And they're off

It's a strange start to the semester, in many ways. This year's election has been surreal; we all swim through its constant downward spiral as if waiting to wake up from a dream, and there are still more than two months to go. Our retreat weekend with the incoming students has been moved up so that we're leaving tomorrow -- after only one class with them. And although I have worked steadily all summer, producing a journal article and 2/3 of a book, I still feel like I napped my way through these three months.

But here we are. Cady Gray has started grade 7 (accelerated math, we love you!), and Archer is warily wading into grade 10 (AP Physics, Algebra II and Programming woo-hoo, AP World History and Pre-AP English, not sure yet). A new batch of Honors students has landed in my class, and will be anxiously trying to keep their heads above water as they learn to navigate Blackboard and post their first assignments. I have two new teaching assistants and two new thesis students to mentor. And I'm on the search committee for our new dean, while at the same time the university searches for a new president.

It doesn't all happen at once, that's the saving grace. Except when it does. Which are the times I feel like nobody's got their hand on the regulator. More than anything I hate the feeling of a bunch of things, even little things, going wrong at once -- I start to get squirrelly when even one of those things happens, like something breaking around the house, as some primal part of my psyche whispers "this is how it begins."

That's because more than anything I like it when things are going right, when everything's under control, when there are no clouds on the horizon. Yesterday I listened to PJ Vogt, co-host of the podcast Reply All, describe how his mom obsesses about the health and well-being of everyone in her extended family. The only time she's truly relaxed and able to enjoy herself, Vogt said, was when everyone is gathered for a holiday or a reunion. That's when she can directly surveill the entire brood. No one is off falling ill or getting into an accident. Everyone's OK.

I don't have a worrying problem at this level, but I do have an addiction to security and safety. It's a trait that serves me well occasionally (saving money), but more often leads me to forgo even small risks or, worse, steer my children away from them for my peace of mind. Letting them go to camp this year was big in that regard. Maybe I can keep on taking those next steps toward their independence and my mental health.

They both had a great time at camp, by the way. Archer's favorite was all-you-can-eat meals at the cafeteria; CG's was the friends she made. You don't know how teary-eyed that last bit makes me, still, a month later.

30 minutes

I find myself with 30 minutes and no obvious task pressing itself upon me, demanding to get done. Next week is a short one, only three days of classes before a four-day weekend. I'm running (well, jogging) (well, mostly walking) (okay, all walking) a race tonight, so I don't need to squeeze in time at the gym. I glance up at my open tabs and there is my blog, opened when my browser starts like everyday. So here is my 30 minutes.

Like this unscheduled time, I feel the unbearable lightness of waiting. The steps toward my book's publication have been many in the last four months -- some big, like the compiling of the index and the final proofing of the galleys, which I did in late July and early August; and some small, like approving cover copy and answering copy-editor queries. But on October 5 my patient production editor sent the book to the printer. Now I look forward to holding it in my hands. A part of me worries that it will seem small and insignificant when I do, not worth the years I invested (not to mention the unbounded generosity of my interviewees). A part of me defensively shouts that I don't care if nobody reads it. But of course I do. All those steps, large and small, have left me proud of what it's turned out to be -- a pride that makes me vulnerable to what becomes of it.

And meanwhile my husband takes his own career-expanding steps (like his byline in the New York Times) and my children grow (into their choirs and online communities and YouTube channels and artistic endeavors). I think about what comes next after this book. I'm contracted to write a volume in this series, and I'm looking forward to it, but taking the first step is always difficult. I'm having a great semester teaching, and that makes me want to create new classes, but I also know that I should be making what I'm already teaching even better, for next time -- learning by redoing.

I turned 50 last week. It was marvelous; I feel great, I've lost 30 pounds since this time last year, I'm so much happier than I was two years ago. 50 feels like a freeing milestone instead of an ominous one, like the moment when the drive to the trailhead ends and the actual adventure begins. Noel threw a little gathering over Mexican food and fishbowl-sized margaritas, and I thanked my lucky stars that my terrible friendship skills haven't yet driven away my generous and forgiving friends. We're starting our twentieth year of marriage. I find it hard to believe how much we've done of what we always wanted to do, and how close we are to what we always wanted to become.

My time is up, and I'm off to the conclusion of a work week, spent as always with my students listening to some provocative, challenging, informative ideas. Until the next half-hour presents itself ...

Every now and then I hear our song

Colleagues on campus who foolishly ask what I'm up to are likely to receive a lengthy explanation of how I've never really had an academic summer. If I recall correctly, I taught a summer course my first or second year at UCA, and then went straight into an administrative position that offered 10.5 month employment for a few years, followed by a long stretch of 12-month administrative contracts. That ended in summer 2013 with a summer sabbatical, the only kind available to administrators. I took two week-long research trips that summer and spent every remaining day researching, conducting phone interviews, traveling within the state, correcting transcripts, and scrambling to be ready to start writing my book. But during this sabbatical, my dean pressed me for a commitment on whether I would continue in administration, and I declined to do so. The summer of 2012, then, would be the last I would spend working full time.

Turns out I would continue to do phone and local interviews into the early months of 2014; the only part of the book with a complete draft by the time classes ended that spring was the introduction. So I spent every day of summer 2014 writing. By the end of August, with classes already underway, I had six chapters done, with four more to go before my Christmas deadline. As I wrote in a January post, that summer I wrote a chapter every 2.4 weeks.

