20190831.0430

If it is the case that I might be well served by being further out of the classroom than I have been these past years, it is not the case that I should stop doing the kind of researched writing that I have enjoyed doing for quite some time. For if it is the case that there is joy in piecing things together and figuring out new things from doing so, it is also the case that doing the work of compiling such writing as I flatter myself I've done focuses my attentions in that regard. And it is a joy that harms none in itself, so it is a pleasure that may be indulged more than most others that could be named.
I continue to have ideas for things to treat, ideas for papers to write and either to post to one of the several webspaces I maintain or to present in an upper Midwestern springtime or some such thing. One proceeds from yesterday's discussion; I saw a connection between a couple of things that I might explicate and bring out for others to see, as well. Others come from emails I get--not the proverbial list of writing prompts (though there are such things, as I am well aware), but instead from ideas sparked by reading one newsletter or another I receive at odd intervals. Still others emerge from sources less clear to me as I move ahead with addressing them. Sometimes they work well. Sometimes they do not. But even in finding that they don't, there's something of value, to be sure, and I am glad to have it.
Maybe that is part of why I continue to write in my journal and in this webspace, as well as in the others I maintain. In the others, I present more or less developed ideas. In this and in the journal, I make no such pretense; here and there, I play with ideas, writing to generate them in the model I was taught in graduate school and which I was obliged to teach then (and which I have not done terribly well in doing, I remain convinced). I am not certain that it is enough reason to maintain the separate media, not sure it justifies my continued efforts in the different areas. For now, though, I will keep doing as I have been doing, and I'll be moving into something else here beginning tomorrow--it will be a new month, after all, and I tend to move around from month to month in this webspace, as I have shown.
What I will take up tomorrow, I am not certain. I think I probably need to return to some of the older things I've done, use them to gather myself as I move ahead into a new line of work and all. There are some things I'd like to try, too, and it will be good to have the opportunity to address myself to them, if only for a time.

20190830.0430

As I round out the last day of one job and take up the mantle of another--my promotion takes effect at the end of the business day today--I note that many of the people who remain in the profession I sought to enter have met with their new students for the first time this week. It will be a while before I have another set of them of my own--I would seem to be coming upon an off session for the teaching I still do--and I still remember fondly some sets of students I have had, who early distinguished themselves as engaged in learning and whose conduct through sessions and semesters bore that out. I miss it (though not nearly enough to leave off the work I am doing now in favor of returning to teaching as my primary job).
Seeing the comments friends and acquaintances of mine are making about their students and the shared enthusiasm, I am reminded of the flatly intoxicating experience of learning going well. Gaining new knowledge, fitting it into what I have already known, and figuring more things out as a result of that joining--there is pleasure in such things, deep and abiding pleasure that is not done in a moment and leaves no sticky mess behind it, carries no threat of disease or illness in the mornings to come. And there's no small joy to be found in guiding others to such pleasures and seeing them revel therein.
Seeing such comments, too, I am reminded of how seldom I have had such moments with my classes. Perhaps it has been what I have tended to teach--classes required but that are perceived (incorrectly) as having no bearing on what the students seek to do--or perhaps it is because the students who have complained about my (lack of) teaching skills have been correct, but I have not often found myself in the position of turning students on to the kinds of things we are doing, not often found myself leading them to enjoy the work I am obliged by institutions to have them do. Or maybe it is the fact of obligation, itself, that hinders it--but I think it is in me, as others who are similarly obliged and constrained seem somehow to do better about it.
Perhaps, then, it is a good thing that I do no more teaching than I do anymore. Perhaps, with the new job, I should look to draw myself further out of that line of work, be in the classroom less and in other places more, and let others who are excluded even from part-time contingent academic work by my presence in it and who might be of better service to students have the space. Certainly, I do not have the poor ratings in my current position that I have in the one I sought to hold before; I'd not be about to advance to head my organization did I. And maybe I ought to be more content with it, focus on it more fully, and not seek to be what I should long have recognized being told I would not be able to be.

20190829.0430

I've noted a propensity towards being long-winded, towards waxing verbose about things that most would regard as being simple. It's something I've seen attributed to those who work in the humanities and those who dabble in them despite repeated failed attempts to enter one of the few lines of work that make a living (increasingly poorly and tenuously) at doing so, and it's not incorrect or inaccurate to make such an attribution. It is, however, incorrect and inaccurate to assign the attribution solely or primarily to such people; it is something of which most folks are guilty, and with things as seemingly "trivial" as the work of the humanities.
It's a thing I've often encountered with students as I've taught writing across many years, now, that they claim they want only to say what needs saying and move on. (That so many of them as do pad out their prose with trite and cliché phrasing, while not offering details that would be helpful or explaining the details, suggests that the claim is not sincere.) Yet I note that they do not scruple to go on at length, mouth to ear, about any number of things that may or may not be of more importance in the wider world than what I urge them to treat in their writing. (I do push them to do more than jump through the hoops of the assignments, though most, given where I teach and what their goals are for their curricula, only seek to jump through the hoops--not always successfully.) And they do so with fellow students who may not have been interested in the subject matter previously, who would have had little reason to be expected to be interested in it.
Clearly, then, being long-winded is not a bad thing in itself. Yet it seems to be condemned in people like me as we talk about the things we tend to discuss. And it is not restricted to the teacher-student relationship, which is often figured as antagonistic and, as a relationship of uneven power dynamic, can be understood to provoke some resistance in itself. On those rare occasions when I am out among other adults who aren't relatives, in some situation that's not work, I find myself going on over-much about my interests and work, while trivia receive rapt attention despite being bruited about for longer and with fewer gaps.
I should not be surprised at it; I should not ever be surprised at it. I know that I am strange for the things I like and enjoy, stranger still for making a study of them, and even stranger for having made an attempt to make it my professional life. And I have long known it, sometimes in bruises on my body. Those have faded, and they have not been renewed for the most part, but I still find myself tender to certain touches that I ought perhaps to have hardened myself against long since.

20190828.0430

As should be clear, I am not leaving off my efforts in this webspace quite yet. There will be an end to them in time, of course, as comes to all things; whether the blog ends because I end or because I do consolidate my writings into a single webspace, as I have said I might do, or because the infrastructures that support blogging, generally, come to their own conclusions (though I am like to end, myself, in such a circumstance), it will end. But that end is not now, or the now in which I write this--which will be a different now from when it is read, and by that now, things might have ended which have not yet while I write.
Such constructions of time are strange things, things the English I know is not well suited to treating. Whether a two-tense, three-tense, six-tense, ten-tense, or twelve-tense understanding applies, moving through time presents problems for discussion. There's a reason verb confusion is a staple joke in time-travel narratives, after all. Humor relies on commonalities of understanding, and confusion about how to describe motion in time relative to the time of utterance and performance is a commonplace, even among the audiences that tend to go in for time-travel narratives--who generally consider themselves more intelligent than the mean. (Whether they are correct, in the aggregate or individually, is another question, entirely.)
The time-travel available to me, and I presume to others (because I think things would be different were other options available to people), does not oblige people to think about strange permutations of verb tenses often. Time sweeps us along, not as boats borne ceaselessly back into the past, but rushing before its driving currents and often trying to anchor ourselves in some fixed point that we thought we saw but probably only glimpsed fleetingly and that offers no secure tying-off point. What is and what is hoped and what is thought once was are generally enough. Maybe there is a reference to another point within those. But the motion seems to go in one direction, though if as a river or as a flow within a broader ocean, the shores of which are seen only barely if at all, is no more clear than such seeing.
It is all a long-winded way of saying that I'm not quitting yet. Such long-windedness might be expected from someone who has several degrees in English language and literature; I have to have some way to justify to myself spending as long doing what I did as I did, some pretense that I know something or have something to say because I spent years in studying what many of the people where I live and have lived do as a matter of course, finding issues in that doing that I and a vanishingly few others might care about--but that does not help us to address our greater needs or others'.

