, so to speak. I think I should also commit to a maximum of no more than double these numbers - tops of two hours work per day on the new book, to facilitate balance with other projects and work/life balance. Aside from the new book project I’d like to spend a little time each day reading for my own edification - there are works that smart friends are reading or have read, and there are works that friends have written. Let’s say that’s between 30-40 minutes (again, ideally about 50/50 between reading and free writing/note-taking) and I’d like to spent a little time each day advancing some side project, with a priority being having the side project be something I can write on. Again let’s say 30-40 minutes. That all sounds good to me. I think in addition to the above a daily habit of reading a little (say, 5 minutes) about writing, of doing the writing diary, and of doing all of the above before any other use of a computer or any other work for my job. It would be good as well to read for fun again and to get more exercise, sleep, and more time devoted to music and music writing, with all of the latter being intrinsic goods to not overdo either.