strong statement on climate change by 56 newspapers in 20 languages

Really? This is fucking wow:

Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency.

How I gots me the cyber scurvy

I am not much of a committed blogger lately. I thought I would get back into posting pics on flickr, but meh. Facebook? I am starting to hate it. Like, really really loathe the fact that I waste time by looking at it 20X a day, despite the fact that it usually makes me feel either bored or irritated or mildly creepy in a joyless voyeuristic kind of way. Why do I look at it? I am getting nothing out of it. I mean, I like my friends but I’d rather actually see them than read the endless witticisms and trivialities that make up for real face to face, embodied interaction.

Oh, so grinchy.

It’s just… I feel my time being sucked into this online vacuum. I spend entire days farfing around getting nothing done but maybe a few emails and a list here and there. Not doing yoga, or going for runs or reading or writing. But yeah, I’m keeping up with the status updates. Oh boy. Can’t miss a single one of those.

I’m also grinchy about the discovery that a google search of my email address reveals pretty much all of my personal information — my gender, age, flickr photos, the alias I use, what social networking I’m on. Check it out. Go to spokeo.com and see how much of you is on the web, free. Who knows what’s available for anyone willing to pay the low low fee of $2.95/month to find out more.

Ugh. It kind of makes me want to delete everything and start over, smarter. Why? I resent the fact that all that stuff is so easily available for anyone who cares to plug my email address into a search engine. And yet, I put all those pictures up, I have no problem linking to them from my blog, I freely give the lion’s share of my time and attention to bullshit social networking… None of it is problematic in any true sense because, hell, who am I kidding? I’m not exactly living on the edge with a lot of things to hide and/or regret. Really, it’s all so completely banal to anyone except perhaps the handful of people who actually know me and give a shit. Or I guess potential stalkers, but it would seem that they’d have their pick of easy stalkable targets with all this information flying all over the place.

But still. I hate the feeling of realizing that I have freely participated in populating the fishbowl of my online identity, and I’ve gotten very little out of it. How’s that for instrumentalism? I don’t really like spending my time on facebook any more. I hardly ever blog except to complain about stuff. I’m totally overwhelmed even trying to keep up with reading blogs, even though I have a bunch that I really enjoy.

What is it, this online malaise? There must be a name for it by now. Hmmm… Network fatigue? Cyber scurvy? Dudes, I am so coining that. It’s what I got. The cause: a steady diet of bland social networking, aimless blog scrolling and compulsive email checking. Since I just discovered this disease, I guess I will have to experiment to find out the remedy. I’m sure it is something very simple, like oranges or killing the facebook.

Seriously. I’m going to do this.

Remedy for Cyber Scurvy

Take in a 24-hour cycle

• 8-9 hours sleep
• 1.5 hours exercise (walking, running, or yoga)
• 5 hours maximum computer work (includes writing, research and work-related emailing) – during computer work, all social networking is turned OFF
• 1.5 hours maximum computer play (non-work email, blog reading/writing, twitter, etc.) – to be taken in three 30 minute doses
• 1.5 hours minimum reading
• 1 hour minimum embodied social interaction with actual friends and family (includes talking on the phone if necessary)
• 30 min. banjo
• 30 min. knitting

That leave 3.5 hours for transportation, chores, cooking/eating and other stuff. Really? Oh damn, I have to go to bed right now to get my 8 hours before 6am.

I will probably report progress in a couple of days. Wish me luck!

Ok, that was intense

I am taking some deep breaths and I am sipping a glass of wine (the malbec that Liza-Lou & I made at the brewery — so good!). Tab A and the kids are playing table hockey (yo, GDM!) and our rooms are toasty warm and smelling of Moon’s bath. There is music playing (Aimee Mann), and the dog and the cat are curled up snoozing on the bed.

