Good news comes in threes?

I am a believer that good news comes in threes-- or at least it should come in threes!

• Good news 1: This past week I have learned that I was accepted to the Cs2007 in NYC. I am presenting on eugenicist rhetorics in contemporary welfare policy making. In doing so I hope to layout my rhetorical methodology for analyzing the policy-making process.

• Good news 2: I also found out just yesterday that I had an article accepted into a transnational feminism journal (a special issue on gender, globalization, and disability). The unfortunate side of that is that the journal had just decided to adopt APA as its citation format. APA, humph! I have not used APA since I was an undergrad. I am not exactly looking forward to learning (or converting) to a new style. But in that paranoia kind of way, I am please that I can check off "publishing in women's and gender studies journals" from my tenure contract list.

• Good news 3: hmmmm.... if it comes in threes what will be next? Acceptance of the essay I wrote with D? Offer of a job on a coast-- or at least not so smack in the middle of the country? A brilliant scholar applying for our r/c position? A brilliant scholar applying for the women's and gender studies search? OR [fill in the blank here].
  

An After thought....

Ok so I tend to obsessively plan things. I am a fan of the list and I carry around a little leather-bound book with that to-do list (among lists of books and articles to look up, people to contact, random thoughts about research, recipes to try, etc, etc, etc.). And so, as I was completing my Sunday ritual of reflecting on the week and creating the new week's to-do list (which was in fact spurred on by my earlier post (see below)), I flipped back to my semester to-do list (yes, I have multiple sorts of to-do lists) and I was somewhat happy to realize that really I am only two-and-a-half tasks behind my imposed semester research schedule/timeline. Not too bad! I have now decided that perhaps I do not have writer's block (ok yeah, well I do have "writer's anxiety" that is for sure) and instead I am luxuriating in a period of incubation. My thoughts simply need time to develop lungs, fingers, and a voice before they get put down on paper (or screen).

Writer's block

I have been away from my blog and well quite frankly away from almost anything that would require me to write except for the occasional email. During a downward facing dog yesterday, while I was concentrating on "settling into the resting juncture" of my breathing in my hopes of calmness, I realize-- ohmigosh, I have writer's block. As I stepped into a lung twist I thought, hmmmm.... why? Despite my hiatus from writing I have been actively surveying several of blogs noting, for example, how to read/research/write when doing interdisciplinary work and the joy of beginning. And yet, my fingers feel uncomfortably clumsy on the keyboard and I begin to panic when I think-- crap, a book, I gotta write this book, come on really it is just revising a first draft, a first big draft that needs about 1/3 more written. Of course then I think, just breathe....

But I am beginning to think my block is larger than the ticking tenure clock or the simple pressure of publishing. What I have realized is that to some extent I am, well, not super intellectually stimulated these days; a feeling that I am not sure I have ever had before. Perhaps it is new professor blues? Last year, my first year, I never quite felt intellectually bored, just overwhelmed. Now that I know how to use the copy machine, who to go to be quickly reimbursed for travel, who to email/call for a quick bite to eat on campus, etc. etc. I am now left to sit with where I am-- and I am not good at sitting still. The fact is, the more busy I am, the more productive I tend to be. And not only in my scholarship but in other parts of my life; for example, exercise is not a chore but a well-deserved break, yoga class is just that: a place where I learn something new about how to be, cooking is an expression of creativity, film going is stimulating yet brainless. I had a long chat with my English chair recently and I expressed to her that I really wanted to be more involved in the department-- especially since we are doing a search in rhetcomp and having this split appointment makes it easy for faculty to forget that I am a full-fledged member of each department-- but yet I came away with that feeling that my job as a junior faculty is simply to produce scholarship for tenure and get decent teaching evals. And I do appreciate this protection but I am afraid it just feeds the vicious cycle of research isolation and a lack of production for me. I think that some of my writer's block comes from feeling like I am writing in a bubble completely disconnected from the vast members of the greater r/c community and coming from a grad program where I pretty much only socialized with rhetcomp-ers (and the occasionally rhetcomp-friendly) this strange for me. Sure, I spent a lot of this week conversing with TCQ through my pen and "writer's notebook" (as Z has come to call it; his 4th graders also keep a "writers notebook," very first year comp-y)-- we had a lovely conversation about the rhetoric of policy making. But as a rhetorician, when I return to the key board, I sometimes find it hard to imagine my audience. Ok, so yeah, I know my project spans the field of rhetoric, women's studies, cultural studies, disability studies, and even prof/tech writing but WHO is that really? And why, oh why, did I decide to bring so many areas together... maybe this why I am blocked?!