I got a very helpful reader report from my editor on March 2 of this year, and immediately began revisions. Once classes ended in early May, I was in the office full time every day doing additional research, editing, and rewriting. I turned in a revised manuscript on June 10.

And since then, it has been Summer. The kind where I don't have to come to the office, where no one is expecting me. I have work to do -- classes for fall to prepare (including a new one), some assessment (done), some faculty reports (done), and then the research and dreaming and thinking about the next scholarly projects -- but it's completely up to me when I want to make progress on that and when I want to do Summer Things. That's the life a lot of faculty live. Yes, many of them teach summer classes or take other temporary work (scoring standardized tests, teaching at summer programs), but many just have a Summer. Like the one I'm finally having.

I come to the office most days. I have research I want to move forward, and interlibrary loan books that I can only keep for a short time. Reading and thinking is a pleasurable occupation, especially compared to the stress of rewriting and cutting and checking citation formatting on a deadline. I give myself plenty of leeway to follow my train of thought wherever it leads, chasing down information on a stray inquiry if it grabs my interest. 

But I also take a walk every morning before the heat and humidity build to unbearable levels. Today I listened to podcasts, but most days I just think for half an hour. Yesterday I took the kids to a nearby state park and hiked a trail along the river. Now that Summer is here, I am going to do more of that.

Summer seems very short when the first six weeks of it are eaten up by deadline work. In July the kids have camps and Noel has trips; my days will not be my own, like they are now. In August the new semester will be on the doorstep. But Summer seems so long, so luxuriously empty, on a day like today. 

Style and struggle

2015 marks my sixteenth year teaching college freshman in writing-intensive courses. And not just any freshmen -- the top high school graduates of my state. Here's how the first few assignments of any given semester goes. They write informal reading responses for me that I love -- natural voice, clear presentation. Then I give them their first formal writing assignment. And all of a sudden, they write like space aliens forced to learn English through a 19th century grammar text and a thesaurus. Out of 500 words, fully half will be empty verbiage. Dangling introductory phrases appear out of nowhere. Idiomatic prepositions get mangled. Sentences run on and on, liberally sprinkled with commas -- or curiously devoid of a single pause. Avoidance of first person leads to pretzeled contortions -- or extraneous "I believe thats" and "In my views" pepper every other sentence. There is not a sentence to be found that would ever come out of a human being's mouth.

I find my hardest teaching task is getting these students to see and hear the impracticality of their writing. They are mortified when I point it out; it's obvious upon even a cursory second look. Yet the task of formal writing somehow makes it impossible for them to give that second look to themselves. I labor to get them to turn in clean, simple drafts. They have been rewarded for writing in this way, I suppose, and so that is the spigot that gets turned on whenever paragraphing and word counts are among the expectations. I wish I knew the magic words to get them to approach these formal writes in the natural, conversational, clear way they write informally.

Welcome back

I finished a book in 2014. It's the first time I've done that all on my lonesome since the early days of my professorship, when I turned my dissertation into a book. Looking back at the process, similarly to that previous experience, it's hard to believe I had the discipline. The introduction was written during the spring, but it wasn't until early May that I had a chance to start the body of the book in earnest. During the twelve weeks of summer break I wrote five chapters -- a pace of 1 chapter every 2.4 weeks. I knew that once the fall semester started, I wouldn't be able to keep up that pace. But with a deadline of late November, I needed to get close to it.

I'll never forget the moment in early October when I finished chapter 7. For weeks I'd been mapping out the time remaining on my deadline. "Chapter 7 is the third from the end," I rehearsed to myself. "Then one in October, one in November, and boom -- I'm done." Then, after putting that antepenultimate chapter to bed, I turned to my master outline. Wait -- what's this? There are ten chapters in my book?! That's right. I had allowed myself to misremember based on the nine themes I was exploring, one per chapter. But chapter 1 was background, not one of the themes. I still had three chapters to go. Writing the third-from-the-end chapter again in October was a low point. And I knew that Thanksgiving was right out. So I told my editors it would be Christmas, and I worked through my trip to the annual AAR meeting in San Diego -- the one I thought would be a book-finishing party -- to finish chapter 9. Finally, on the Friday before Christmas, I submitted the manuscript.

Since then, it's been vacation from almost everything having to do with school or scholarship. We played tabletop games with the kids everyday, from their first day of the break through New Year's. I relaxed into post-Christmas-rush knitting, the very best kind, when the deadlines fade and the knitter can consider her long-term needs and goals as well as her short-term gratification. Football ruled on the television, and we snuck a few screenings of 2014's best movies into our schedule, too. Noel made the most amazing holiday food of our lives -- baked goods, prime rib for Christmas dinner, a Yule log, corned beef and cabbage for New Year's Day.

I knew that when the calendar rolled over to 2015, my life would look very different. There's no book that I need to push forward a few more pages every day. Without having to carve out an hour or two, whatever could be spared, in my schedule for writing -- without promises to editors looming -- my prospects seemed to stretch out before me limitlessly.

So I made some resolutions. Here I am fulfilling one of them -- I'm going to get back to freewriting every day. It may not always be blogging, but it's likely to be blogging, quite a bit of the time. I've got a year's backlog of projects to post on Toxophily. And I'm tired of having a thought worth exploring, thinking "I ought to blog about that," and realizing that I'm not going to because all my writing energies need to be bent toward my book. I'm going to blog about those, this year.