Everything is okay — wonderful, really. But the last few weeks have been crazy intense and scary with Tab A’s (possible) reaction to the H1N1 vaccine. We still don’t know if it’s just a weird coincidence that he had a major and totally out of the blue breakdown 5 days after getting the shot, but the lingering results are suspicious — dizziness, headaches, disorientation. Bad brain-related shit that is really very scary. He’s still sorting out getting some serious medical attention, but we are on top of it. And he is getting better — much, much better.

Really, though, the past three weeks have been more or less crisis mode, what with not knowing if things were going to get better or worse, and being very scared about what was happening. I have recognized my response to crisis: to not consider that the worst is imminent. To resolutely refuse the possibility of a terrible outcome. To convince myself, everything is okay, and to say this over and over and over again even though I have no fucking idea if anything is okay at all.

In the end, though, all I have is some abstract faith that everything will be — has to be — okay. It’s the same thing I told Dave over and over when he told me before the surgery how scared he was of not making it through. No, I said, everything will be okay.

It’s hard to think of that right now in light of this. I still miss Dave fiercely, some days more than others, but the thought of losing Tab A does not even compute. Instead, we talk about how this has changed our thinking about everyday life and the future. The high-stress, competitive, race to the finish mindset? Really, not that appealing. Tab A’s program is very much structured in a way that funnels doctoral students into that mode, and it’s really not cool. At all. I’ve been lucky to have a program and a set of supervisors much more flexible in that regard, but we both realize that that’s what academia is largely about. And to be honest, it is really unappealing. Because we can both play that game, but at the end where are we? Vying for tenure in an environment that is just more of the same old shit, for practically ever (or until tenure, which might as well be forever the way things are going with the university).

No. Fuck that. I’m not fucking going to do it.

I do this work because I love it. I think it’s important, and I think it makes a difference in the world. I want to teach and do research that (I think) helps us fight the good fight to keep this planet sane and safe. I don’t want to be ground down by the satanic mill in any form, university industrial complex or otherwise.

So yeah, I’m well aware of the enormous privilege that comes with opportunity to study at the level I am. I don’t take lightly the opportunity to have full funding for the next two (well, 1.5) years of that study. I will make the most of that opportunity, and I will continue to work my ass off in a way that honours both my passion for knowledge and for a balanced, grounded existence with full awareness of my connectedness to all life on this planet. One cannot cancel out the other.

I’m not totally sure what that means yet, but I am grateful for the wake-up call, and for all the other innumerable things that are wonderful and amazing in my life.

How I got my just deserts

That “victory” post a few weeks back? Yeah, I should have known it would come back to bite me in the ass. Anyway, if you haven’t already gone done and shot yourself up with the poison otherwise known as the H1N1 vaccine, don’t do it. My household has had a rather large shot-related scare, and after doing a bit of research we are highly suspicious of the contents of the vaccine, as well as the shady science legitimating its use. I’m sure you’ll hear about it soon enough, because with the numbers of folks that have been injected, it’s sure to surface at some point — even with the stupidhead media pundits pushing it like crack that’s good for you. I know it’s probably too late for this, but beware the hype.

In other news, there is no fucking other news. We stopped listening to it because it’s sickening.

(Actually, I lie. There is other news but it will have to wait for another, less angry post. The last couple of weeks have been tough, is all. We’ll get over it.)

 

Slow motion day

I think my yoga practice for today will be an afternoon nap. I started out the day full of hope and promise — after two long days at 2nd Job today was looking like a shining beacon of opportunity to get some post-workshop, pre-book work done to clear my desk so I can get to what I really want to do — my directed studies paper on Polanyi.

But no. Apparently it is not to be. I got a little bit done this morning, but so far my day has mostly been spent trying to clear some work space out from under the piles of laundry and assorted paper crap that’s been accumulating around here for quite some time. Between that, and commiserating with a sick and unhappy Tab A, I have done almost exactly nothing of what I wanted to get done today. Plus I am now battling first-day menstrual cramps, so I think that makes this day pretty much a wrap.

