the view from here
Originally uploaded by KF

R. and I are off on another of our famous working vacations, a phenomenon which makes my family (and many other folks as well) think we’re positively nuts. “You’re going to Hawaii in order to sit in front of your laptop and work?” they ask.

Well, yes.

The joy of these trips has a good bit to do with the ways a change of scenery, an escape from the usual pathways and the quotidian business of house- and cat- and job-care frees up the brain to focus on a project in a new way. And the beauty of Hawaii in particular for such a venture has to do — well, partly with the beauty of the scenery, but partly with the change of time as well as of place.

I got up this morning at 4.30 am, feeling pretty well-rested and ready to go. Sat down at the computer, and very quickly produced a six-page overview of the contours of the chapter I’m beginning to write, all the while watching the light gradually come up outside. It’s now 8.30 am, and I feel as though I’ve had a successful work day already, and can either continue plowing along or can move onto something else as I like.

Day 1, accomplished already. I’m feeling pretty good about where things go from here…

The most amazing thing about conferences for me is always how energized I am during and after them, how excited I become about whatever project I’m working on and how much I look forward to getting back to work.

The worst thing about them is that I always return to a pile of mail or grading or letters of recommendation or committee meetings or reports or god knows what all else that absolutely positively must be taken care of before I can start writing again.

MSA was no exception. The conference was amazing — fantastic panels, great people, wonderful colleagues both old and new — and it left me really, really excited about my project and the connections it’s drawing. (And the amazingly flattering response after my plenary didn’t hurt. I didn’t have quite the rock-star turnout that Fred did — his talk was literally standing-room only, and for mine, the enormous room was, I think, a little less than half-full — but the feedback I got was positively overwhelming.)

But now I’m home, and have crazy amounts of teaching and administrative work that simply will not negotiate with me. So I’m hoping to force myself, starting tomorrow, back into my get-up-early-and-spend-one-half-hour-writing-before-anything-else mode, so that I can at least remember what this feels like when the paperwork cloud has cleared…

The last few weeks have been a bit of a blur, between the election, a pile of grading, a few general crises around here, and so forth, but one of the things that’s had me most preoccupied is this weekend — I’m headed to Nashville this morning for the Modernist Studies Association conference, where I’m delivering one of the conference plenaries.

Just to put that in perspective: the other plenary speaker is Fredric Jameson.

So I’ve been a little — well, preoccupied is putting it kindly. The talk I’m giving is an overview of the project, and it’s been well-received when I’ve given it before. But this will be the first time that I’m not preaching to the choir on this issue. And they tell me it’s a 700-person congregation.

If you’re there, be sure to come say hi. And if not, wish me luck.

It’ll no doubt shock everyone to hear that I’ve been starkly unproductive today. Weirdly unable to focus. Distracted. Nervous.

The good news is that I had errands to run, which allowed me to feel like I was accomplishing something, and a big stack of files to start sorting through.

And there was that voting thing. I decided to wait until after the polls had been open for an hour, hoping that the early birds would have worked through the system by that point. And I was mostly right, though there was still a 20 minute wait when I arrived, a wait easily four times longer than it’s ever been for me at this particular polling station. No problems at all once I got in; the poll workers were helpful and friendly, and the whole thing seemed to be working like it should. The line, though, was a little longer as I left than it was when I arrived.

Of course it was nowhere near as annoying as my trip to the doctor today, where I was taken into an exam room just a few minutes after my appointment time and then left sitting on a table, wearing a paper sheet, for 45 minutes before the doctor came in.

In my fantasy world, at least, the outcome of the former event might help fix the latter. So cross your fingers, folks.

Now I’m going to pretend to get some grading done, while calculating how long I have to wait before it’s reasonable to turn on the television.