20141211.0817

I did not really sleep in today. I did have to take care of a few things before getting to this bit of writing. I will be taking care of more things soon after; I have a freelance job in progress, and the headache remains.

My wonderful wife has a job interview today; I will be driving her to it and to her current job afterwards. Both of us hope that she is able to get the job, as it would represent a substantial increase in income and an offer of stability that we have long sought. Her getting the position will limit my own job search somewhat, I think, but if it is at the cost of having some security (and only some, given where we live), it will be worth it.

I will continue to deal with exams as I am able. I do need to get the freelance piece done, of course, and that has a tighter deadline than grading exams and inputting scores. But as soon after that is done as I can manage, I will be handling the exams submitted to me yesterday. It should not take long; there were not many submissions, many of them were brief, and I read quickly.

At this point, there is not much else to say, or at least not much to say that I am willing to say here. I will hope for the best from my wife's interview today and move forward from there.

20141210.0826

The headache is still present, although it has improved somewhat, likely because it is still morning and I slept in (as should be obvious).

My sleeping in has been increasingly common, despite my annoyance with it. I have found it harder and harder to wake when I really ought to, and that despite going to bed earlier than was my wont. Perhaps the fatigue of the term is catching up with me. Perhaps also my body is failing me--and there is other confirmation thereof. I am growing, and neither vertically nor stronger. I really should find more time to exercise, should make it, but when I cannot wake at a decent hour to do so and still attend to the things that need attention, such as my paying work and care for Ms. 8, I do not know how I will do so. It is not as if I can afford to turn down work, and it is not as if I can neglect my daughter, nor are such things to be expected. I understand better why so many in the United States find it so difficult to burn off the calories they take in, and I well understand why they take in so many: they taste good and are inexpensive in the short term.

Seriously, think about the cost of a fast-food hamburger, and then think of the cost of the materials to make a similar hamburger at home. Don't forget to factor in time spent acquiring and cooking the food, or that from cleaning up afterwards; the price of the fast-food burger does so.

I am hardly alone in bemoaning my body. While it is true that I carried a gut even when I was competing in judo, and I was pudgy even while getting ten or more hours of practice in aikido each week, I have been bloating in the last year and a half. I have had to go up a pants size, and I am poised (unhappily) to go up yet another. It is not a pleasant thing to think upon, particularly given the family from which I am descended, with its heart conditions and early deaths even for those who did work out regularly and well, and the other problems attendant on those who have survived so long as they have. But I suppose I have only myself and my laziness to blame, and I suppose that that laziness is the thing that requires vanquishing. As always.

Whatever else is true, I could still use a bit of help. While I am going to try to trim down so that I may not have to buy a new suit for the conference, and I am going to try to improve several parts of my physical health (the end of the term will open up some time for me to do so), my financial situation is still much as it has been--which is not as I would have it. The help would be greatly appreciated.

20141209.0909

Something tells me I have an issue with triplicate...

I have been nursing a headache for the past couple of days, which annoys me greatly. I do not know what the cause of it is, either. Aspirin has not helped it, nor has ramping up my intake of water (the Mrs. suggested that it has been a result of dehydration). I have to think that it is stress or tension, but it has greeted me when I work up for the past two days...I do not know. Maybe it is the oncoming end-of-term illness about which I have commented before (although I cannot seem to find the post at this point); I rather hope not, as I have much to do, including a new freelance piece that was just ordered. Whatever its cause, though, the headache is annoying me mightily, and I wish it would go away.

Wishing will not make it so, however, no more than it will make many other things so. It is probably better thus; I know that I have wished for things that would not be to the benefit of the world, and I am certain I am not alone in having done so. (Many of them have involved things deemed impossible by current understandings of physical laws as I have seen them reported. Some of them still do. Others are wholly unethical and probably icky. Again, I doubt that I am alone in such wishing.) The actions I can take to enact some of those wishes are limited, not only by physical law, but also by federal, state, and local statutes and by my own moral and ethical imperatives. Simply put, there is only so much I can do, only so much I can get away with doing, and so much that I am willing to do...and because of the last, I have to accept that my wishing is not in earnest. And in that, too, I doubt I am alone.

Perhaps it is for that reason that I see in the behaviors of some what I see. I can understand immersion in certain narratives that allow for action without consequence, despite the lack of verisimilitude such narratives display for that very reason. I am not immune to it, as might be suggested by my long involvement in role-playing game communities. (This is particularly true of running them; the GM is god, or is at least a god, within the collaborative improvisational storytelling environment Mackay describes.) Acting in such a way as betrays a lack of acceptance of consequences, though, makes for a bad time to be had by all concerned, in games and out of them--and I do not think I am alone in having had the delightful experience of being around such people. I am not alone in being concerned with such things as trying not to be such an actor...but I am more nearly alone than is good, for me or for anyone else.