20190827.0430

If it is the case that I question why I continue to keep a journal, it should also be the case that I question why I continue to write in this webspace. Others I maintain, namely Elliott RWI and the Tales after Tolkien Society blog, serve clear functions for people other than me. The former serves as advertising for my freelance work and a repository for the students I still teach. The latter is a mouthpiece for a scholarly society I have the privilege of leading, one that offers publication venues for scholars who may not be the most traditional and presentation venues in at least one place. But this webspace serves as a place of random rumination and odd bits of verse. It lives up to the ravings in its name, though I am not sure the lucid prose in the same place appears as often as it perhaps should.
There is a certain amount of vanity that informs any public performance--and publishing writing, even so informally as in a blog like this, is a public performance. Doing so demands that the one doing it have some belief that he or she has something to contribute, something others need or want to see, and that necessarily has a certain amount of arrogance about it. Who am I, after all, to decide that you need to read a thing, or that you want to do so? Yet I make that decision with each keystroke, each letter put into pixels and pushed out into the world where, presumably, somebody reads it--few as such people are, from the reports of readership available to me.
Yet vanity is a bad thing, or it is often called so. In any other situation, I would not do well to indulge the presumption that I do in writing and posting. I would be rightly rebuked for telling another person, mouth to ear, that he or she wants something or needs it in most cases--Ms. 8, as she is now, offers most of the exceptions. Why it should be different for writing is not entirely clear; there is the fact that readers seek to read, admittedly, that they are generally not forced to click the link or turn the page, but choose to do so. But that is not the sum of it, I am certain, though I am not certain what the remainder is.
Even more than most of the writing I do, this blog is a vanity project. It does not bring in money; it does not advertise my efforts except insofar as it links to them; it does not allow others to promote their own work. And while I will treat many topics in it that might be called objectionable, there are decided limits as to what I post here, even more than to what I log into the pages of my personal journal. It is not an open and authentic representation of who and what I am, not really. So its continued justification for existence is uncertain.
I have considered setting this aside before. I am not going to leave it off quite yet. But I do not know how much longer I will keep it going. Then again, that is always true...

20190826.0430

I have not made a secret that I have been trying to keep a journal--a pen-and-paper one--for some time now, having started when I was an undergraduate and moving into more formal and "fancier" volumes since near the end of my baccalaureate. I've not been as good about doing so as I would like to be; there are often gaps of more than a few days between entries, with some spanning months. I am not proud of my lack of performance, as might be imagined.
I have for some time questioned why I maintain the pretense of maintaining the practice. The very word "journal" implies that it ought to be the kind of daily thing it never has been for me, as does the other common word for it: "diary." I might claim to use my journal to work on my pen-hand, but that remains much as it ever has been, attracting censure from those who have occasion to look upon it for long. I might also claim that I use it to work out ideas where I can look at them, the specific physicality of pen on paper helping me do so, but that I write in it as irregularly as I do suggests that I have few ideas--which is not good cause to keep doing it. I might also claim that I do so in the hope that Ms. 8 or another might take interest in who I am more privately than in such webspaces as this.
I remark "more privately" because I know there is always a performative, constructed aspect of how any of us appear to others as soon as we gain any conscious ability to regulate ourselves. More attention accrues to social media sites and blogs like this, to professional personæ than to such venues as putatively private written journals, and there is a prevailing perspective that such journals are somehow "more real" than more ephemeral media. The object has more presumed permanence, certainly. But even in handwritten journals, even in documents that might be thought to be sharply restricted in their circulation and readership, I and others fashion ourselves. How many narrate their lives to center themselves in events, to make themselves the protagonists even when they have been nothing but antagonistic?
I expect a fairly limited readership here, and I expect an even more restricted one for my handwritten journals. The issues of limited number of copies--there is only the one, unless something has happened of which I am unaware--and the poor quality of my pen-hand (though I still cannot seem to get a straight answer about what makes it bad) would keep many from reading it even were there a clamor to look at what I have written. I do not expect that I will have to hide much from such readers as would stumble upon and pore over my pen-scrawled pages or that I will be in position to conceal from them--save through what I do not put into those pages. Given what I do put in them--I am freer there than here, and I comment on a great many things here that some might argue I ought not--it might be thought that I would not elide any topics in my journal. But while it is the case that I address uncomfortable or impolitic issues in the journal, there are a few things I flatly will not put to paper. They are not mine to share, or not mine alone.
Some such secrets may do well to be brought to light, I admit. Others need to stay hidden, and I could wish to forget them as I have forgotten other things it were better I could still recall. There are times the burden of remembering as I do vexes me greatly. I do not know what it is that lets me forget things, that seals away sensory impressions I know I have had--the touch of a hand, the sound of a laughing voice--yet leaves others ever-present just behind my eyes, others that seek to entice me down a spiral path to dark places I already visit far more often than is good for anyone.
I will not rehearse those memories here. I will not put them where they may be found. But I have to acknowledge that having them and withholding them, here or in the personal journals from which they are also absent, marks me as presenting a selective, partial, constructed version of myself in each writing situation, and it would do so even were I not so open about doing so. That I do not comment on a thing does not mean I do not acknowledge its reality. And if I will circumscribe myself even in a venue that presumes openness, then I must wonder why I pretend to it. I could practice my pen-hand otherwise, and I could shift my log of events to this webspace or to another, entirely.

20190825.0430

I've had occasion recently to consider--yet again, or still, since I'm not certain it's been far from the front of my mind at any point--my further removal from academe. An online conversation not too long ago put it back into the front of my mind; in essence, the question about what to do with graduate students in the humanities who do not or cannot secure tenure-track employment (which is most of us, really) came up again, with a professor looking for answers to be able to pass on to students (also at the undergraduate level), and I answered from my own experience stumbling into the job I currently have after being spurned for the last time by the tenured world.
I am aware that my experience is not typical. I don't imagine that all of us who enter graduate school thinking we will become professors, only to be disappointed and frustrated at the unwillingness of the academic world to increase again its ranks of full-time mind-workers, will be able to do as I was lucky enough to do and find a job that makes some use of our skills and does not take a look at the post-nominal cluster of letters that bespeak the years in class and working to push back the boundaries of human ignorance and push us away. I don't imagine many will find a place whose leadership is looking to retire and seeks a successor, either. So there's a limit to how applicable my experience will be for others.
My testimony seems to have been appreciated, though. There is some validation in having those among whose company I aspired to be looking with favor on what I write and say, some whiff of "I didn't fail to get a tenure-line job because I'm not smart enough, not good enough." (That I am as happy about it as I am probably says something unpleasant about me. I do not think I want to explore it much further than that.) And I can hope that the comments, being where they are and having attracted the attention that they have, will attract more attention to me, both for the sake of my vanity and for the sake of my freelance work (which I still do and can stand to have more to do). So there is that much to consider.
In the meantime, I am glad to have the job I have and be poised to take the one I am about to take. I am doing better now than when I was "following the dream" and seeking to find a tenure-line position to fill. And I think I am doing better work in the world; I still work against the boundaries of human ignorance (doing more now than I did while amid the search, as it happens), and I am in a place where I do not have to worry every few months about whether or not I will have a job next week. It's a nice thing, and I can hope that more people get to have it.

