20150111.0720

I continue to be in attendance at the MLA convention in Vancouver, BC. It has proven to be an interesting experience, and not only because it is only my second trip out of the United States. (Although that is not so bad. The exchange rate is in my favor, if nothing else.) I have gotten to hear a number of good presentations (and I will be listening to a few more today). It has pointed out some places where my knowledge is lacking; it helps to know where remediation is needed when seeking to enact it.

The peril of such revelations, of course, is in their implications. Those who have terminal degrees operate under some expectation of *knowing* things, so that to have gaps in knowledge, natural and inherent to bounded mortal life as it is, registers as a failure in some ways. I have to think that those in the academic humanities have it somehow worse. The nature of our research admits of little room to falter, somehow, perhaps because so little "real" work is involved in its conduct and production.

Too, the excellent work that some are doing prompts or threatens to prompt a round of self-rebuke. "Why am I not writing such papers?" I ask myself. "Why can I not come up withgood ideas and develop them? Is that not the work I have trained to do? Is it not the work I love? Why, then, do I not do it, or do more of it (since I *do* write and deliver conference papers--but I need to make articles or books of them)?" As a source I cannot presently cite (for which I apologize, but the limitations of facility and equipment I currently face are as they are) notes, I should be writing.

And I will be writing. The conference wraps up early this afternoon, and I will see about finishing the transcription of my notes into my journal afterwards (it is where I keep the conference notes I use in later papers). Some adjustments of how I present myself online and in the classroom will follow. And once I am back with my books and notes, I will get right back to work on the projects that have too long needed my attention, as well as one or two others that have come to my attention as needing my work on them *now.*

20150109.0657

Today, my wife and I have been married for five years. That I am away, I regret. That I have a place to return to, and a loving wife there, I do not regret at all.

I love you, dear wife, very much. I should be home soon.

20150108.07

I am sitting in a pub attached to my hotel in Vancouver, having just eaten my breakfast there. It is a pleasant experience, one that calls to mind my years-ago trip to the UK. I appteciate it greatly.

I will be spending time at the MLA Convention today, attending some talks and hoping to run into someone who can offer me a job. There are some hours yet before I can do so, though, so I have some time to relax a bit and explore the city a bit more. I have time also to fight with typing on a tablet with my blunt and insensitive fingers. Trying to two-hand it is not working well for me, and one-handed work is slow.

The experience here is one that has been suggested to me as useful practicefor next year, when I intend to once again attend this conference. It will be easier, then, as MLA will meet in Austin, and I have access to support, substantial support, there. I am from the Hill Country, after all, and Austin is at the edge of it. I have family there, and possibly a few friends.

While I am here, though, I will do what I can to improve upon myself. The talks should prove illuminating, and I can get a feeling for what the conference likes; perhaps I can present at it next time. And it might happen that I find someone looking to hire, although I ackmowledge it is not the most likely occurrence. Hope springs eternal, though.

If nothing else, there is a bit of time to rest before the new term begins. I somehow have the idea that I'll need it...

20150107.1630

I find myself in sunny Vancouver, BC, as I write this, where I have arrived to attend the MLA Convention. I had hoped to have a job interview here, but I do not. Instead, I will do what I can to make yet more useful connections and perhaps parlay them into job offers later on. And while I am here, in an interesting part of the city, I will see about experiencing some of what is on offer.

I think I will exclude the several medical marijuana dispensaries within two blocks of my hotel from my list of places to visit.

One thing that has already struck me as I have settled into my hotel is how quickly I slip back into the kinds of things I did while I lived in The City. I walk faster without trouble, and I begin again to navigate public transit as a first recourse. How different it is from the semi-rural life I lead where the wind comes sweeping down the plain!

I am certain that I have more to say. I am equally certain that I need to say it another day. So I will save it for then...

20150106.0733

I did go to the gym yesterday, as planned. There, I did some thirty minutes of strength-training exercises (probably incorrectly), focusing on my upper body. It was a good experience, and I felt good for most of the rest of the day. I have every intention of resuming once I am back from my trip, and I may actually avail myself of workout facilities in the hotel where I'll be staying. (It has not been a thing I have tended to do in the past.) Again, I want to set a good example for Ms. 8, and I want to continue to do so for a long time.

I will not be doing so today, however; I will not be back at the gym quite yet. Part of why is that my wife works today, and so I have to be home to make sure that Ms. 8 has what she needs. Another part is that I do have a bit of freelance writing to do, as well as work on my course materials to push through and job applications to complete. My current position is still a contingent one, after all. But most of it is because I am stiff and sore in ways I had forgotten I would be. I will see about getting in some aerobic work today, but I will not be handling weights.