20141208.0735

Today is the first day of exams week, and today is the first day I give an exam during the week. My literature class will get done today, and I will be putting in some final-touch type grades on my technical writing classes in preparation for their examinations on Wednesday and Friday. Thus, while I will be busy, I will not be so busy as I have been, and I will have a bit of time to focus my attention otherwise. This is good, for I have no shortage of other tasks requiring my attention.

I had hoped that some of that attention would need to be given to more freelancing work. I do not have an order waiting for me, however, either through the exchange that gives me most of my work or through the private channels that send occasional bits my way. This disappoints, because I do feel compelled to pick up another few gifts, and having the additional money would be of great help with that. Perhaps orders will come in later today.

Some attention probably ought to be paid to my work on the Tales after Tolkien Society blog, Travels in Genre and Medievalism. I have not posted to it since last month, and while others ostensibly contribute to it, I have not had submissions from other sources for some time. There are ideas growing in the fertile soil of minds; harvest them and grind them into flour for baking or malt them for brewing, that we may eat and drink deeply!

Some also ought to make its way to the ongoing search for a continuing-line job. I remain pleased with the way I am treated where I currently work; I am voicing no complaints against it. But I am on a term contract, as I believe I have noted several times before, and I would like to have less worry about whether or not I will have a job next year. Hence the search. I know that its success will not eliminate worry, but it will diminish it significantly.

A chunk will doubtlessly find itself devoted to the online game I am helping supervise. With over 100 players and some 20 staff (including me), there is a lot going on in that community, and I am entertained to watch it and gratified to participate in it. And I have an idea for a Tales after Tolkien Society piece that may make use of the community; I can turn my work on it into work I should be doing. Possibly. The results will determine if I may or not...

Finals week is the beginning of when I can attend to such things in earnest. It is not without its own challenges, of course, but those challenges are much more easily managed than those of the semester as a whole. Too, there is a near, definitive ending to them, and that is a thing greatly to be appreciated. I am not ungrateful for it, and so it is with somewhat lightened heart that I approach it now, going to do what it is that I need to do.

20141207.0857

I am driven on by a
Green-eyed task-master

Its whip cracks nearly every time
I see another person
Smiling
Happy
Celebrating
Successful
Reminding me that
I do not feel myself
Smiling
Happy
Celebrating
Successful
Stealing the joy I ought to feel

I know I have much
I should be happy
I should celebrate it
But I feel the lash upon me
Again
And again
And I know of few who smile under such an onslaught

20141206.0840

This is evidently the 700th post to this webspace. Not bad for four and a half years, eh?

Two years ago today, I was reminiscing about middle school and high school band. Last year at this time, I was waxing poetic about the snow. This year, neither applies; I am not wistful about the past, and there is not snow on the ground. The weather is instead fall-like, with temperatures in the 40s F and the sky an overcast grey. It is weather conducive to the work I will need to do, for final exams are next week, and I need to be clear of other grading going into them.

I am not the only one at work, of course. My most magnificent Mrs. will put in a shift today, and Ms. 8 continues the difficult task of growing rapidly, crawling proficiently, and being cute in a devoted and serious way. Indeed, I must go tend to her now, and so I will leave this post as a brief note. All it needs, really.

20141204.0719

I have noted that my freelance writing has me read a number of things I would not normally read. Most recently, it has taken me through Preston and Child's Blue Labyrinth. While I know that the series of which it is part sells well and enjoys a great deal of currency, something about the text strikes me as...wrong. It is not merely the Batman-esque protagonist (ridiculously wealthy and possessed of substantial skills in both investigative techniques and hand-to-hand combat), who partakes heavily of the Marty Stu trope (if not actually God-Mode Sue), although I do react negatively to that. (Yet I like many incarnations of Batman--but a reality where illegal aliens land in Kansas farm-towns and Amazons who do not cut off their breasts fly around, invisible jets or otherwise, allows for more...leeway than something ostensibly based in contemporary reality.) It is not merely that those closest to the protagonist partake of the protagonist's nature, becoming the Robin or Batgirl (horrible name, that) to the protagonist's Batman--although that, too, does irk me. Really, there are few challenges (and thus little meaningful conflict) for those such as the protagonist who are already equal to any situation--however unexpected it might actually be.

It is rather that the text uses the words it uses as it uses them, trotting out high-level diction in ways that seem discordant with their context. (Note that I have no problem with high diction in itself. I hardly could, being a literary scholar, and as I have expressed once or twice my appreciation for diction in itself, I cannot complain on that ground alone.) I might expect the highly educated to use such language in speaking with other highly educated people in reference to those matters about which they are highly educated--and Preston and Child do deploy elevated diction thusly. I might expect such diction as a class marker used to remind "the lesser" that "their betters" are, in fact, their betters--and Preston and Child do deploy elevated diction thusly. But for an omniscient third-person narrator to do so, and to do so in attending to the less-educated (although decidedly not less worthy; frankly, the protagonist is an ass if not actually Cohen's douchebag), strikes the eye as discordant. It does not fit, and because it does not fit, something is wrong with the text. (Yes, I do tend to expect narratives to follow their own rules consistently.)