20190824.0430

This month has been a struggle for me in terms of getting writing done. I have been much distracted, less able than usual to sit and put words to pages physical and otherwise, and so I have not been able to build up the buffers I usually enjoy, in this webspace and in others. The distractions have not been unwelcome--really, I ought not to call them that. They are the bits of day-to-day living that make a life, and the writing I do is a distraction from them. It is only because I have learned many bad habits across many years that I make such a comment, that I would view what I do on a screen or with a pen as somehow more important than being with and around those for whom I purport to do any of the work I do.
I suppose it speaks to the various kinds of privilege I have enjoyed in my life. I have often been able to be selfish, to be indulged by attending to my own desires and devices instead of aiding others with their concerns. I have been amply supported as I have sought to do so, even without providing any real return on that support, any justification beyond the love my supporters have for me (of which I am entirely undeserving). And so I have taken on the idea that my desires are more important, and that those which entertain me are the desires to be pursued.
The idea is utterly wrong, of course, and I know it. I know that I am of worth only insofar as I am of aid to others, only insofar as I make things better for others. I know that indulging myself does not make things better. But there are different kinds of knowing, and some of them stand in the way of others. I work to overcome them, but I have not won the battle. I am not sure I ever actually will, even though I will keep fighting.

20190823.0430

The Prince of Fantasists writes into Bilbo's mouth that the hobbit feels "like butter scraped over too much bread." It's a lovely simile, one fit for the food-loving perian and broadly accessible to readers, most of whom will have at least passing familiarity with the noted substances. Like most comparisons, however, the simile has more to unpack in it than comes across on a first reading, owing chiefly to its vehicle of butter.
For if it is the case that Bilbo is like butter--and it might be argued that he is in ways--then it must be wondered what cow yielded the milk from which he was churned and who did the churning. Easy answers within the milieu include Manwë and Ilúvatar, and Gandalf might well be thought to have had a hand in the cultivation, as well. Others include Bilbo's parents, and it may well be noted that the cow grazed upon the grass of the Great Smials, the quality of which comes out in the product of its milk. (The obvious out-of-milieu answer is, of course, Tolkien himself, or Tolkien's narrative persona, at least.)
As to the spreading, there is ultimately one answer: Sauron. It is the Ring that extends Bilbo's life, that lets him endure as long as he has by the time he makes the comment in the quote, and the Ring is an extension of Sauron, per the text. The argument could be made that the action of the simile--spreading too little over too much--is miserliness and parsimony, both of which are generally considered negative, therefore appropriate to attribute to the Dark Lord. So, too, does the image that arises of a knife pushing the butter along the bread; it portends violence, knives being knives, but it also foreshadows the ultimate defeat of Sauron, as the knives used to spread butter are generally dull, rounded, suitable for cutting only the softest of things. They are not of much use as weapons; their proposed violence is muted at best, apt for an evil destined to be beaten.
The simile both reveals some of the character of its speaker and offers a bit of subtle foreshadowing (though not a bit that comes as a surprise, given the expectations of genre in place at the time). Further interrogation might reveal yet more, of course, speaking perhaps to Tolkien's own ideologies or to some other commentary on the greater world. But even a brief look at the phrasing reveals that there is work to be done, reminding readers who are interested in taking that look that there is much to unpack in the simplest of notes and showing that entry into criticism is not so hard a thing as might be imagined.

20190822.0430

Ruminations on my office situation are not new for me, as I've shown in a few places (here, here, and here, among others). Given events, I am likely to draft another one soon; I have noted, I believe, my impending shift in job, and the shift comes with a new office I've not moved into yet. After I do, though, it will be time to sit down and write more about my office spaces; I welcome the task, not least because I like having other things to put into the webspace where I make such comments. But I am not in that office yet, and I am in something of a liminal position for another week or so, until the current occupant moves out and I move in. The situation is a strange one I've not really been in before.
To be sure, I've lost office spaces. I've explicitly spoken to such losses, in fact, such that I do not need to rehearse my feelings about when it's happened before. The current situation, though, has me still in occupation of my current office space, but sharing it with another who is training to take it over as I move into the office my new position will afford me. I drift between the two, going from my desk in front to the office desk in the adjoining room. And I feel the drift; I feel myself unanchored, though it is less a feeling of being underway than it perhaps should be (and if I may, landsman that I am, use such metaphors as that).
I am aware that I am not cast out, as I have been more than once. I know that I still have a place and that I will continue to have a place. But I think it is the case that my earlier experiences being moved from office to office and being forced out of office after office have left me anxious about things this time around. I learned later than I ought to have that I should not be secure in my academic positions, and now that I am in a position that is more stable than those (because things could still happen that I would prefer not to have happen), I cannot escape it; I cannot unlearn what I have learned, or I have not yet done so, and it leaves me feeling...strange, and not in a way I enjoy. (I admit to a certain amount of strangeness and to enjoying the same, but not all strangeness is the same.)
I will persist, of course; it is only for a bit more than a week, now, and I can deal with that. It is simply a strange thing for me, and I thought I might remark upon it a bit.

20190821.0430

I have often toyed with the idea of writing a memoir of one kind or another, of setting down in pages printed or pixelated the days and deeds of my life. Who would read such a thing is unclear to me; those who might be most interested are those involved in the events and who recall them, or who would have access to the root sources from which I would be most likely to work. Ms. 8 will have access to my personal journals at some point, presuming she will be able to read my writing--a comment I make not because "kids these days can't read cursive" but because my pen-hand has never been good (even though I cannot get anyone to tell me what, exactly, makes it bad). Why she would need a more "public" version, I am not sure--and, again, I don't know who else, save perhaps family, would want to read the damned thing.
Thinking on the idea of a memoir, though, or autobiography (and where the difference between the two is, I am not certain), the idea occurs that the major break-points in my life have largely related to schools. (Ms. 8 starting Kindergarten this week is still very much on my mind, as might be imagined.) School through fifth grade was different for me than school in sixth grade through eighth; it changed again when I went to high school, yet again when I went to college, still again when I went to graduate school. There was a perhaps subtler shift when I completed the PhD, since I had already been at work in the field where I spent the next few years, but those years still revolved around different schools and the search for work among them. The birth of Ms. 8 is, of course, a major break-point; being a parent is different than not being one. But even many of the markers with her have involved school, and I expect that quite a few more to come will do so, as well.
Such breaks help in framing narratives, of course. Periodization is perilous, admittedly, but boundaries have to be drawn for the mind to take in things even close to well. Series have volumes and books have chapters for reasons, and categories can be aids to understanding and interpretation, even as their determinations are always fraught with meanings that may not be intended but are present, nonetheless. They also serve to remind me how much of my life has been bound up with learning, and I have to wonder how many other people's lives function similarly. Given the prevalence of alumni merchandise I see on display (and I am not immune to its allure), given the alignment of people with colleges they and their families have never attended, I think it is no few.
Given that, I wonder that we do not hold teachers and schools in higher esteem, collectively. I know well that many individuals have reasons to hold formal learning in contempt, and I know that specific political entanglements always skew things. (Yes, your curriculum was and is political. It always has been. Think about who makes the decisions about what gets taught; it's not only the people in the classroom.) But for as many as trumpet the schools they attended, for as many as mark their lives through their schooling, perhaps it would make a bit more sense to be a bit more favorable towards such institutions.

