Scheduling
Amy and I had a brief spat this morning. I was in a crummy mood: overtired and hypercritical from adrenalin, testosterone and exercise; it could happen to any mid-distance runner still losing mass after winter indulgence. Exercise-induced brown study, that's me.
Anyhow, the short of it is my feeling the time of this spring quarter racing without easily measurable gains in my rewriting the second chapter of “Recombinant Media.” I'm also starting to feel put upon by grad student exams and essays, departmental meetings, and a very oddly-shaped personal life. Regarding this last, it seems to be comprised mostly of email correspondence with friends past, frequent but not particularly fulfilling phone conversations with my girlfriend, and widely scattered contact with colleague friends. I also understand that the lack of time I spend with my girlfriend and my colleagues stems directly from my need to be alone not because I am writing but because I am not writing enough.
When I'm writing, I focus all the energy of my not writing into a desperate need to be alone. This works for my writing but erodes the personal contact I have with others. Friendships with distant people (blog-watchers and email buddies) don't suffer because they have little to zero chance of occupying my time in way that distracts me from writing. People closer to me, however, have a legitimate claim to my attention and time, and these claims (which translates to desire on my part) both compel and repulse me. This is a very long way to saying that when I'm writing I'm very ambivalent about close emotional relationships.
That feels like a load off my mind. When I'm writing, close emotional relationships feel threatening to me. This, however, is the direct result of my not spending enough time writing and researching.
Comments
I so definitely relate to the almost desperate desire for alone time which occurs when I am almost consistently not using that alone time for productive writing. I don't have the same academic or external deadlines you have, but the internal ones are enough for me to feel a sense of panic that after writing for over four years I have yet to get something so polished and complete that I could consider sending it anywhere to be published. This is my own personal nightmare- that maybe i never will.
I also know what you mean about far away loved ones versus near by loved ones- I feel anxiety and guilt about not writing/calling as often as I should/want to, but at the same time, I also look at my faraway loved ones with a great deal more benevolence- through no-one's fault at all, I look to my close by loved ones with frustration when I am not getting the writing done- and then, of course, a terrible anxiety and guilt over not being as loving as my loved ones deserve.
In any case, I'm very glad you've started this blog. I've been hesitant to post a comment, for fear of perhaps creating a skittishness if you knew that someone was reading- but I get the feeling you are inviting that kind of reading, so I am taking you up on it.
Also, I dearly miss access to the way your mind works. That was one of the (many) things that I so valued about our friendship when living in Athens- the close proximity to your brain, your ontology- I feel like in interacting with you, I learn a great deal, not in the least about how my own mind works.
It is so good to read your writing, here and on mistersquid. I was thinking that maybe, rather than direct emails, our journals could be, for a while, the way we communicate. What do you think? I know that right now, more than I am interested in sharing stories about my life in a directly personal way, I am interested in just sort of interacting with your large-audienced writing, and of being conscious that you might be interacting with mine. I am saying this clumsily, because I haven't worked out exactly what this is that I want- but it seems that this sort of structure of conversation might work really well for us, as it implicitely involves writing that we both want (and need) to do.
Also, thank you so much for both your comment in my journal, and also the beautiful email. I sometimes worry that in the geographical leaving of a place, the relationships get left behind there. Sometimes that does happen. I am so relieved to sense that our friendship has a weight and endurance beyond Athens.
I hope you are having an excellent day.
Posted by: Sarah O | April 25, 2006 2:46 PM
Awesome blog. Peace out until next time TabathaOster
Posted by: TabathaOster | May 18, 2006 12:08 PM