Because it's freewriting, it's not going to be priceless pearls over here every day, loyal readers. Some days it will be just a brain dump, or worse -- the writing equivalent of taking the garbage to the curb. I'll try to be discerning enough to leave the dregs in draft.

But I'm excited about being back here. It's part of a larger set of resolutions, about making time for people I care about. Far too frequently in the past two years, as I've researched then written this book, my students and colleagues have knocked on my door only to have me communicate to them, by words or attitude, that I don't have time for them. I've stopped reading blogs and participating in my online communities. Yet when I do spend time with people who need my help or just want my company, they receive far more from me than I am actually expending. This year, and going forward, they're going to be welcome in my office, on my schedule, in my life.

That includes you, if you're reading this! I'm here for you. Ask a question, suggest a topic, offer feedback. I'll see you back here often.

Writing about writing

I shared a couple of Archer's writing camp pieces last week. Now here are a few of Cady Gray's compositions.

First thing each morning, the campers had prompts on the board and did a little writing before the official start of the schedule. The first day's quickwrite prompts were about being a fabulous writer.

What makes you a fabulous writer?
My writing is fabulous because of description and tone. I love describing objects or animals or even people, with fancy words. However, you have to keep a friendly tone, and too many fancy words spoil that tone. It is like that old saying, "Too much spice spoils the broth," or something like that. Just stay the same person throughout your writing. Don't be dramatic in some parts and casual in others. 

What could cause a writer to lose their thrill of writing?
If a writer stops writing for a while, they may pick it up again later. Then, one of two things will probably happen. One, they will "come back with fresh eyes," which means to catch things you didn't before, like spelling mistakes. Two, they will fumble a lot more and get mad at themselves, not wanting to continue and be disappointed again, and again, and again.

I think that the last day's quickwrite was about seeing a glimmer out of the corner of your eye. What happens next? You can see the influence of the YA fantasy-adventure she loves to read in this one.

I slowly creep toward the glimmer, hoping silently for gold. I reach it, and it is as if the very sun has broken through the ground to peek up at the earth. The glimmer rises from the ground, too bright to look at, and everything goes to black ...

"I am in a dream," is my first thought. A rippling effect, pink and resonating. That is what I see in front of me, all around me. A voice, soft and innocent, speaks. "Help ... you ... You must save ... our world ... You are the only one ..." A shock passes through my spine as the ripple effect becomes more violent and the pink turns to purple. Another voice, desperate and echoing, screams. "HELP!" A fuzzy vision plays in my head. An oval-spheric pink blob is there, floating above the ground. It has large eyes and a flap-like mouth. It has no nose, and purpleish spots along its sides. It is being chased by a three-headed dragon-like creature. The middle head snaps at the blob, and it all fades into white ... 

 

Robotboy writing

Noel and I tag our tweets about Archer "#robotboy." It's an affectionate reference to his sometimes machine-like demeanor and behavior, as well as a shout-out to a favorite Guided by Voices song, "Gold Star for Robot Boy."

This past week, the kids went to Bearswrite, a writing camp at UCA.  Cady Gray went last year, and this year the grade range was expanded to secondary school. We were thrilled that CG enticed her brother to attend with mention of the cool technology they use.

Over the next several entries, I'll share some of their writing from camp. Today, a couple of Archer's pieces -- one that surprised me with its reach toward some kind of life wisdom, and one that shows that although he's come so very far, he's still the same kid with the same autistic obsessions.

This first is a series of haikus -- the prompt, I gather, was to write in the voice of an older person giving advice. AA was most proud of the way he put the introduction (with its reference to "glows and grows," camp-speak for praise and suggestions), in the form of a haiku.

Advice from an Old Man

I made this myself.
Post glows and grows you may have
In the comments list.

“I have seen long life,
The wisdom of existence
Can still be better.

“Humanity’s claim…
‘Everyone constantly learns.’
Now for what I think…

“‘Keep on improving.
Continue renovations.
Yearn for knowledge.’

“No-one is perfect,
But get as close as you can.
That is the spirit.

“Some are silly, yet
Others are intelligent.
Humans are diverse.

“Settle with yourself.
Don’t yearn to be someone else.
Just be who you are.”

I don't know if this is in response to a prompt. But it's so wonderfully typical.


Flash Fiction #1 :-)

I was just relaxing in my hotel room when I saw someone break in! The chase was on! We both proceeded to go in our cars. I had to catch the criminal before we reached his hideout, 4.7 miles from I-40 Exit 175A. We just passed Exit 148, so the chase was still far from over. He began to speed, suddenly and unexpectedly! The speed limit was 70 (65 for trucks), but he went 87 mph! I continued the chase anyway without calling the police, because I didn’t want to call while driving. 18.2 miles later, the criminal passed Exit 173—bad news for me, because I was still 0.4 miles behind him and he was only 6.7 miles away from his hideout. I sped up to 70 mph, right at the top of the speed limit! I was so close—only 315 feet away from him—when he got off on the wrong exit (Exit 175B)! I took the chance to get off on Exit 175A and travel the remaining 4.7 miles to his hideout. While he was still on the road, I called the police. They caught him for breaking in and speeding, so he had to pay a $9,999.99 fine and serve 3 months in jail. I finally returned to my hotel room afterward.

Hail the Gatekeeper

Janus was the Roman god of transition. It's a strange thing to have a god for, at first glance. But anyone who's studied anthropology will recognize why he's needed. Any beginning or ending, any movement from one state to another, is fraught.