20190820.0430

With the weekend trip ended and Ms. 8 installed in school--comfortably and easily, I might add, which says something, even if I am not sure what--things are beginning to return to some semblance of normalcy, if only for a short time. It will be brief, in the event, as I am soon to take up a new professional position, one with significantly increased responsibility (and pay, which is good). Another set of adjustments is coming soon, though there should not be terribly many after, and I will appreciate having time to settle into my new roles before other things start to shift under me again.
How much of what I am doing now is possible only because the demands of my current position are as they are and not as they will be with the new job is unclear to me. I feel I struggle to get done what I feel the need to get done already; adding more seems like it would force me to abandon one thing or another, and I do not want to do that. I also feel that I do not do nearly as much as I ought to get done, though that is as much a product of my still having an academic's mindset as anything else. I internalized the ultimately unsustainable, unrealistic standards of production academe demands while I was making a go of becoming a professor, and I have not been able to let them go as swiftly as I took them up.
There are a number of things that that applies to, that I have not been able to let them go so swiftly as I took them up. I have been working on some of them; I know that keeping hold of them does not help me, that I am one of a few to keep them--if I am not the only one who does so. I have clung to things, and in clinging, I have not been able to let go and open myself to enjoyment that I might otherwise have had. That I recognize this does not make letting go easier, of course; seeing that a thing can be done is far different from doing that thing, however needful or helpful that thing might be. And I suppose I am in some ways afraid to let go; I have held long, the feel of the thing in my hand is, for all it hinders me, a touch-point, a certainty in an uncertain world.
I am amazed that, even now, my grip on it seems not to falter. Perhaps my muscles have locked in place; it is a thing that has been known to happen. Whether I can pry my hand open to let go, to let myself loose into the changing world I face, I do not know. I do not know.

20190819.0430

Today is the day. Ms. 8 begins Kindergarten. I've commented on it already, so I'll not add much here except to note that I am and remain proud of her, and I love her. (And, in later days, when you are actually navigating the Internet, Ms. 8, assuming that such a thing still exists and that this little piece of it can still be found and comes up where you can see it, know this: I love you and am proud of you.) Too, I still look with hope to her years ahead.
For now, though, I have to get a few things ready for her. She is still young, so young, and needs me to do things for her. I remain hopeful that she will need me less in the days and months and years to come; I continue to work so that she will do well when I am no longer here to do it for her, and I still hope that my failings do not tell upon her.
What else is there?

20190818.0430

One of the things I have been doing has been work on a re-reading of Robin Hobb's works. I'm close to done with the first novel in the Realm of the Elderlings corpus, Assassin's Apprentice, and I confess to it being a strange thing to have the work come out across so long a time as it has. I've pushed out a chapter's write up on Monday and Friday of most weeks, advancing my account relatively slowly, especially relative to how quickly I still read. It's different from reading as I have read before, and many times, plowing through the books with abandon, spending hours turning pages and realizing only when the book was done that time had passed and I suddenly had a remarkably urgent need to piss.
I cannot do such things anymore, or I cannot do so often. I don't have the luxury of so much time to myself when I do not have to be doing other things--and I do not begrudge it. My life is better as it is than as it was, truly. But I do miss having so much access to that particular part of how my life was that was good. I've missed several such, though I've been taking steps to correct it, to access them again. I've been better off for it, so I might see about trying to return to some of my older reading habits. As much as the obligations I am happy to discharge allow.
Part of why I am doing the work is because I think it needs to be done. I am fond of Hobb's writing, and I do not think it gets enough attention or acclaim. Doing my small part to increase those quantities seems a fitting thing to do, therefore. Too, I continue to have some small part of myself engaged in academe, and doing the re-read allows me to play at doing something I thought would be a career, much as my participation in the bands I am in allows me to play at doing something else I thought would be a career. (I thought I'd be a band director when I grew up. I'm grown; I'm not a band director. But it works for me.) And I may end up getting one paper or another out of it, in time. (As it is, I've got an idea for a conference piece I might want to pitch. Maybe two. Or three...) So that would be to the good.
I doubt I'll ever have the chance to read the way I used to again. And I miss being able to immerse myself, lose myself in the words on the pages I would turn. But I do not miss it as much as I would miss what I have now, I think, were I to try to return to it.

20190817.0430

My daughter, the inestimable Ms. 8, will start school on Monday, 19 August. Her mother and I attended a meet-the-teacher and Kindergarten orientation to help prepare for it; the session was a good one, and I am pleased that we attended. We learned a lot, and some of it still seems to be processing. In a small way, it reminds me of what it was like to be a student, and I look at Ms. 8 with a bit more...I'm not really sure what...as I consider what she will start to deal with on Monday, what she will be facing for the next dozen years or more.
I've had some occasion to reflect on my school days recently. I have been reminded of how pre-Bilbo Bagginsian I have been for most of my life; I have never really been an exciting person, focused mostly on school and work and coming home between them and after. It has meant I've had little trouble, of course, and I appreciate that; things have been straitened enough without the costs of redressing trouble of one sort or another. But it has also meant there have been things I have missed and cannot reclaim, connections I have not made or have allowed to lapse that I have needed to develop and maintain.
How much of such distance Ms. 8 will have from things, I am not sure. I've noted, I believe, that she does not appear to have many of the same hangups that I did and still too much do. Even at the meet-the-teacher session, when she was clearly overstimulated and began to withdraw into herself, she talked with other children and made efforts to make herself pleasant. It seemed to work, at least to some extent. It would not have done so with me; I have never been able to conceal well what I feel, so that it has been obvious when I've been dissatisfied even when I've tried to demonstrate otherwise.
I look forward to her having an easier time, perhaps not in her coursework, but with her peer group than I did mine. (I did pretty well in class, far less so outside it.) I think she will get the better end of the bargain if she does so. But I will continue to love and support her, in any event. Ms. 8 is my beloved daughter; I cannot do otherwise, nor do I want to.