As I noted, it has been some time since I last exercised regularly (and one day, no matter how solidly other days are intended to follow, does not make for regularity). When I did, though, I did so for quite some time. I was in judo for years as a graduate student, practicing regularly and intensely during that time (eight or more hours weekly in the last few terms). I was also enrolled at the New York Aikikai for years in New York City. The last months I was in The City, I was at the dojo five days a week (sometimes six), two hours a day. I was accustomed to the exertion (and to the strain put on joints purposefully), and while I would have a dull ache in my muscles as I went back to the dorm or to Bedfordside Garden, it was dull, and it was pleasantly warm.

That is not currently the case. My deltoids hurt; lifting my arms, either to the sides or in front of me, is substantially uncomfortable (which made this morning's shower interesting). I believe I may have overexerted myself at the gym yesterday, my enthusiasm at feeling myself strong again, if only for a moment, and working as I had worked before when I was in some kind of condition, overrode what little sense I have of such things (and, again, I probably did the exercises incorrectly, as I am not the right kind of doctor to know how to do them well). Today, therefore, I will let them rest as I can, and I will let them heal if they need healing (I think they do), and I will be a bit more...moderate in my attempts at working out when I do it again--soon.

20150105.0758

I know that it is cliché of me to do it, but I am going to head to the gym at work. The facilities are open again, and I really need to start taking better care of myself.

There is a factor of intimidation in my doing so, though. I am not exactly in the best of shapes, either generally or of my life in particular. I am aware of having lost much since I was in training for competitive judo or in aikido in New York City. I can tell where I have grown flabbier and smaller. I can point at where I am less strong and less flexible. It is no mystery where I am less enduring. Knowing all this, and then going into rooms where the young and virile pump and flex swelling hard muscles...and without a separate locker room for faculty...it is not the most inspiring thing I could do.

Too, there is the matter of simple laziness to overcome. I had meant to wake up earlier and go earlier, but I did not, preferring instead to stay abed and doze (for some damn fool reason). It is cold outside, and it would be easy to stay home and in the relative warmth rather than gird up and hike to the gym (I do not have parking privileges, as I have not paid for them). It would be easy to simply curl up again and sleep, as if all the fatigue incurred from times past can be washed away by taking a day and sleeping. It would be easy to simply give up and let things go away.

In neither case would it be to my benefit. If I have lost, then it is because I have stopped, and only by starting again will I regain. Allowing myself to be lazy will not aid the working of my body--and it needs aiding. Ms. 8 needs to have a father who can do things with her once she is old enough to do them (and she approaches walking, having decided that she can occasionally stand unaided). She needs to have a father in her life, and I know that my familial history makes me prone to dying earlier than ought to be the case. She needs to have models of conduct that are worth following, and my taking better care of myself will conduce to that end.

Thus, soon after I finish this little piece, I will make my way through the cold (fortunately without snow, although uphill for some of the way) to the gym, where I will get in at least a bit of exercise before beginning the many other errands that have already opted to fill my day. Depending on how it goes, I may even try to do it again tomorrow, and then to begin to do it again after I return from my upcoming expedition to the Pacific Northwest. It should prove interesting, although how I will cram yet one more thing into my life...I will have to do so.

20150104.0921

Emily St. John Mandel quotes
Star Trek: Voyager
Saying survival alone is not enough
Her characters deriding the source
But acknowledging the wisdom

A long-ago splatbook quotes
A fictional text
Saying there are three options
We may deride the source
But the wisdom is there

I do not know if anyone quotes
What I write
Saying anything at all
I wonder if I am derided
I hope wisdom is here

20150103.0941

I would seem to have missed the commemoration of Asimov's birthday (although I might not have missed the day, as it was not completely recorded...), and I find myself somewhat conflicted. On one hand, the work that the Good Doctor did is the important thing about him--the words he wrote are what remain and what have inspired many. I am not part of his family, after all. But on the other hand, I have long been a reader of his, and I am a nerd, and it is part of that that I ought to attend to the minutiae--which I have not done. There is a sense of diminishment, somehow, a sense that I have not done as I ought to have done, that I am somehow less because of it.

