Weeknote 5
by Sunita
Sorry for the delayed Weeknote and the radio silence over the last few days. I’m still recovering from the flu and we drove cross-country so I was mostly offline.
Work
I managed to do some this past week! I got out my unkillable zombie manuscript and started mapping out revisions, chapter by chapter. And they actually work. Maybe letting my brain wander around through the various options was a good idea. All that not-writing has turned into writing. Go me. I still need to finish the chapter outlines, but I will be able to keep quite a bit of what I have, which I wasn’t expecting. And the new parts are mostly things I’ve already been working on, so I don’t have as much to figure out from scratch as I originally thought.
I’m also back in meetings and admin. I am really going to pay for this semester off, I can tell already. One task is going to start this summer. Blergh. I thought I would be able to ease into old-person-colleague status and let the newly tenured, newly promoted, eager younger colleagues take over and I would just teach and do research. Ah well. Maybe next year.
Reading/Watching
I’m still reading North and South, which I’m enjoying a great deal. It’s more dramatic than I remember Cranford being, but now that I’m halfway through the romance is definitely picking up and we’ve got the impending deaths out of the way. My hold on Ali Smith’s Spring came in, so I will take a break from Gaskell and read that over the next week. It’s received some very good reviews and I’m curious to see where she goes in this seasonal installment.
In addition, spurred by an intriguing Goodreads review, I read Jarett Kobek’s latest work, Only Americans Burn in Hell. He’s the author of I Hate the Internet, which I haven’t read but now want to. OABiH is like being hit over the head with a mallet for 200+ pages, but it says a lot of things (over and over again) that I think need to be said. Kobek links consumption, surveillance, and capitalism in ways that I wish more people would pay attention to. We’re getting better with our realization that online life makes us give up a lot of privacy and control, quite apart from the cognitive effects it has on our modes of thought and interaction. But we’re still not really willing to acknowledge that the system itself is broken. We talk about the great friends we’ve made online (which is true) and the way it offers a window into the world for people who are isolated (which is also true), but we’re not really willing to confront the full individual and social costs.
I can’t decide whether to review the book on Goodreads, because (irony alert) that’s giving Amazon free content, which is part of his argument against GR and other platforms. And I’m not sure I can fully recommend it, given the mallet-to-head aspect. But I’m glad I read it.
I’ve been watching sports, mostly. The Warriors are in the NBA playoffs, the Sharks and Blues are in the NHL playoffs (the Sharks’ comeback in Game 7 was EPIC), and Liverpool is in both the Champions League semifinal and the Premier League race. Of all these I’d say the Warriors have the best chance. I don’t see Man City dropping its remaining games. It’s been an amazing duel between Man City and Liverpool, and whoever comes second should still be extremely pleased with their performance. But it’s not #1. Sigh. As for Champions League, Liverpool’s chance at the final goes through Barcelona. Yeah right. Still, an amazing year. And Virgil Van Dijk won PFA Player of the Year, so there’s that.
I’ve fallen behind on my podcasts, what with driving and not being on my own when I have lots of free listening time. I’m three episodes behind on Football Weekly, but luckily Brexitcast was off for the Easter break. I like podcasts, but I’ve realized that unless I’m exercising or commuting I just don’t have a lot of podcast-friendly time given the way I like to listen to different kinds of audio. I can do music or baseball pretty much anytime, but audiobooks and podcasts don’t work for me unless I can given them my full attention.
Productivity
I’m back to list-making, and as usual it helps a lot. I picked up a new notebook (of course I did!) at an old and wonderful stationery/office supply store in San Francisco. I need to return to some form of time-logging too; I found writing down notes on each day’s time flow to be informative and useful. I’ve also gone back to using Pomodoros to structure my writing time. I don’t know if I really need them, but they keep me focused, especially if I have to have the computer open while I’m writing. If I’m in Pomodoro mode I don’t click on a tab when I’m thinking, I just keep thinking and sitting there.