20190816.0430

Over this coming weekend, my wife, Ms. 8, and I will be heading out to Lockhart to spend some time with my mother-in-law. Said mother-in-law normally lives at the family ranch on the weekends, staying in Lockhart during the week to ease her commute to the Texas Parks & Wildlife headquarters in Austin.The weekend, though, will allow three generations of the women in that family to have some fun together--and, given the kind of fun they'll be having, I'll be finding some quiet place to sit and rest up a bit. Things have been busy, and I am a bit winded; the respite will be welcome.
I'll admit that some of the busy-ness has been a result of preparing for the weekend trip. There're a number of things I do on the weekend that I'll not be able to do this weekend, being away from where I do them. Consequently, I had to get them done through now, meaning I had to do just that much more each day. I am already weak enough that what I do in a day leaves me quite ready to find my bed each night; adding to each day's tasks makes it just a little harder for me. And, again, this is not because my daily work is necessarily hard; it is because I am barely sufficient to it as it is, without adding to it. The problem is mine.
That noted, I have caught myself up, more or less, and I am ready to take the trip. It is something of a last little hurrah for Ms. 8 before she begins school this coming Monday, and while Kindergarten is a byword for easy to many, for a five-year-old, it is an appropriate challenge. I have every expectation that Ms. 8 will do well, but I also have every expectation that she will have to work for it--and I think that is a good thing. Having to expend the effort will make her better able to face the many, many other challenges that will come. It gives me hope that, when that day arrives that I am no longer available to help her, she will be able to thrive.
Morbid as it is, I do keep an eye to that end. I know I am not eternal; I know my existence is limited and bounded, temporally no less than physically. I expect, as I think most parents do, that my child will see days after I no longer do. I know my daughter will see a world that does not have me in it; I do not expect it soon, necessarily, but I know it is coming. What I do when I am not being a selfish ass--which is less of the time than it ought to be, because I am a selfish ass--I do with the thought of making things easier for her when she enters that world. It does, I admit, take away from the now to some extent, and that almost certainly introduces problems, but I also know that if she makes it through the now to then, and there is no provision made, it will introduce other problems.
I do not know which will be worse. But I can work now on the problems of now and on the problems of then; I cannot work then on the problems of then.

20190815.0430

Later on today, my wife and I will be taking Ms. 8 to the school she will start attending next week. Our daughter will be heading to Kindergarten, and she seems to have been changing herself somewhat to prepare for it; the details are important to her parents, and they speak to a certain step of growing up and becoming more independent. My wife's reactions and mine to both the coming schooling and the changes in Ms. 8's behavior differ.
The Mrs. is in some ways saddened to have Ms. 8 growing up. Our daughter knows more and is learning more, and she will doubtlessly learn some lessons other than those her teachers mean to offer, both in the classroom to come and outside it. She is becoming more and more her own person and independent--and my wife feels that she is less and less important to our daughter therefore. She feels, too, that the lessening innocence that comes with living longer in the world is beginning to have an effect on our daughter that might not be to the best, and she fears for things that may come.
I understand the concerns, and I share some of them. I attended the school where my daughter will go; it was not necessarily the best experience I had. I also know that no few of the problems were my own fault; I was mouthy and arrogant, determined that they would know I was better. Ms. 8 does not seem to have quite that same set of hangups, and she is already better integrated into the broader community than I was (and, it could be argued, better than I still am). And I have long viewed it as my duty to Ms. 8 to get her to a point where she does not need me anymore; her moving ahead in school is a mark of her needing me just that much less, just that much more success for me.
And there is this, too: however old Ms. 8 gets, however big she grows, however accomplished she may become--and I have every expectation that she will do well--she will still be my child. I will still love her. And when she does not need me, I can hope that she will still want to have me in her life; it is one thing for a dependent child to cling to a person, and it is quite another to have the adult stand beside that person as a peer. I look forward to the day when Ms. 8 does that with me, and I continue to work to be a person she would want to stand beside in the years to come.

20190814.0430

I often run into a difficulty when I try to work at home, as I am doing as I write this. The difficulty is distraction. When I am at work, I can focus on work; when I am away and working, I can focus on work. When I am at home, however, I cannot focus on work, even when I really ought to be doing so. Ms. 8 will come in with something that needs my attention or just to say she loves me, and I cannot refuse her that, or the dog will need to be let out or in, or there will be a sudden need for me to get up and saturate a new nest of yellow jackets with chemicals that will kill the little fuckers and dissuade others from coming in to take their place. I will respond to the concern of home--because home is home and comes first--and lose the thread of work that I had meant to do, that might have actually helped if I had been able to do it, and I am rarely able to find it again among the tangled skeins.
I am glad, of course, that Ms. 8 comes to me to have me in her life, and I do not dare let the dog linger too long unattended; poor as the state of my carpet is, I have no desire to let it be made worse. And the fucking yellow jackets do need to die--how do they build so large a nest in so short a time? I am glad to be in the position of trust and love and honor I hold in my home, and I work to be worthy of it daily; I do not trust that I am or remain so, ever. I dare not, lest I become complacent and deserve to lose what I have. But I am aware that doing what I need to do to be worthy of love sometimes conflicts with other things I need to do to be worthy of love, and I confess that I sometimes grow aggravated by the tension between the two.
I strive to balance the many needs I must fulfill, and it is right that I do so. I know that others do more with less, and that I am not so mighty a person to do so little well as I do with as much as I have been given. I know, I know, I know, and the knowledge brings neither comfort nor clarity; however much I know, I do not know the thing that I really need to know: how to be enough. I do know that I never have been so, am not now, and am not likely to be enough to meet the needs of the moments in which I am. I know I am fortunate that that matters less to some whom I love than it perhaps ought. I know I am not worthy of the love I am shown by them.
I do not deserve what I have.

20190813.0430

I've not been sleeping well these past nights. I am not sure why. I usually fall asleep quickly and sleep soundly until my alarm begins to call--at around this time, in fact. But across the past week or so, I've been having trouble getting to sleep and staying asleep for hours after I find my way to bed. I've not been feeling any more guilty than normal that I'm aware, and temperatures have not been unexpected; it is August in the Texas Hill Country, but it is far from the first such I have spent, and it is not the first I've spent where I'm living now. Yet it is the first time I've been so sleepless for so long. One or two nights might be expected as an occasional thing. Day after day after day, though, is something different--and entirely unwelcome.
I've not had any substantial change of habits, either. I haven't been waking later or napping during the day; my caffeine consumption has stayed consistent--for years now, really, and less now than it has been at several points in my adult life. (The day I drafted my dissertation's conclusion sticks out in my mind as a major example. I churned out thirty pages of academic prose. I also drank at least that many cups of coffee. It did what I needed it to do, but it also did some other things that were not nearly so pleasant.) So I am not sure what it is that is making my sleep less easily found and less restful.
I have every expectation, though, that the changes to my sleep are causing other changes. I still perform at work as I have, which is good; I am finally getting back on decent financial footing, and I do not want to imperil that, which lower quality of work would do. I have been told my public presentation is as it has been, so there's not been much if any change in how I interact wit the broader world. I have, however, noted in the past few days that I have not behaved with those close to me as I ought to be doing. Perhaps my sleep is at the root of it. It does not excuse my behavior, however, or absolve me of responsibility for allowing myself to act as I feel I have.