We've arrived at the annual moment where our culture recognizes this. And for me in particular, the transition into a new year, with its accompanying look back at 2013 and expression of hope for 2014, is an especially rich story of beginnings and endings.

I'm spending this last day of 2013 interviewing the 84th subject for my research into the prayer shawl ministry, and reviewing and tagging a transcript from one of my earlier interviews. It's hard to remember that eight months ago I had yet to do a single interview. I was nervously anticipating the inauguration of this new project, looking back with some regret at the phase of textual research -- a process I know how to do! -- that I was leaving behind for uncharted waters. One of the most unexpected rewards of this research has been learning that I am good at these qualitative interviews, and that when I'm doing them I am a better person -- a more empathetic person, a better listener, a more attentive and responsive dialogue partner. Another surprise: Just when I'm most concerned about how much I'm asking of those kind enough to agree to an interview, they tell me how much I've given to them, by prompting them to think, by valuing what they say and do, by opening a space for them to speak.

Now the trepidation moves to 2014, when I have to leave the data-gathering phase behind and produce the written analysis. I am optimistic, but still, the unknowns of the process are daunting.

In 2013, I started leaving behind the world of pop culture criticism that I have pursued, in some form or another, since college. I hit my high point in terms of audience and influence in the process of that exit, with my reviews of the last season of Breaking Bad for the A.V. Club. In 2014 I'll review the last 11 episodes of How I Met Your Mother and write an overview of the series for the A.V. Club's 100 Episodes feature. And then I'll be done.

I'm looking forward to exiting that grind and focusing on the grinds that are more directly related to my academic goals as a teacher and scholar. But I'll miss the push to reflect critically and to appreciate expansively. I'll miss the readers and the community of TV critics.

It's almost hard to remember how I fit it in, but the other thing I did last summer was compile a massive four-volume application for promotion to full professor. That rank represents the top of my profession. As of this moment the application has successfully wended its way through two committees and two administrative reviews, and awaits action in 2014 by the provost and the board of trustees. I expect to remove the "associate" from my title this spring, just in time to also remove the "dean."

I'll never get used to this process of looking back and forward. When I turn my gaze to the things already done or set in motion, I can't believe I found the time and energy. When I imagine what current efforts will look like when complete, I can't picture myself as the source and the agent. It's a pleasant shock, though, to glance back and be flummoxed by what you managed to accomplish, and to peek forward and get all excited about what it will feel like to glance back this time in 2014. I hope all of you are having similar feelings on this day -- Janus's Day Eve.

A new season

Tomorrow I turn 48 years old. You know, as long as there's a four in that tens column, I still feel young. And in two years when that changes, I'll probably feel young anyway.

I haven't written much in the last year. A post a quarter, maybe two. It's because I've been busy, of course; in my down moments I haven't felt like doing much other than knitting, sitting, watching TV, hugging my daughter. But it's also because this past year has been All About Me, and even though this is my blog, I've never been comfortable treating it as a therapist's couch. I haven't wanted to show up every few days and repeat the same stuff about my mid-life crisis.

But you know what? I think that's finally over. I made the decision to leave administration, and despite some lingering backward glances at the extra money, I'm happy about that every day. I couldn't be prouder of Noel and the awesome work he's doing at his brand new publication. I'm bringing to a close a period in my life where I practiced weekly television criticism, and reclaiming those evenings as time to do something other than work. And I've gotten an immense, humbling outpouring of praise for that work as the series I cover come to a close -- a thousand times more readers than I ever could have imagined, and hundreds of people saying nice things about what the work has meant to them. My promotion application for full professor is making its way up the chain of command. I've even gotten a couple of recent invitations to speak at conferences, related both to my theological work and my criticism. My research excites me, my book is underway, and there's a stack of other projects I hope to get to someday. It feels very much like I've made it to where I wanted to be when I started out.

Maybe it's the end of weekly writing about television that has prompted me to come back here. I've learned a lot about writing from blogging every day for years; I put much of it to use writing on short deadlines two and three times a week. I wouldn't like to see those muscles atrophy. (I'll need them for all the books I have to write.)

And while I've been away, my kids have been growing. I love to write about my kids. They are endlessly fascinating. People tell me they like to read about my kids -- well, about Archer particularly. He's done amazing things while I've been writing elsewhere. I don't want to miss the chance to get the stories down, and to share them. (I'm inspired here by amonthofson.com, Matthew Baldwin's lovely project about how his classically-autistic boy interacts with the world.)

So let's see if we can meet here more often, shall we? Teaching, writing, television, kids, theology, movies, sports, and the occasional self-indulgent state-of-the-Donna report. Hope it turns out well for all of us.

No retreat, no surrender

Now it can be told. The new publishing venture that I mentioned in my last infrequent update, the one that Noel is helping to launch (and his first salaried, non-freelance job in decades) is The Dissolve, a new film site from Pitchfork Media. Right now they're just a placeholder site, a Tumblr, and a Twitter account, but the first real content will hit the streets next month. (And notice how cleverly I titled that last post, before the name of the site had officially been announced.)

Noel is energized and feeling creative, both doing administrative thinking like mapping out how the DVD reviews will be assigned and scheduled, and writing essays and reviews that will start appearing when the site goes live. It's a terrific place for him to be in his early forties: starting a new venture that builds on all the experience and expertise he's developed in the past twenty-odd years of critical writing.