That such a feeling would befall me makes some sense. I have mentioned, here and elsewhere, that I am very much a nerd. Enthusiasm, as I note in earlier comments, is typical of nerdiness, and enthusiasm often manifests as attention to small details, a passion for getting things exactly right. As such, failing to get things exactly right becomes an indication of lessened enthusiasm, thus of lessened nerdiness--and when a label has been applied consistently and pervasively, it becomes a component of identity. Threats to identity do not sit well. (I am aware that there is substantial peril in reducing identity to labels. That I still do is a part of the social conditioning imposed upon me, tacitly and explicitly, throughout my life, and there is little I know how to do and can do to overturn it. There are...other things bound up in it.)

At the same time, the utility of the "nerd" label (assuming, of course that labels retain any usefulness in general) is diminished. A Cracked.com article about which I comment in another venue usefully dismantles the definition--and while I am aware that there is some trouble in using a post to a comedy website to support an argument, I find the basic point put across to be largely valid. Nerdiness is not what it used to be (if it ever was, admittedly). For me to be at odds with what a nerd is "supposed" to be is not necessarily a failing, both because the supposition is bad and because not being a nerd remains desirable.

I am left without a clear direction in the matter. Some part of me suggests that I ought to let it pass by as something of no importance; again, I am not part of the Good Doctor's family, so the dates of his birth and death should not be what matter to me. I certainly have enough other things to which to pay attention. I know myself well enough to know that the matter will stay on my mind, receding perhaps into the distance, but still marring the landscape of it in some way I cannot yet foresee, altering the scenery and the view for the worse.

20150102.0758

Thanks to a most excellent friend, John Jarzemsky's 19 December 2014 LitReactor piece, "A Generation of People Shunned Standards in Writing and Journalism...You Won't BELIEVE What Happened Next!" crossed my news feed this morning. In the piece, Jarzemsky argues that online journalism is currently experiencing a period analogous to yellow journalism in the United States, one that prizes sensationalism over attempts at accurate reporting and that has become a means to demonstrate that a given person is "right." The article seeks to demonstrate that current online writing often fails to meet definitions of rhetoric (provided but not cited, weakening the rhetorical force of the piece) and offers a series of actions that can help to undercut the immediate reactions Jarzemsky notes with sadness as part of a hopefully passing phase that will soon resolve itself. While there are some points at which the article falters (the aforementioned lack of citation, raggedness of some of the transitions among paragraphs), the basic ideas are sound and well worth consideration.

Some things in the article are notable. One of them is the relatively balanced framing of the issue Jarzemsky discusses. He situates current internet journalism in journalistic history, allowing him to comment about purported inaccuracies without running into the problem, common to commentators on current constructions, that writers now just can't write. It does privilege present presentations of offline journalism, admittedly, tacitly asserting that there are unbiased, objective reports (which is not true and never has been) and that they are lacking among online journalistic pieces but not among more traditional media; it is a problem. But it is a great deal better than the more typical comments that are nothing more than to say "people are stupid now." It may be true that they are, but if it is, it is also true that they have been.

Another is the closing statement: "writing, reporting, communicating, and learning, is seldom, if ever, about me." The article as it appears online recognizes the importance of the statement, highlighting it in a text-box for easy attention. And it is an important comment, one likely to rile those whose focus is on the aggrandizement of the self (although such people are not likely to be those reading LitReactor) and one that serves as a corrective to the narcissistic tendencies enabled and abetted by the diversity of the online publication environment. (It is to be noted that Jarzemsky cites the ease of offering multiple viewpoints as a benefit of online journalism. It is a point with which I agree.) There are times and places for opining, certainly. They are not all times and places. Too often, it is forgotten. Too often also, the needs of the readers are forgotten--or needs of diverse readers are, the peril of the echo chamber.

Finally, Jarzemsky's four-point call to action, although familiar in large part from other places and (annoyingly) reading much like a series of resolutions, is a useful beginning point. It is incomplete, certainly; any provisional measure is, and any measure which has not been deployed can only be provisional. But, joined with the closing comment, it is something to keep in mind.

20150101.0834

It is a new year by the calendar I and many others use
An arbitrary measure, to be sure
Adhered to by fiat as it corresponds in no meaningful way with
Heavenly motion

Many are rising from chemical torpor
Or have yet to rise from it
And they are doing or will do so
To quieter celebrations
And protestations of things resolves
As if the world is different today
From yesterday

Perhaps it is
But if it is
It is no more different than yesterday was
Than the day before

The weather is not much changed
The problems that were in place
Are still in place
Wishing them away will not make it so
Else they would have been gone long ago
And so would I

Resolutions as given
As night becomes morning in some arbitrary measure
Are words
And as one writer writes
Words are wind

They are broken often
Beans or not
And usually to less laughter