20190812.0430

I am and remain a damned fool, a poor student despite more years of schooling than is good for anybody and that most will ever undertake. When I was a younger man and more hopeful for the world than I have since become, I studied judo and aikido. (Not at the same time, mind; I studied sequentially.) The latter, I had the chance to study in one of the foremost schools for it in the world. I did not attend classes as diligently as I ought to have done, not until near the end of my time in The City, and I was not as good a student of either art as I ought to have been, certainly not as much as either deserved from me. And it has shown, not only in my performance in the dojo, where I fared adequately but only that, but also in my ability to apply the lessons that were offered to other areas of my life. I have not transferred the skills, which is not the fault of my teachers but of their student.
The chief failure to transfer is one that was pointed out to me in grad school and has been pointed out to me since by people whose opinions I value. While I have been--I do not know if I still am; I am years out of practice--able to use others' physical force against them, either accentuating what they offer past the point where they can control it or avoiding it and redirecting it where I would have it go, I am seemingly unable to do so verbally or emotionally. Physically, I can see how I can move laterally or, on occasion, vertically to get people to go around me or past me who might want to go into or through me; even with eyes like mine, it's easy to see my way clear to a step to the side or a sudden crouch. But I am unable to do so in other arenas; I do not see my surroundings.
It's a more important lesson for me to have learned, one applicable in more areas than the physical training I have long let lapse. I am fortunate in that I am not confronted overtly with the threat of physical violence often, if I am at all. I am fortunate, too, that I am not met with mental or emotional force in opposition to me more than I am; I know many others have far more to face than I do. And perhaps that is why I seem to have so little skill in facing it adroitly; I confront rather than avoiding or evading. The confrontation does not work; it simply breeds more conflict, and nobody gets anywhere they need to be. I see no place to step; I see no way to crouch to avoid and position myself to redirect. Consequently, I fail again and again.
The fault is mine. The consequences of that fault fall on others, as well, and that is...not optimal. I should do something to address the issue, I know, but I am unsure what options are available to me, or I am unsure how to pursue those options, since some have been pointed out to me, or I am unsure that I can do so, or any number of other excuses that make sense but all speak to the same point--that I am not willing to do what I can to make things better. And I thus deserve to fail, even if others do not deserve the consequences of my failure.

20190811.0430

In the event, Stonecutter's birthday yesterday went generally well. So far as I could tell, the people who attended the party had a good time, and the kids had fun afterwards. If there was a problem, it was not a problem because of anything Ms. 8 did, but because of what I did around the party. (During, I managed to keep more or less quiet and out of the way when I wasn't helping move things or hand food out, so there wasn't really much opportunity for me to fuck things up. There's that, at least.) I confess to frustration in the lead-up to the party, as well as failing to hide the effects of my fatigue and lingering frustration after the event was ended--as well as to directing those towards people at whom I ought not to aim either.
It is not the first time such has happened, to be sure. I have often commented that I do not do well around celebrations, noting that my demeanor does not tend to admit of jollity when many others will feel it. Yesterday, I did well enough at the event itself, so there is that. But, again, around it, I did less well, and I begin to think again that I need to absent myself from festivities and celebrations. My presence does not make things during enough better that my...ill-contentedness around is an acceptable cost. Or, if that is not acceptable, I need to remember to focus on getting work done--which I do adequately, most of the time, though never well enough--and being present but removed for the rest of it, keeping my mouth shut. There's not much I can add, but there's a damned lot I can take away, and with few words, indeed.
I have a lot of practice with making things worse for people, as I've noted. My voice takes on sharp tones quickly, and what little I can see of people focuses on their vulnerabilities; it becomes easy for me to find the place where they were held when dipped into the waters that wash away their weaknesses, to touch them tellingly with a tongue-tip sharpened and hardened through too much use. Too often, it is a first reaction to events, one developed to keep people at bay--but that does not make for a good life for me, or for those who have me in their lives for whatever reason. (After days like yesterday, I wonder that I am still tolerated. Then I look at the ratios of income to expense, and I am reminded of earlier comments that have been made, and I think they continue to apply. And if it is an economic argument alone, then I have to think that other calculations will begin to become relevant--and there is no good figuring in such equations.)
I am being melodramatic, almost certainly. I erred, and there is no punishment for it other than mild rebuke--and what I foist upon myself. But retribution does not yield sufficient penance; nothing will make right what has been wrong, but the prevention of further wrong can at least be of some use. That work likely exceeds me; it has so far, clearly, else what continues to motivate such comments from me as I have made would not continue. I can only try again--or finally learn the lesson that I recall from the man Caspar Pallavicino would not name, and leave myself oiled in the closet, lest I grow more rusty yet than I am.

20190810.0430

Today, my nephew, the stone-cutter, has his birthday. He marks being a year old, and the family and many of his parents' friends will be gathering in the Alamo City to celebrate the occasion. I've no doubt that it will be documented thoroughly by many people, so I feel safe in relaxing my tendency to stand aside and watch to record later in words scrawled badly in my thin pen-hand on pages to which I insufficiently attend. I can celebrate with my nephew, watch as my daughter, Ms. 8, who greatly loves her cousin, exults in the celebration, as well, though I confess to some concern that she, being also young, will be somewhat put out that she is not the focus of the day, as she so often has been.
I wonder if she will grow up with the memory of having been not the first, but the only. I wonder if she will remember when she was the sole focus of her parents' love and her grandparents'--because she was, even as recently as a year ago and a day. My wife remembers being four, though I do not, and I think Ms. 8 is not a stupid person. Far from it; young as she is and sheltered from as much--and I do not account it to my shame that she has not been exposed to so many things as I have known others at her age to have been--she takes in all she sees and hears and smells and tastes and feels, and her mind works deftly upon it.
But that Ms. 8 is no fool does not mean she will remember in days to come what she has done this day; again, I do not, and I like to flatter myself that my mind works well. And I recall how it felt to be the only, to have the undivided attention of the people in my life whom I love and who love me, though for deeds and places my memory runs into a barrier stronger than any wall well after I turned six. I have the sneaking sensation that it has poisoned me in ways I cannot see, being inside them or having them behind me; I do not doubt that they whisper in my ear, though softly enough that I do not mark the words they would say to me.
I hope that Ms. 8 will not have such things to struggle against, though I fear that she already does. She is strong enough to face most any challenge already, and she will grow stronger in time; I have no doubt of her eventual victory. But that I believe she has the strength does not mean I relish thoughts of her having to test that strength. As many of my failings as I can prevent her from having, I would. Today, I will see if one of them has touched her in ways I would not have it do. I will work to correct it if it has; I will work to prevent it if it has not. And I will wish my nephew happiness, either way, today and in the years to come.

20190809.0430

I am sometimes more aware than others of the environments in which I do my writing. For example, I do almost all of the writing in this webspace at one desk or another, either filling idle moments in my workday with putting words on the pixelated page or taking some of the quiet time I get in the morning before others are awake to do so. The writing I do in my more professional webspace, I tend to at my desk at home; what I do for the Tales after Tolkien Society, I also do more at my home desk than at any other place.
There are advantages to each, of course; the work-desk setup is congenial, while the home-desk setup allows me easy access to food and drink. There are also disadvantages; working on other work while at work has clear difficulties--namely work--while working at home admits of many other distractions that are not present at work but nonetheless take attention away from getting words out into the world. Getting the words to come forth is not always an easy thing; yes, they sometimes flow, but they sometimes need pumping to get going, and the pump is sometimes rusted.
When, as now, I have to write on a mobile device to get the writing done, usually because I am away from my home desk and my work-desk is taken up by other concerns, things are...less useful. I am trained to type, and I do so well, but the screens on my phone and my tablet do not admit of typing so well as a full keyboard does. Indeed, I recall having and using a laptop, and I recall struggling with the keyboard when I did so. (Among others, special characters like the ash and thorn, which I use in my work, do not show up so well without a ten-key.) The phone is especially problematic; I have blunt fingers that do not do so well with tiny touch-screens. The problem is mine, of course; I hold no other to account for it. But that it is mine does not mean I do not note it or find it to be a problem.
I will write, of course. I have to, not because of any external compulsion, but because I have to--even if I have to do it on a tiny screen, one letter pecked out at a time. I hope it helps.