And me? Well, I'm almost as happy as he is. Happier, maybe. I set out with some trepidation on my first research trip last month, to Hartford, Connecticut. This was the acid test. Could I find prayer shawl knitters to talk to? Would they want to talk to me, if I found them? Would my questions elicit the kinds of information I needed to know? I was elated by the result. I talked to 15 people in 8 interviews over the course of 6 full days in Hartford -- mostly in the surrounding area: Windsor, South Windsor, Farmington, Stafford Springs, Vernon. They were generous with their time and with their organizational energy, helping me get in touch with other members of their groups. And they seemed to appreciate the questions I asked, both the prosaic ones that allowed them to explain how their ministries worked, and the more unusual ones that asked them to reflect on what it means. I came home with about eleven and a half hours of interview recordings. And with some new ideas, too, about what themes might be present in this subject matter and in these women's experience that I hadn't hypothesized. That's how qualitative research is supposed to work; you continually reshape your hypothesis and redirect your investigation based on what you find as you explore. How relieved I am to find that it's happening here!

In a couple of weeks I head to Seattle for my second research trip, and my calendar for the six full days I'm there is already chock full of interviews. I'm trying to push myself to make maximum use of my time in the field, but I know now from experience that doing these interviews is hard work. I was glad in Hartford for some downtime, an empty morning or afternoon here and there (my evenings were almost all taken), to be alone and rest from the effort of connecting with other human beings. I was glad for flexibility in my driving schedule, so I could head out early if need be to avoid rush hour traffic and the frequent heavy rain that blanketed Connecticut while I was there. Knowing I was not so tightly scheduled was important for my peace of mind.

I've also used my freedom while on sabbatical to think about my mid-life crisis, to examine my reactions to this research activity and to being free of administrative duties, and have some preliminary thoughts about what I want the rest of my academic career to look like. Just preliminary; every time I follow them too far down the road to prospective action I get cold feet. But I'm remembering what led me into this life in the first place, and what fed my fire in those early years. I'm different now, but it's still useful to ask the question of what I would most regret not accomplishing twenty years in the future, based on what I wanted to do when I started out and what I've found that I have to offer along the way.

More to come, of course. Meanwhile. bookmark The Dissolve, and if you're in the Seattle area, let me know so we can cross paths while I'm there.

Dissolve to next scene

Definition of infrequent posting: My last post was in late March, and announced my sabbatical for the summer (actually nearly a month after it was approved). This post, on Mother's Day 2013, contemplates the start of my sabbatical in just two days.

It seems like it's taken at least a full semester since spring break to get to this long-awaited point, even though it's only been seven weeks. April has been a month of intense hard work, with two major service projects in my two classes involving on-campus events coming to fruition. I ended the semester drained; the word that kept coming to mind, frankly, was "defeated." But at least it wasn't an ordinary summer stretching out in front of me. Wonderful as that can be to look forward to, it wasn't going to cut it in my burned-out state.

Because of my sabbatical, I won't be working on anything but my book after Tuesday. Well, I'll have to work on my promotion application, which has made almost no progress since spring break, and will be due shortly after I return from sabbatical. But nothing that has to do with my normal administrative duties. No freshman orientation. No information management. No reports. No strategic planning. No assessment. No curriculum development. No course prep. Nothing but reading, writing, interviewing, and organizing material for my prayer shawl ministry book.

It might sound like I'm already there. But this week, representing the transition from my administrative job to my sabbatical, involves several big tasks.

Here's my to-do list for Monday and Tuesday, my last days at work as associate dean:

• Complete sections of the annual report for which I'm responsible, chiefly reporting on the status of goals from the last year.
• List specifications for computer and A/V purchases for several classrooms, so that they can be ordered by the secretary.
• Brainstorm goals for the upcoming year with administrative team.
• Convert cash donations for service learning fundraisers into checks, write cover letters, and send to the appropriate charities.

And here's my to-do list for Wednesday through Friday, the first days of my sabbatical:

• Familiarize myself with my interview recording setup.
• Ascertain if I need any more equipment or backups.
• Conduct a trial run of my interview outline with a local subject.
• Schedule and confirm interviews in Hartford, Connecticut, where I'm headed next week.
• Make travel plans for my next trip in late June.
• Continue reading and notetaking from my growing stack of research texts.

Noel is in Chicago this upcoming week starting his new job (details on that forthcoming). It's hugely exciting for both of us to be opening the door to new lives in the same week. His change is more permanent; mine is more of an extended vacation from my usual routine. I'm as eager for him to get started as I am to start my own sabbatical. In his absence, I have a few additional items for the ol' to-do list, related to being sole custodial parent this week, including school chauffeuring duties that will shorten my office workdays by a couple of hours (making those Monday-Tuesday to-dos more difficult to achieve without taking work home).

I've been looking forward to this Wednesday, May 15, the first day of my sabbatical, for a long time. I'm nervous about being able to do what I'm setting out to do, and I'm aware that I'll be working just as hard and long on this (if not more so) as I do on my teaching and administrative work normally. I'm already stressing about squeezing all the pre-Hartford sabbatical tasks into just a few days this week before I hop on a plane next Monday. 

But oh, the appeal, the longed-for luxury of turning my attention to Just One Thing rather than trying to squeeze my scholarly work and theological thinking into the odd half-hours left over after the million and one things of my normal job. Sabbatical, here I come.

Taking a break

It's spring break. More accurately, it's the last day of spring break. And it's been a fantastic experience. Every day I've been in the office, mostly all alone (on two days, two different co-workers were also present). Spring break is like a harbinger of summer, with its empty campus and long stretches of unallocated time.

