i'm blogging again. which means, no doubt, that some rough thing, somewhere is slouching towards somewhere else.
my exile from blogland has not been an enforced one, per se, but more just the effect of me getting hooked on twitter and then, through twitter, on facebook. then i discovered the shareaholic plugin for chrome and everything went to hell. see, many of my almost-2,000 (!!!) posts on here in the past have been simply my way of sharing cool videos or songs, or pictures or whatever with my readers (or potential readers), and now that i can share those things on facebook much more easily, and with people who are way more likely to actually see those things and read them (i.e. 150 of my friends), it just makes sense to hang out over there. as much as i have this weird feeling in doing so that i'm doing the internet equivalent of shopping at wal-mart instead of the local haberdashery, it's just much easier and more sensible. also, nowadays i find myself a lot more content and a lot more busy with my work (maybe those two are connected?) than i once was, and so there's much less time and reason for gigantic personal rants.
just for old time's sake, though, here...have a video of a dog eating a police car:
so why am i back? the answer's quite simple, really. i've forgotten how to write. seriously. somehow. even though i read and write for my job, i seem to have forgotten how to do either. and oh, what a horrible time to forget. see, i'm finishing up my last class (probably ever, after 25 years of going to school) and that means two and a half years of dissertation coming my way, starting now. unfortunately, i have no idea where to start. i'm working on revising a paper for publication right now (two, actually), and today after pouring over pages of notes, i realized that i'll essentially have to rewrite most of the paper. that realization completely floored and demoralized me. as if part of writing a paper isn't having to redraw and recast all of your ideas. i seem to remember trashing 25-page chunks of my book at one time and then rewriting them wholesale back in the day, and being able to do so with the understanding that that was just part of being a good writer...you know, the whole "kill your babies" thing. and i believe that's true, just as much for scholarly writing as it is for art-writing. or whatever. so, my current baby is a paper i wrote on heidegger's theory of dwelling and the implications of ubiquitous technology and location-aware technology for that theory. i spend about fifteen pages of this paper (and hours upon hours of crazy scribbling and reading and whatnot) unpacking heidegger and then applying my own twists to what he has to say. however, after a serious workshopping session, i've realized that this paper that i spent probably close to 50 hours on is not actually about heidegger at all. or, at least, it shouldn't be. it's about something much bigger and more important. but something that i have to delete my old work and start over to get at. no big deal, but somehow i've convinced myself that the need to revise is a failure, instead of a natural part of the process.
so here i am, trying to remember how to write. i have a feeling i'll be on here a lot more, at least for a little while. i need to find a way to keep writing and reading, even in my spare time, rediscovering the things that make me enjoy reading and writing and then find a way to work those things into my scholarly writing. or else i'll never survive the dissertation process. i'm starting to realize that.
part of my enjoyment of reading and writing has always been wrapped up in my desire to be able to think of myself as a "writer" type: the sort of person who reads for fun, under a tree, and then sits seriously at a typewriter, pen behind ear, hammering out thoughts serious and funny for the edification of those unable to express such thoughts themselves. but that's not a real motivation. that's a put-on, a costume, something to pose as so people will think i'm cool, or so i know what type of people are "my" people and which aren't. none of that helps actually getting good work done, though. which is why i have to find what parts of the work i really do like, rather than the parts i think i'm supposed to like. i'm a little afraid that i'll earnestly like less than i need to. but maybe not.
regardless, i've got a shitload to read, a shitload to revise, and i'm also feeling a distinct lack of life-quality due to not spending enough time playing music and taking photos. that's a lot to undertake at once, but hell, it's spring. so why not try it all at once?
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