wordfalls and scatters

It's been an awfully long time since I've written here. I haven't written about Burning Man, or San Francisco, or getting back and all the things that have happened since.

I don't know where to start, and I don't know if anyone's still reading. You're not writing much, these days.

I'm writing a lot, these days, just not here. I'm writing much more than usual in my on-paper journal, which is just for me, as I try to Work Some Stuff Out. I'm writing emails and on FB and Twitter and Diaspora. I'm trying to write more on my blog: every post I write makes me cringe with embarrassment at how clumsy it is, but I know the only way to keep better is to keep writing and live with imperfection. I'm trying to relearn how to write research-stuff, and how to research. It feels hard.

I'm also thinking a lot about who I want to be and how I want to fit into the world. How I want to live.

I've been fretting a lot about not having published anything over the last year. The last year's been very hard emotionally, and my contract at work hasn't left room for research and writing. But still I fret, because I know that if I want to be an Awesome Academic (TM) I need to publish stuff.

So, maybe I'm not going to be an Awesome Academic (TM). Maybe I'm not going to be an academic at all, because there doesn't seem to be a lot of room in academia for people who don't make time to publish. I don't know what I might end up being, because reading and writing and teaching is the only thing I do that people seem to want to give me money for.

I'm probably not going to be a Brilliant Author (TM) either.
Or change the world.

I think I'm okay with that.

There are sacrifices I don't want to make. There are plenty of things I want to do just for the sake of doing them, and not because they'll help me to Achieve Goals. I don't want to give up all the things I do without any hope of being ever being great at them (dancing, cycling, ukulele, greek...) I know the time I spend pottering around the house or seeing friends or visiting family takes time away from research and writing, but I don't want to give it up. I want space to compromise and travel with my tiny chosen family, even if it isn't great for my career. I want to work with friends on shared projects, even if they're tiny silly projects.

So, maybe I'm not going to be Awesome. I don't know what I'll be, but I think it'll be...nice. In a quiet kind of way. And that's okay.

There are a range of things that I am fretting about rather a lot at the moment, and I am trying quite hard to think about just the time I am in rather than getting caught up in worrying about the future. I need to work on my thesis, I need to be nice to people around me, but I do not need to get myself worked up into a panic by extrapolating a few weeks of unproductive time into my failure as an academic, or some current dramas into me ruining all friendships and dying alone and bitter. So I am concentrating on looking at the blue of the sky, the way it frames the leaves in King's Park as I cycle in to uni. The fresh, cold, air at night. Things that I can do right now that make me happy.

Also:
Last night I went out with friends, and we made up stories about who we were. I like that part of the evening best, I think. Dancing was fun, too, but I still haven't found a good place to dance where I like the music. For a while there was a band at The Library, and they played music it was fun to bellydance to. I had forgotten how much I enjoy bellydancing, even when people can see me.

Also:
There were pro-China protests in the city today, and they made me kind of angry. But I am also intrigued...I want to know why the people there think what they do, and who is organising them, and how they manage to hold up signs calling for 'fair media' without being overcome with irony.

Also:
I find myself wanting all the things I used to do in the beginning of the century, way back when. I have been wearing boots and taking myself on rambling missions through the city. I found a walkman, and I have been listening to my mixtapes from nina, who I have been missing a lot of late. Much of my time, these days, seems to be filled with wanting music.

That is all, I think.

The last couple of days have been wonderfully odd - I wish my life was like this all of the time.

( This may be a little long, and I suspect that I still won't feel at all like I've done the weekend justice. )

Also, I've just finished reading Che Guevara's Motorcycle Diaries, and one thing's really stuck with me. Che wandered around Latin America and had all these adventures, and it relied on him basically being terribly impolite (by my standards). He and Alberto would show up on friend-of-a-friend's doorsteps and stay until kicked out and cadged food and drinks constantly. Whereas I've had two offers to stay with friends over the last few days, and both times I immediately thought "oh no, I couldn't possibly, I'm sure that they don't really mean it". I have no intention of going to the extent in the book, but I do think I should try to accept offers like that more often.

And in this spirit I'm going to Kerala with Kavita on Friday, to check out some open source software program for schools that the government is implementing. It feels a little weird having a professor do all the running-around-travel-arrangements (but then, the only time Kavita has reinforced her superior-professor-status has been when she insisted on paying for my coffee).

In other news, today I desperately want to be like Renee and just stay here and get a job doing freelance writing. I'm being thinking through it all morning though, and I've decided that staying isn't feasible, but perhaps I could come back next year sometime? Anyway, it may just be a fleeting impulse.