And then the end of the semester rushes back, and it's five weeks of utter chaos before summer actually starts. Usually I think of that chaos as the last gasp of activity before a more leisurely pace for three months. But this year is different.

I applied for and received a sabbatical for the upcoming summer. Most sabbaticals are given for fall or spring semesters, because most faculty don't have regular duties in the summer for which they would need official release. But administrators, like me, can only be granted a sabbatical for the summer, because their administrative functions would (presumably) be more difficult to replace or reassign than the teaching duties of faculty in a normal semester.

This is the first sabbatical I've ever applied for. I'm in my twelfth year of teaching. Prior to a few years ago, when I considered a sabbatical, I didn't have a major project that warranted a request. But now I do -- a book about the theology of prayer shawl ministries, under contract and due next spring.

And the university and the publishing company aren't the only institutions expecting results from my summer off. I have a grant covering some of the travel I need to do for my research and even a course release to give me more time to write this fall. There are another couple of grants still in the pipeline, at least one of which I'm quite hopeful will be funded.

So my sabbatical will be far from relaxing. On the contrary, I'm hoping to travel fully a third of the time. But I'm still looking forward to it as a period of much-needed rest. While I'm not in active crisis like I was a few months ago, I'm still experiencing burnout in my job. I'm still feeling dread about the approaching pressure to step up in administration, and still wondering whether I should instead step aside.

If anything, although my emotional state about it all is more stable, the conditions at work have become harder for me to treat with equanimity. Not that anything overt is wrong, but that the ever-elusive promise of stability and order continues to slip farther and farther into fantasy. I crave work in which I control the pace and the outcome. For scholars, that's research. I'm well aware that it's asking far too much; few human beings ever have the chance of experiencing such control. But those of us in academia usually have some taste of it, and when they're not teaching, faculty typically set aside periods  for it. Right now, that kind of life seems mighty appealing.

So I'm looking forward to throwing myself into research and writing almost full-time for the rest of 2013. It's a test, of sorts, to see whether I get it out of my system and emerge ready to take up the administrative mantle again, or whether I find myself unable to contemplate a life without ample time for scholarly immersion. or something in between.

And when it's over, if all goes as I think it should, my application to be promoted to full professor will be nearing approval. I know my boss will be looking forward to the end of next year as a return to full strength for the department, with sabbaticals for me and another faculty member behind us. But I've long anticipated that moment of promotion as permission to look around and see what other opportunities exist. It's hard to contemplate changing jobs, moving my family, any of those massive disruptions. And I'm not planning on it. But after the freedom to work on my own behalf, on my own project, comes the freedom to see whether that work (and my other experience) can bear more fruit elsewhere than it can here.

What I see is so much more than I can say

Yesterday I posted a lengthy and photo-rich account of some overdyeing experiments. You can read it all at Toxophily, or if you aren't interested in the details, just revel in the eye candy.



But I know that what Noel and other family members are craving isn't pictures of yarn. So to go along with the above photo snapped as we were heading toward the exhibits at EcoFest 2012, here's a short piece of writing that Cady Gray brought home from school.

The Tye-Dye

Once upon a time, I went to Tennessee with my Grandma Libby. We Tye-Dyed one day with a tye-dye kit. We did three swirl patterns and two bullseyes. I did a freehand and one of the swirls. I did a swirl pair of socks and a pair of splatter socks too. We used a neon color kit, but we have a primary one at home. I hope I get to do it again someday.

Summer's end

Labor Day weekend is the unofficial end of summer, but the weather has picked this moment to give us a last blast of heat and humidity. In the wake of Tropical Depression Isaac, which brought us some much-appreciated rain, the heat index is soaring into the triple digits again. Regardless of how it feels, though, some things are coming to an end, and other things are beginning, just as they do every year.

I'm focusing on the things that are ending. It's not just nostalgia or regret; some of those things I'm glad to see end, at least temporarily. Two of my major summer writing projects, the TV Club Classic coverage of Sports Night and the regular coverage of Breaking Bad, are going on hiatus until next year, and it's a relief. Those pieces take a lot of concentration, time, and anxiety every week, and it will be nice to have them off my plate for a while. Sports Night's last season 1 post went up this past Wednesday, and Breaking Bad's last episode of the current half-season is tonight. It's still a couple of weeks until the other shows I cover regularly (How I Met Your Mother and Modern Family) start their seasons, so I've got a nice break coming up.

It's also pleasant to have the kids' birthday party and the Ravellenics behind me. Last week I went to the Rhea Lana sale and bought most of the clothes they'll need until next spring (I hope). I still haven't cleaned out their closets of too-small items, or unpacked the bags of jeans and jackets I hauled home from that sale, but at least I'm more than halfway ready for colder weather. And with all the Ravellenic administration in the past, I've gleefully started what I hope is a binge of knitting things to keep other people warm, whether they are friends or strangers in need.

We've been having our master bathroom remodeled this summer, and that's nearly done, too. The pace would be considered too leisurely for people more outcome-focused than ourselves, or for a room where the loss of function is more disruptive. But we're just proud that we've gotten the process underway after years of knowing it needed to be done.

That's also the way I feel about starting a conversation with a financial planner this summer. We haven't finalized much yet, but stuff is in the works: more life insurance, rearranging some assets to provide more focused retirement funds, college savings, and an easier way to keep track of it all. I'm so pleased with myself for finally moving in this direction after living so long with the uneasy feeling that I wasn't properly taking care of business, that I'm not in too much of a hurry to get everything signed and squared away; it's enough that the ball is rolling.