We drove across the country using only our Mostly Dumbphones and it was fine. It helps that we took a familiar route, but it meant that we had to look at road signs to find coffee, food, hotels, etc. It also meant that whoever was the passenger wasn’t sitting there scrolling through their phone. The absence of staring at my phone is the biggest change since switching to the Nokia. It’s incredibly restful. And I don’t check my email all the time. Which is also restful. I text more and I’ve even had voice conversations. Mostly it’s like being back in the 20thC. In a good way.
This Week
Appointments, meetings, and a paper to finish (yes, that paper). And more writing. And there are house things to do. So kind of an odds and ends week where I really need to make sure I have lists that keep me on top of things and moving forward.
ReaderWriterVille 
I had totally lost track of Ali Smith. Thanks for mentioning her new book–it is now on the library TBR of Doom.
No one ever truly bounces back from the flu. It is more like dragging yourself back to normalcy by your fingernails.
I really enjoy reading about your notebooks and list making. I can inform you that the number of lists will diminish in retirement; alas, they will not disappear entirely..
Good luck with your writing–both academic and zombie.
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“Old-person colleague status”: I so yearn for this, but it doesn’t look like it’ll happen any time soon. Today, I was hauled into a 3 1/2 hour should-ve-gone-to-the-whippersnapper meeting. But I get why the admin might want us there: it’s a matter of experience and judgement, I think?
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I was browsing my library’s digital offerings yeterday and saw Spring was just added no one had checked it out yet. I alllllmost succumbed, but then I thought of the pile already beside my bed and decided to wait for my paper hold. The paper copies are “newly acquired” and I am never sure how this differs from “in cataloguing.” A book can spend a surprising amount of time in either of these limbos, but I am top of the list so looking forward to reading it soon. (LOL I just saw I have two other holds already on the way to me, I am doomed as always).
BUT I have more reading time now because yesterday I sent my program review report to the administrators in charge. I guess now I’ll have to carry out the recommendations, but not this week! It feels good to have done that. I was up this year in our self-evaluation cycle, so I have to write up the report on the teaching project I did, but that’s short and interesting (to me).
Miss Bates’ report on her Lenten Twitter fast really made me think (again again again) about how much time I am spending online for how little satisfaction, and what I might want to change about that.
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Barb, you are so right about the flu. I can’t believe how long it’s taking to feel better! I was in a meeting this afternoon and just kept thinking, come on brain, focus. But the mucus kept interrupting …
Also, thank you for the great review (over on GR) of that new book by Arkady Martine. It looks fascinating.
Ah retirement, I am so conflicted. On the one hand I’m ready to retire now. On the other, I like my students, I like much of my job, and I know that interacting with colleagues (most of whom I like a lot) and working is good for my brain and will probably help me live longer.
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Kay, you’ve nailed it. The thing I was asked to do, that I swore I wouldn’t do, that I now will be doing, is something that will go pear-shaped if it doesn’t have someone running it who has a particular range of expertise and perspective. It does not reflect well on my department that there aren’t more of us, but that’s the reality.
Also, I loved your post on social media and will go comment soon. I read it this morning and kept thinking, how are we twins when we live in different countries and are from different backgrounds? I think it’s the #feralspinster connection; I’m happily married but it took me a LONG time to choose the married state (and TheH is the only man who will ever manage it).
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Way to go Liz! Admin reports are so demanding, because you think somehow they’re easier than academic writing but they’re not, they’re just different.
I sent a bunch of books back to the library this winter/spring. Those holds are too easy to fall prey to. I don’t want to stop using the service, because it’s wonderful, but I regularly have to remind myself that I don’t have to read everything NOW. It will still be there when I decide I really want to.
I know that social media is a boon for many people. But I think it’s always worth evaluating individual usage on a regular basis. It’s so easy to fall into behavior patterns that outlast their usefulness.
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I need a blog feed. It wasn’t until I saw your comment on Miss Bates’ latest post that I realised I hadn’t read your blog for months and months. Unless someone tweets a link to a blog post that I happen to see, I forget to look at blogs these days. And I am missing out!
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Hi Ros! waves Yes, I came back to blogging last year, and then have been blogging pretty regularly for the last few weeks. I’m hoping I can keep it up. I know many (most?) people get their blog links from Twitter and other social media sites now, but I love my RSS feed reader.
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