20140731.0727

Payday has come once again, and I am glad of it, although the bills have come along with it and there is all too little left. So it is not quite the same as I have remarked before. More's the pity.

The end of July has tended to be a good time for my writing, I find as I look back through the blogroll. I posted here on this day in 2010, 2011, and 2013; in 2012, I was overseas and concerned with being a tourist. It was a good experience, overall, even if I do still lament the amount of money I spent that month...never again. The years of which I do have records here, however, show a shift in preoccupation and in writing. Being able to make such a claim is one of the advantages of record-keeping, and being able to do so easily is one of the advantages of doing so online. That I can seize upon the advantages helps me to understand some of the claims of scholars in favor of digital humanities work; Fish is still wrong.

In 2010, my concern was entirely local. I lived in The City, and there was rancor about the so-called WTC Mosque. My comment about the matter was terse, a mere 125 words. I have not heard anything about the matter since moving--and, indeed, I did not hear much about it before moving, although it is possible that my relative isolation from mainstream news media did something to inhibit my hearing about it. The comment was somewhat passive-aggressive, I admit; it is addressed to "those of you," a nameless collective I have no real expectation ever actually read anything I write. Perhaps it bespeaks some degree of cowardice. Perhaps it bespeaks some degree of stereotyping. Certainly, it indicates a lack of focus for the annoyance evidenced in the piece.

In 2011, I was enmeshed in drafting my dissertation. As it happened, I did not get the draft completed until the end of the year and hurriedly pushed through revisions and final proofing in the short months of the UL Spring 2012 term. Again, I posted a mere 125 words to apologize for and justify the gap in my writing into the blog. I suppose it is understandable; I was teaching six classes at the time in addition to the research work (on the dissertation and on other projects). Such actions do not leave much time for other writing, whatever the value of that writing might be. (I am well aware that there may not be much to anything I put on a page, although some writing is more likely to be of worth than other writing.)

In 2013, I was working through preparations to move to Sherwood Cottage from Bedfordside Garden in the Best of the Boroughs. I was also more fully engaged in my teaching than I had been in previous years--sensibly, since I had completed the dissertation at that point. I was also dipping a toe into digital scholarship. I have not immersed myself more fully in that kind of work; I still do most of my criticism with printed pages, even if I find many or most of them online. (I read more quickly from a sheet than from a screen. Old habits.) But the kind of writing that I was doing in 2013 was of a more sustained, more contemplative, and more developed sort than my earlier pieces. It suggests that I have gotten better at doing what I do--which is good, since a fair chunk of my money comes from my sitting in front of my computer and typing madly about things clients want to read. It is how I can increase my payday yields and maybe have a little bit more left o'er next time around.