Maybe this change of seasons isn't really about things ending, or about us moving on. It's about not having wasted the time we've been spending. And that goes for time with the kids, too, which right now is not a matter of long looks backward, but lovely moments that still linger in the now.

Dazzling

When I got home this afternoon, a delighted Noel made Archer come tell me about an unexpected homework assignment. "I had to do something for my parents without being told to," he said. "So I cleaned my room without anybody asking."

Later that night I reminded him that he had a questionnaire about that assignment to fill out. He came back having written only one sentence under each of the three questions, even though there were several blank lines available. I had a little chat with him about how the space provided tells you something about the expectations, and made a deal that if he wrote enough to get down to the fifth line, he could play some more DS.

I loved what he wrote. He was a little apprehensive about the third answer, asking me "What if what I wrote just started being garbage that is off-topic?", but I thought he fulfilled my request cleverly and well. The first sentence of each answer, by the way, is the original response, before his elaboration.

"DAZZLE" YOUR PARENTS 

Do something for your parents, grandparents, or someone you live with. Do something nice without being asked or told to do it (e.g. clean your room, or feed the dog without being told). 

1. Write what you did to "DAZZLE." 

I cleaned my room without being told. I sorted the books and instruction booklets. I did it with so much vigor, it was amazing! I could not have done it faster. It was clocked in at about 1 minute, 30 seconds. 

2. Write what your parents, grandparents, or guardians did when they were "DAZZLED." 

They were very proud of me! There was no special reward, but at least I got their respect. If I could rate it on a scale of 0 (worst quality ever) to 10 (best quality ever), I would rate it a 9.1. 

3. Write how it made your feel to "DAZZLE." 

I felt proud to myself. I got 100% of the credit. I got 100%, the entire thing, the whole enchilada, yada yada yada.  Cady Gray (my 7-year-old sister) may have helped, but she decided not to.

Passing the Grade 4 ACTAAP

Archer wrote a personal narrative in his fifth grade literacy class.  He created an outline, did a rough draft, and then revised. For content, he needed an introduction paragraph, a beginning events paragraph, a middle events paragraph, an ending events paragraph, and a concluding paragraph; the narrative had to include character(s), setting, problem clearly stated, transition words, and solution clearly stated. The rubric for style scored him on an effective lead, specific nouns, hefty verbs, adjectives, adverbs, figurative language, descriptions appeal to the senses, dialogue, and an effective conclusion. 

The following personal narrative earned full points. I think you can clearly see how Archer adapts his own obsessions, the things he's interested in (like video games -- "Spin Off" is a Wii Party game) and the filters of quantification through which he experiences them, into a more standard format of storytelling with many of the external trappings of emotion and narrative arc. It's also interesting that he's the only character, putting himself in conversation and conflict not with another person, but with a test booklet and himself.

Passing the Grade 4 ACTAAP

It was the day of the first section of the ACTAAP Benchmark Test, Grade 4. I felt like my most stressful day ever. "This will DEFINITELY be a challenging test," I thought sadly, gulping. 

I was starting the Grade 4 Benchmark in Marguerite Vann Elementary on April 15, 2011, at 8:30 in the morning. First, I did a bunch of Math sections quickly, but then, there was the first writing prompt. It read, "Write about a toy that you had for a while." "What toy should I choose?" I thought, worried. After pondering that for a long time, I finally chose my mini-pinball table. I scored 19 out of 20 points. 

Soon enough, I faced a 2nd writing prompt that read, "Imagine you went to a castle that appeared overnight." I already knew the idea. I told proudly to myself, "This is going to be the easiest prompt ever!" I used "Spin-Off" castle with Takumi, Tatsuaki, and Lucia as my other characters. I would do a Spin-Off Battle against them and see who could bank up the most medals. I scored only 18 out of 20 points. 

Then the Benchmark ended. After 4 reading sections with topics easy to understand, there were no more Open-Responses to complete. I explained, "The rest of this test will be more like the Iowa test, which has no open-responses." To my surprise, I was finished as quick as a wink! 

At the end of the Benchmark, I was all exclamatory! I was also proud of myself. Have you ever faced a difficult test?

Writers write

You may have noticed that I haven't been writing here every day. I made a special effort -- sometimes a superhuman one, it felt like -- to blog every day for several years. But after missing a day or two inadvertently recently, the imperative has seemed less urgent. I've tried not to let more than a couple of days go by without writing, but when I've been traveling, or writing elsewhere, or just didn't have anything to say ... I let it go.

And I've been having a lot of trouble figuring out what to write about for quite a long time. I feel like I need to stay away from religion and politics, except in a careful and general way, because people close to me whose views aren't really congruent with mine make up a big chunk of my readership. I doubt they want to read any tossed-off rants, and walking a tightrope of appropriate tone and balance isn't something I'm usually excited about doing in my leisure time. For some reason, other topics that have made up a big chunk of my posting in the past -- anecdotes about the kids, popular culture, technology -- have fallen by the wayside. I'm left with my crafting (which also takes a lot of effort to write about, what with the template I've set for myself) and my work. And every time I finish a post about administration or teaching, I wonder whether I'm really communicating with anybody but myself and a couple of other academic types.

Writing every day was important to me for a long time. I used it as a discipline that gave my life order. I tried to keep my chops honed for the many pages of text I'm regularly asked to grind out on short notice. And I felt an obligation to my readers to be there for them.