Lunch out with a good friend I haven’t seen in a while and an afternoon nap should set me right again. Maybe, who knows, I’ll even find an hour or two to do some work later.

It’s anxiety-inducing, though — the degree of difficulty it seems to even try to get in one solid morning of work. Gah!! I have shit I need to get done. Must figure out a way to make time.

Victory!!

That may be a bit of an overstatement, but I’m considering our collective survival of the past couple of weeks to be a sort of small victory. That extra hour we got yesterday made me feel especially victorious this morning when I woke up spontaneously at 6:30 am, feeling like it was 7:30. It never fails to make me feel like a brand new person, that extra hour.

In other news, Tab A kicked his comp’s ass, writing something like 15 single spaced pages in the five hours of the exam. He has the oral defense coming up this week, and I’m pretty sure he’ll be victorious on that one too. As for me, I survived the workshop, and on the whole I think it went pretty well. Thankfully Tab A was there for the whole weekend and so I’ve been able to do some pretty good debriefing with him. I’m still troubled by some of the politics of the research, but there are good reasons also to keep playing — one of the main ones being that fact that I have an opportunity to shape this project in ways that I think make it useful and a little more critical than it would be otherwise.

So the next step is the book. The series editor was at the workshop and was happy with the papers. Now we have to rewrite the proposal and tighten things up with the chapter outline. Part of me is still shocked that this is happening, but I will need to rechannel that shock into some kind of productive capacity. Two years of working with Dr. J is enough to know that I will be doing the lion’s share of this thing, which is both opportunity and curse. I’m not going to pretend that it will be easy.

On the other hand, I think there’s some potential for good work to come out of this. I still need to find someone to fill a couple of holes in the overall analysis, and I’m a bit worried about that. I emailed someone later last week about a very important piece that we don’t have covered, and I’m worried that I won’t get a response. This is someone who is a relatively young academic, but who has already published a book on his research. Maybe he won’t be interested in contributing to a book edited by two people who have published very little on the topic — one of whom is a phd student (not even ABD, at that)? I don’t know.

What I do know is that the stakes are increasing, and that this research is rife with contentious politics. There is a significant ideological divide between the very critical and the not very critical (and some of this came out in the workshop), and as a result there’s a very real risk of immobilizing, polarized debate where we really, in fact, need work that is more reflexive and grounded on all sides. I think I can negotiate this, but it will be tricky. I cannot express how grateful and glad I am to have Tab A’s perspective in all this. I know there are benefits to not having an academic partner (such as, for example, financial security) — but being able to talk this shit over with him is worth millions. I have a hard time imagining how I would keep my head from exploding otherwise.

I’m happy to report victory on another front too — tickets to Mexico for the kids and I are bought & paid for. Spanish immersion course and homestay is confirmed, and I have a line on a little surf getaway on the Pacific coast after we finish the course and before I put the kids on a direct flight from Guadalajara to LA. After much brainstorming, my dad came up with the brilliant plan to hang out with the kids at my sister’s place in LA instead of coming down to Mexico for two weeks, thus saving much money and headache. There has been talk of 6 Flags and Legoland, and the kids are completely thrilled. So all told, the kids are in Mexico for a little less than four weeks, and I’m there for a total of six, with a couple of days visiting in LA for the tail end. Victory!

Next up: get all the chapter submissions organized and rewrite the book proposal in the next two weeks. I also want to submit my first paper for the directed studies course — I’ve read the first book (Polanyi’s The Great Transformation) and I owe my supervisor a 7-page review paper. I’m looking forward to getting back to some of the foundations in this course, and with the workshop organization out of the way I should have a lot more time for reading and thinking and writing. Victory!

ETA — I just checked my email and as I was writing this post, I got an email back from above-mentioned awesome young academic who I want to contribute to the book — he is interested and wants to talk this week. Oh yeah VICTORY baby!!

Five hours, four questions

Right at this very moment, my beautiful and brilliant Tab A is locked away in some room up at Alma Mater U, 2 hours into his 5 hour long comprehensive exam. It’s just him, a laptop computer (with Word only), no notes, and the past three months of studying swirling through his brain.