20190808.0430

Even after all this time, I still find myself rolling dice and telling lies as one of my main forms of entertainment. The dice may more often be digital than dimpled at this point, and the table at which I sit to sling them a computer desk rather than some plastic or metal-and-wood contraption under fluorescent tube lights, but the idea remains the same; I get together with people to make up stories about made-up places and people and to chat outside of doing that about what I do with the rest of my life. And it remains good.
I'm not sure I had anything to say about it, other than that.
Maybe that's enough, though. I know we're in a cultural moment that admits of things like D&D and, if still recognizing their nerdiness, does not single them out for opprobrium as once they were. But I do remember the Satanic panic, in which people were convinced that playing such games was a deal with the devil and a surrender of control to ghastly or infernal powers. I remember when a polyhedral die was taken as an invitation to harassment and bullying--and not always from peers, because even the cubes that might could pass were seen from on high as gambling tools. And they were, to be fair, but not with money, but with story outcomes.
A stock portfolio is no less gambling, but it somehow does not strike others' eyes as objectionable.
I will not attempt to sing a paean to the RPG here. I do not need to, and my voice is not one that does well to be lifted in song, anyway. Nor have I the time to say all the good about such games that I could say. For now, it is enough to say that it has been good and is still good, at least for me and others I know.
Maybe more people should try it.

20190807.0430

My parents are away at a conference, so my wife, Ms. 8, and I are keeping an eye on their house and pet-sitting for them. For the latter, rather than having us pop over to their house twice a day (our work schedules don't really agree with doing that), we're keeping their two dogs at our house. Our own dog, Cherry, is exceedingly happy about it; she's the sister of one of my parents' two dogs, Berry, coming from the same litter and adopted at the same time. And, as she was kept by my folks before coming to us, she's familiar with my parents' elder dog, Bud, as well. For their parts, Berry and Bud seem happy to be over, if a little bit disoriented by the change in location.
I understand it, certainly. They're not too weirded out, to be sure; I was still in high school and living with my parents when they adopted Bud from a local shelter, so I'm some twenty years familiar to him (and the little guy still gets around decently, for being in his twenties as a Dachshund/Chihuahua mix). We're over at my parents' house a fair bit, too, so all of us are familiar to Berry, as well. And, again, the dogs know Cherry from having lived with her. Even so, Berry and Bud seem a bit hesitant, while Cherry is almost oppressively giddy with them.
Anthropomorphizing is always problematic, of course, but I cannot help but think it's like staying with family for me. I know I'm welcome, of course; it's been said any number of times, and borne out over the course of years. But I also know I'm always aware I'm in someone else's space when I overnight at someone else's home. I know that things do not work there the way they do here, and I do not expect them to. But I am habituated to here, so being there means I have to attend more carefully to things than is normal for me. (I am lazy and try not to move things at home so that I do not have to look hard to find them.) It makes for some difference.
Even so, I am treated well by my family, as I work to treat them well when they visit me. That much is as it should be. I think I am treating my parents' dogs well; they're family, too, or as good as. And there is certainly something nice about typing this while Bud lies on the floor under my chair; it is a comfort to have an old dog there, resting at ease while I do what I feel the need to do. Cherry is always stirring when she tries to do it, distracting me from what I'm about, but she'll get there someday, I'm sure.

20190806.0430

I know there are a lot of things I need to work on improving in myself and in my life. Some of them, I am addressing, and my professional position is getting better, certainly. (A coming promotion and pay-raise have been confirmed for me, and I appreciate both.) Some of them are less overt, perhaps, or less measurable. (I know there is a prevailing obsession with "measurable outcomes" in many parts of life. There are many parts of life in which such is appropriate, though not so many as it gets applied to anymore.) But that does not make them of any less importance--though I don't mean to get into concerns of relative value at the moment. There'll be another time for that.
I mean rather to focus on one area where I'm making some progress, some improvement. I am working on being more openly kind than I have been. I know it's a low bar, the more so the earlier people came to know me. I imagine the people who knew me in high school thought me a mean-spirited little shit, and with justification; I took delight in petty quips and comments that demeaned others, thinking that they showed my superior quality. (They showed my quality, alright, but not its superiority. Rather the reverse.) As an undergraduate, I was a dour person, and, as a graduate student, I was focused on completing tasks more than on most other things--and not the things I ought to have focused on. As a professional...I've not been close to others at work. Sometimes, it's been for cause, but only sometimes...
Recently, I have been working on reaching out more, one being more overt in my appreciation of things. I've found it easier to do online than in real-space venues. I am not sure why. Possibly because stakes are lower and because what I have to respond to is what those to whom I respond have presented for me to see. Face-to-face, we offer more than we likely mean to offer others, bound by things we may well not be able to control. Online, what I get is what has been placed where I can get it; it is a more deliberately constructed version of the self. In some ways, it is a more moral thing because more fully consented-to. It is what that person putatively wants to be, and so can be responded to in ways that the messier, strangely constrained real and embodied cannot.
I'm practicing as I can. And I'm trying to translate the online practice into the real. It's working slowly so far, but I have hope for more improvement to come.

20190805.0430

If it is the case that I feel somewhat drained by my writing, I think it is because I am not doing enough reading. Such a statement is a strange one for me to make for several reasons. One of them is that I do spend a fair bit of time reading, even now, even if it is online more than on the page. (Some of it is very much on the page, though, as witness this and following.) Another is that, in my youth, I spent more time with a book in my hands and my nose buried in it than doing anything but breathing. That there could be "enough" reading is something that seems at odds with who I have been and whom I, in what may be my weaker moments, still might like to be. I do not know that doing as much reading as I did for as long as I did made me happy, as such, but there was a pleasure in mastery that I have felt and miss feeling; it has been some time since I felt like I actually had a handle on things.
There's a lot of reading I need to do, in addition to what I've been doing for the re-read project linked above. I should read to Ms. 8 more than I do, share with her the things I love (that she can handle; there are some things for which few five-year-olds can handle) and share in what she loves. (Already, her interests are moving in ways that mine do not; there's overlap, of course, but certainly areas where what we enjoy is not the same. And that's fine; Kelly Turnbull's Commander has the right idea about it, I think.) My wife enjoys having me read aloud for some strange reason, so I ought to do that more; I like reading, I've been accused more than once of loving the sound of my own voice, and I have a vested interest in keeping the Mrs. happy, so it seems a thing to do. And I still need to study more; even with me being largely outside academe, I keep a toe in, and I have let my reading in the few journals I still take lapse long.
I have the time to read more, certainly. Or, rather, I have things I can set aside in favor of reading. Evening television could be swapped out for evening reading, for example; while we tend to talk about what we watch--and not in terms of what happened as much as in terms of what it means that things happened the way they did, what it means that the lighting and positioning and the like are as they are--there is a different engagement with the printed page than with the moving screen, habits of focus and attention and rumination that may be able to be developed in other media but have not been that I have noticed. I do not think I can be held too much to blame for sticking with what has worked for me. I have quiet mornings, too, that I tend to spend staring at screens that I am not sure I enjoy; I could turn pages, instead. I think I would get more out of it.
Getting more, I would be able to give more in turn. I have done my best writing when I have been reading. I am not satisfied with how I've been working of late, so I need to get back to doing what I know will make things better. After I get a bit of rest, perhaps...