I have plenty of other disciplines these days, from classwork to service to sticking with my diet. My readers are few, and if they are anything like me, the way they read blogs (through RSS feeds or aggregated subscriptions) prevents them from noticing when I take a day or two off.

What I worry most about, by letting the blog relax into a more occasional thing, is whether I will lose my ability to crank it out. I don't want to become a writer who needs inspiration to get the words flowing. There's too much prose for which colleagues rely on me to become an artistic type. Every week when I have to produce a TV review in an hour or so, I feel relieved to find out I can still do it. Whether I come back to this blog on a daily basis, continue at this relaxed pace, or let it slide into abandonment, will depend less on whether I find subject matter that motivates me, and more on whether I feel I need the structure.

The craft of writing

The writing department at my university runs an annual literary festival called ArkaText. It features writers based on Arkansas or with a connection, either personal or thematic, to the state.

This spring the faculty were kind enough to invite Noel to be one of those writers. He gave a "craft talk" to a group of faculty and students in the morning, was treated to lunch with faculty members, and in the afternoon did a reading (of a couple of VSEs -- this one and this one) to the general public.

Even though I tell people all the time that my husband's a writer; even though Noel and I talk about writing all the time; even though I've taught courses on writing for the very department that invited him -- I still find it strange to watch Noel in that setting. He spends all his time writing. Now suddenly he's being asked to spend a whole day talking about writing instead of doing it.

It's not that he doesn't have plenty to say that's valuable to writing students about what he does. His presentations -- both of them -- got great reviews. It's more the psychological and cultural distance between writing, and being named, treated, and queried as a writer. Whenever you make that move from the daily work to the social meaning of your role, its status and connotations, you feel a shift.

That shift is enhanced when you go outside your normal site and are introduced to strangers in terms of your role. They don't know you as a person; they only know what they've been told you do. Then it's up to you to live up to those expectations, or to ignore them if you prefer.

I'm going to a university in a nearby community on Monday to give an invited talk. As I prepare my presentation, I'm not just thinking about the topic of my talk. I'm thinking about how they'll see me. I'm thinking about my image as a professor, and the image of my department and my university.  The school that invited me is a more conservative place than my home institution. I don't want to offend, but I also want to represent my topic and myself accurately. I want those who attend to leave informed and challenged, not only about my topic but about me.

In between my work, my self, and my various roles, lies my self image. And it's constantly on the move. I can't imagine how hard it must be for people who have more roles they need to fill and more people they need to please.

That awkward age

I probably use the word "awkward" more than most English speakers.  That's because it's one of the words I write most often on student papers.  My high-ability freshmen suffer from chronic overwriting; they use twenty words when two would do, and twist them into the most convoluted and often nonsensical students you can imagine.  "Awkward construction" I write on a sentence that contains three unnecessary dependent clauses.  "Awkward pronoun usage" I write on a sentence that turns itself inside out trying not to commit to the gender of a hypothetical person.  "Awkward" I write, just plain "awkward," on any sentence that would cause someone reading aloud to stumble or backtrack.

On the last day of school before the winter break, both kids were invited to wear their pajamas to school.  I drove Cady Gray there, as I usually do.  "This feels awkward," she kept saying in the back seat, referring to the sensation of wearing inside clothes outside.

This afternoon, Noel enlisted Cady Gray's help with some holiday baking.  She sampled the batter for some primal cocoa and nut bites.  "This tastes awkward," she giggled, unfamiliar with the texture of unbaked batter and non-flour-based treats alike.

I'm not sure where she's picked up that word, but it strikes me as the perfect adjective for the situations where she used it.  Awkward is not fitting into the usual categories, the well-worn tracks of our lives.  Awkward is out of place, square pegs in round holes.  But awkward isn't necessarily wrong.  It should be noticed, but maybe sometimes it should be embraced.

Avoidance

Work you don't want to do can lead you to find other work, sometimes to a perverse degree. Right now I'm avoiding the intense and repetitive work of evaluating student work before final grades are due next Monday.

And what I've chosen to do instead is work I could easily have avoided entirely.  There are a dozen students graduating this December, and we're holding our usual banquet for them and their families this Friday.  At the May version of this banquet, when the numbers of graduates have sometimes reaches eighty or nine in recent years, my boss gives an address.  Several years ago, he asked me to take over giving the address in December, to give him a rest from speaking and often giving the same talk twice a year.

We're not going to have any December banquets after next year; the size of our entering classes have dwindled by a third due to scholarship cuts, and the winter graduating cohort will be able to be counted on one hand.  Those graduates will be invited to the May banquet in the same calendar year.  And so I've got only a couple more of these talks to give, and coincidentally a couple of talks already written that work in pretty much any year.

You see where this is going.  Instead of grading, I'm writing a new address.  In fact, I've probably done this same thing two or three times before during my time in this role.  I tell myself it's because I've got something new to say, or some thought I want to get out of my head and into a more coherent form.  This year I'm trying to coalesce some of the thoughts about quality that my seniors and juniors in the past two semesters have expressed in their final presentations, and give them back to the students in a form that will let them see the collection whole.

But really my writing comes from the same impulse that leads us to clean our homes, or organize our desks, or rearrange our computer's document filing system.  It's a way of putting off the work we don't want to do at the moment without giving up on working altogether.  Work that doesn't actually have to be done at all, let alone that second, is the purest form of avoidance.