I just have to say — we have talked about almost nothing else but international relations theory for the past two weeks — and the man knows his shit.

And, I cannot wait to have my baby back. Go Tab A!!

I am not beyond bribery

Although I’m cheap. I’ve just sent the kids to the park with the dog and her frisbee. If they bring her back pooped (in both senses of the word), they get two bucks each. With any luck, they’ll expend a bit of their own excess energy in the process.

And for me? Chocolate. After each paragraph, one teeny tiny piece of the most delicious dark chocolate flecked with candied ginger and orange. Yum!!

Really, though, today is going well. Perhaps this is because I’m, uhh, actually writing? But more than that, I like what I’m writing. It makes sense to me, and in this process I’m crystalizing a lot of shit I’ve been thinking about. I guess that’s no surprise — I’ve probably written those exact words before in my reflections on writing the last few papers. But more and more it feels like I’m picking up the narrative of this running plot in my mind where, bit by bit, all the stuff I’m reading and thinking about is falling into place. It’s good to realize every once in a while that this practice of setting it all down in words and sentences and paragraphs is more than just an exercise in self-abuse. Like, actually, it’s kind of useful.

Does it have to be so goddamn hard, though? Does it?

I know that, in theory, there are people out there who make this sort of thing a regular practice, instead of making procrastination a regular practice. I think it’s called being a functioning, productive [writer, academic, human being].

In other news: I am going to Mexico with the kids for SIX WEEKS (!!!!) in January-Feb. Three weeks will be a Spanish immersion/homestay program in Guanajuato (I’ve been told that we can be lodged with a family with kids around the same age), then we’ll meet up with my super-fantastic dad to get set up in some all-inclusive place, and then I leave them to go back to Guadalajara for the field course through my uni and the University of Guadalajara. SO EXCITED!

Okay, now back to the crux of my paper. Oh mercy, the end is in sight now…

Argaaghghaarrr!!&!#*#!

This is the sound of me not writing. At all. Today, people, was a complete write-off. Err… Literally.

It didn’t need to be so. I woke up and effed around until about 10 — did a little bit of fixing up here & there but no real writing. Then it was Monk’s soccer game in the pouring rain. Then Moon’s game, also in the pouring rain. Home at 2:00, grab a fast sandwich and then Liza & I went to bottle wine — the first batch we’ve made at the brewery: thirty bottles of very drinkable Malbec. Then home, shower and head out again to friend’s kid’s first b-day bash. Dropped off the madly studying Tab A at a coffee shop on the way (comp in 4 days!), promised to return within a couple of hours. No problem — the house was full of very small and very loud children. Said hi & hugged some friends, observed the children, thanked the gods & goddesses that I somehow survived that stage of parenting (how long ago it seems…), rescued Tab A from the coffee shop, picked up enchiladas for dinner, and — wtf, it’s 8pm?  Gahhhh!!!!

How can my brain be fried after a day like that? What, exactly, did I do?

Okay. I have tommorrow. The kids are home, but whatevs. Tab A is on an early schedule, so I’m going to quit beating my forehead against the desk and watch some Deadwood and go to sleep early. In the morning, I slay this beast. I will do nothing else — NOTHING — until it’s done.

Unbelievable.

That paper?

Yeah, it’s almost done. Funny how deadlines work like that. They just kind of grow with you, like the pajamas that Moon wore from the time he was six until he was ten (um, they were stretchy, what can I say?).

Anyway, 2300 words and counting. I’m about halfway through, but I’m hoping that the second half will be faster than the first. It will, I swear. If it’s not I will probably die.

In other news, I have a new blog. It’s not that exciting — there’s only one post. On the other hand, it IS that exciting. Yay, research blogging!

And now, to celebrate my being finished the hard half of my paper, I will post some new pics on flickr. Yeah, that’s right, over there —–>