I have to wonder, though, if Preston and Child are not using the device to somehow connect with their readership. As I read the text, I felt as if the narrator and the implied author were somehow sneering at those who do not understand the words being used; the diction becomes a class marker not only within the text, but also within the context of readership. A reader could easily become complicit in that sneering disregard, so that the diction becomes a way to make the reader feel good by self-promotion; understanding the words makes the reader "smarter" than those who do not understand the words. It is not something that I can recommend.

20141203.0710

I wrote in my journal last night that "I feel I must confess that I look forward to the end of the term," something I think I have indicated in earlier posts to this webspace. Soon after, though, I found myself musing on the phrasing "feel I must confess," as if looking forward to having time off is somehow a sin for which I must atone. The teaching I do is supposed to be a calling, something only done by those who love what they do (else why would they suffer such low wages for it?), and there is something awry in wanting release from the ostensibly beloved. Too, I am acculturated such that diligent work is virtuous--the more so the more so. Time off thus comes off as something of a lapse in virtue. And I am aware of cultural currents that flow in such ways as make teaching, particularly at the collegiate level, "not really work," so that to look forward to time away from it is disingenuous.

I do not know if I have ordered my points well. Whether I have or not, though, and whether or not I have a complete list (it is not likely), I can identify things that prompt the feeling of needing to confess, of having somehow sinned and thus of being in need of penitence. I do not subscribe to a doctrine that can prescribe a particular number of incantations or some specific physical hardship to redress what I seemingly cannot help but feel is error (although I know it is not, but knowing and feeling are different things entirely, and the latter almost always triumphs over the former). I do, however, have other work to do than that which I do in the classroom, and I will be attending to that in plenty as my means of making right the purported wrong I commit in looking forward to being away from the classroom. Because I should not ever not be working, right? Especially if I am going to be asking for a bit of help, yes? I dare not look like I am lazy or wasteful, after all.

But all this is is whining, of course. It is a feeble attempt by one who sucks uselessly at the public teat (for I teach in a humanities field at a state school) to justify his impending indolence. Such people ought to feel shame at not contributing, at receiving benefits without working. That kind of thing is only for those whose incomes come from investments, after all, and who are famous for whatever it is that makes people famous. But they are of a different sort altogether, not bound by the strictures that apply to those who work--or who should work. Those people have jobs to do, and they had better do them; there are others waiting to take the jobs if they will not or cannot, and they will not be looking forward to having time off from work every now and again.

20141202.0921

I know that I am posting later than I normally do; the morning has been busy. I have already completed a bit of freelance work today, which please me no end, and I have been working with the online L5R PbP RPG I have noted before. It has formally begun, so what leisure time I have is being devoted to it at this point--and it helps me by giving me practice writing, negotiating competing demands from international audiences, and storytelling (so I need not feel quite so guilty about doing things other than work). And I have been attending to other things, as well.

That said, I do feel some obligation to make a post to this webspace. I have, as I recall, waxed poetic about the demands of writing for a public audience--even one as small as mine tends to be (I do look at the reader statistics thoughtfully provided by the platform). More, I find myself much in mind of something I have seen attributed to the Good Doctor: "I write for the same reason I breathe--because if I didn't, I would die." My feeling for writing is not quite so strong (obviously, or I would be a *lot* more productive), but it is of the same sort; I write because I have a need to do so, and I write here because I feel a need to do so. Thank you, then, dear readers, for helping me meet one of my needs.

There are other needs, of course. The Maslovian hierarchy applies, I think, at least in part; my writing is a higher-order need than others I yet feel. For I am not at all certain of my security or of the esteem in which I and others hold me. (I have spoken to anxieties about the former on more than one occasion--not all of the training, formal and informal, I received as a graduate student has been to my benefit.) And I offer the statement not as a plea for cheap statements of validation; any that would come in the wake of this piece would register as shallow and reflexive, iterations of pity and condescension (whether intended so or not). It is simply a thing that is.

Perhaps I write as a backwards approach to the Maslovian, using what I perceive as my "thing to do" as a means to secure the ostensibly more fundamental levels of need. And perhaps that is why I remain ill at ease; I am approaching things in reverse. (It may be that Maslow is a bit off. I am not informed enough about psychological issues to be able to speak to that end; I would welcome input from those who are.) Whatever the reason or effect, however, I write because I must, here and elsewhere; I have no doubt that I will continue to do so, and I nurture the hope that it will work to my benefit and that of those for whom I care.

20141201.0648

The last week of teaching's beginning today.
The current semester's almost passed away.
Exams will soon happen; then students will play,
For the last week of teaching's beginning today.

The hard work of grading is going away.
In research and writing I will spend the day
Instead of planning that soon goes astray,
For the last week of teaching's beginning today.

It's odd to be happy, as some folks may say,
To see that the class-work is going away,
But why not be happy? The work doesn't pay.
O! The last week of teaching's beginning today.

The last week of teaching's beginning today.
It will not be students that fill up the day
But comfort and rest, and so say "Hooray!
The last week of teaching's beginning today!"