20190804.0430

I think I am running out of things to say.
Some will doubtlessly comment that I have long since done so, that I have not offered anything worth considering in some time--if I ever have. There are days I would even make such a comment, seeing how little of my writing appears to have made a difference in my life and having little or no way to see what differences it has made in the lives of others. (They are not as many as might be thought, else I'd not keep doing the writing I do here and in other places. Clearly.) Leaving such comments aside as mean-spirited, however, I remain concerned that I am repeating myself overly much, that I am not producing new material, but am merely rehashing things again and again, trying to plant again in soil depleted and feeble.
There is some value in returning to topics, of course. Learning more allows for new perspectives on things already treated, and revisiting them can therefore generate new ideas and insights. But that's not been what I've been doing. I've simply been repeating myself with minimal variation, and not necessarily at long enough remove to make any real difference or blunt the memory of the earlier iteration.
The thing is, I am not quite so stuck in my ruts as I have been. A promotion is impending, and I've other projects going on. Maybe it's that they are running me more nearly ragged than I might prefer.
I hope it's that, anyway. If it is, a rest will do much to help matters.
I would like to get some rest.

20190803.0430

Tomorrow, the Mrs., Ms. 8, and I will head to a state park not too far from where we live. There, we will gather with several score members of the extended family, as has been done annually for longer than I have known my wife--indeed, long than she's been going to the event. It will not be the first time that I will have gone to the event, a family reunion that marks kinship attenuating through generations, and I do not think it will be the last; I have enjoyed it when I've gone before, and I look to do so again tomorrow. We'll be taking an ice-cream maker and fixin's for a couple of batches, which ought to make for a good time, and I expect to be helping on the pit. (There don't look to be burn bans where we're heading, which helps.) It's like to be a good time.
The first time I went to the reunion, though, I did not look forward to it. I was afraid of it, actually, thinking I would be around a bunch of people who already knew each other and wouldn't have any common ground with me. It's happened many times before. No few times that it's come out that I have a doctorate, or that I do the scholarship I have done and still at least pretend to do, conversation around me has died; no few times has conversation limped on with an "I guess I have to watch my language around you" or something similar, as though I remain ready to pounce on any slip of usage when I am not on the clock. Even with my own family, it happens; there is too much I do not share with them, and them with me, for it not to happen. And with others with whom I do not share blood and background, it's worse. With people who do "real" work for a living, it's worse yet--and many of the people I expected to meet were, I knew, hard-working folks.
I am still too much an academic. I still fall on the wrong side of the town and gown divide too often. And I do not have a room in the ivory tower anymore, though I still seem to visit.
In the event, I did manage to fit in decently well. Two things did it, I think. The first was that, when we arrived and got unloaded--because we don't show up empty-handed--I went up to the folks working on the pit and asked what I could do to help. The second was that I largely shut up and listened to the older people talk. The first has worked well for me in other contexts; it's hard not to be favorably disposed towards someone who leads off with trying to be useful. The second has, as well; "lurk moar" is an old refrain of internet communities that still take in new members, and listening to others presents a humility that many people find agreeable.
I still go in to help. I still listen. And I still do well with both at the reunion. Or I did last time; maybe it will work for me again.

20190802.0430

Even with as much writing as I do--whether churning out poems or essays in this webspace or writing commentaries or reports on another blog I maintain, or else posting to keep still another webspace alive and afloat--I feel like I need to be doing more. I should not have let myself fall behind in my journal-writing again, I should be pushing out papers, I should be submitting my writing for sale--and I should be doing the kind of writing that can be sold. And I should be doing all of it in addition to taking care of all of the other things I need to do every day, as well as all of the things I want to do with my day. And I should still somehow get enough sleep and exercise and all of the rest of it, so that I can take care of myself in ways that let me take care of other things well.
It's a legacy of my having been in academe, I know, coupled with my working-class heritage (though I am decidedly white-collar at this point, being poised to take over as executive director at my main job and maintaining my status as a visiting professor in my main side-job) and the prevailing productivity culture at work in the United States and elsewhere in the world. I spent years in environments that demand every waking moment be spent making something that can be sold (preferably by someone else, who takes more of the money than is passed on), that as few moments be spent asleep as can be managed (and those are still too many), and even if I did not do as well in them as might have been hoped, they have marked me in ways I still struggle against.
I am aware that my struggles are far less than many others' are, of course. My job now is one that involves inside work with little to no heavy lifting. The pay is decent, and I am in position to actually help people. Not all have it so good, and I try to remember that. But even when I do keep it in mind and am appropriately grateful (or approach being so, because I cannot be as good as the people in my life deserve to have me be), I am aware that I need to be doing more. More from me is needed, and I only fail to provide it because I am somehow lazy and selfish. I keep too much for myself without making more of what I have make more for me. I let myself be indolent in that I rest at all, and how can I allow myself to do that, when there are so many who do so much more and better than I?
Competition can be a healthy thing, one that brings about greater results than might otherwise have been the case. The thing is, the competition has to end, and there is something about that seems to keep it going long after it should have been done. Even now, I am caught up in it, and if I did learn at last to stop knocking at every door when my knuckles bled against them, I have not yet learned how to get out of the bout to do more in which I find myself. I do not yet know how to make it not be never enough.

20190801.0430

Not long ago, I got started on another project--not one of the putative writing series I've started and discarded over the years, nor yet one of the amusement projects I thought would be good and went nowhere, but one that has already been shown to the public and has attracted a fair bit of attention and almost as much support. It's gratifying to see so much interest in the project, to be sure, and to see as many people ready to contribute to it in one way or another. I'm glad to be part of it, and I'm glad to have seen the early success. I hope to be able to keep that success going for a while, at least, and I have the notion that having happen even a part of what I hope will happen with the project will ensure that it keeps itself going for a long while, yet.
At the same time, though, a lot of the attention given to the project has come from people I knew in my own past--which is not surprising, given who and what I have been and what the project is. Seeing faces that have changed from what I remember them being, but not so much that the people behind those faces can't be recognized, has not been the easiest thing for me--not surprising, given who and what I have been. And I admit to being worried that my involvement with the project will be less welcome when it becomes clear that I am involved in it, and heavily. (Right now, I am one of two spearheading it, and the other is far newer to the project's base than I am.) I have not always been a good person, if I am one now; if I am not, I used to be far worse than I am, as those who knew me then might well be able to attest.
I am likely worrying overly much about it. I am more than likely the only one who remembers much of what I am worried others remember, and I am realizing that I have not done well to hold onto the memories as much as I have. (I've worked for years to develop my ability to remember things, and I used to be better at it than I am anymore. It follows that I remember things that I should let go.) I do not know how to let them go at this point; I've nursed hard feelings for too long, feeding them at my breast with bitter milk, and they have a stronger grip on me now than is even close to comfortable. Enthusiastic as I am about the project, I am pulled by them; I want to move towards it more fully, embrace it, but my feet are held and my body pushed back.
I would like not to worry about whether or not other people will hold me the same as I once was and treat me as I deserved to be treated. I would like not to worry that I still deserve to be treated in such a way, that I have not atoned sufficiently for the things I did wrong when I was younger than I am. I would like to be able to press ahead with the project with only worries about it as itself, rather than with worries about it as a thing I do. And I have been counseled to do so. I do not know the way, though, and I am not sure where it is that I would be able to look, being as I am.