In hopes of moving forward: note to self this week's goals--

1. Reread Advice for New Faculty Members, especially the pages on beginning (which btw, consists of breathing exes adapted from Donna Farhi breathing techniques);
2. Send emails to grant reviewers;
   
3. Rewrite grant (for an audience I do *know,* one member's research applies darwinism to lit crit-- this is difficult given that I am exploring the problematic reiteration of eugenicist discourses in late 20th US-based and internationally-based policies);
4. Write a page of my book, yes just a page and it does not have to be a good one-- one page is better than no new pages.
   

Illicit scone

This past weekend, Z and I traveled to Pittsburgh to visit my father, his wife, and my brother and his family. Given that it would have taken a good 14 hours to drive my father kindly purchased tickets for us so that we could enjoy more time visiting than driving. However, in addition to TSA regulations (especially the no water on the plane rule) travel these days is not so simple. For us it means driving two hours to the nearest non-regional airport and if our flight is early-- as it was for this trip-- it also means staying over night. On this particular evening, we arranged to have dinner in the city the night before our flight with Jen1, Jen2, and Jen3 as well as L and their significant others. We ate and were filled (note important foreshadowing) at a lovely Asian-fusion restaurant-- I had a variety of dumpling and then a Chinese curry dish made with duck, yum-- and afterward we shared pitchers of beer at a nearby pub. Z and I left somewhat early in the evening since we had to catch our flight at 6AM.

After a restless and near sleepless night for me, we rolled out of bed at 4:30 AM to be at the airport at 5:00 so that we would make our flight at 6:00. When we arrived at the airport there were a few kiosks selling coffee and other morning sundries but they all had significantly long lines AND I knew I would not have enough time to chug a hot cup of coffee before passing security and there were no coffee kiosks after the security gates. So Z and I stumbled on the plane without our usual coffee jolt assuming that the airline swill would get us through to our layover in Detroit.

We arrived slightly late in Detroit and in my fuzzy-headedness (and now in a state of near starvation--those of you who know me well know how cranky I get when I do not eat on a regular basis) I kinda forgot that we had left our home central time zone and we were now in a time zone an hour later. So Z and I took our time getting to our next gate, admiring the mostly empty airport, riding the train from one gate to the other deciding where in the airport we might have dinner on the way home (note: The Mediterranean Grill in DTW serves up a mean lentil soup, fabulous hummus, and fresh pita), getting coffee and a little snack. In the midst of all this I realized--oh crap!--we're in a new time zone and our flight is scheduled to leave in less than 15 minutes. We bolted to our gate just in time and of course we were made to dump our coffee before the attendant took our tickets. As we walked the walkway maze, Z was still holding his scone-- after all, a scone is a solid not a liquid. As we walked through the plane's door, the steward whose nametag read "Paul" said to Z, something like "Ah, I see you have a scone." Which Z responded in the affirmative? Paul then said, "boy I would like to see that scone" to which Z and I chuckled nervously-- we were not sure if he was kidding or serious until Paul said, "no really, I need to see that scone." At this point, we both looked at each other and I think we both thought, hmmm.... What are our traveling rights? Why does he have to inspect our scone? Do we really have to give him our scone? Is this a new TSA rule? In the meantime, Paul grabbed the scone out of Z's hand mumbled something about TSA rules regarding food and dumped our beloved scone in the trash--in the airplane (now if said scone were atomic, why dump it in the trash that will fly with the plane?!). Now bewildered, insufficiently caffeinated, and hungry Z and I made it past rows of people happy chewing on their granola bars, muffins, cookies, and bagels (was there something about scones we did not know?) to our seats where we immediately began looking in the seat pockets for the flight magazine to see if the TSA rules were listed someplace, which they were not. So Z decided to ask another flight attendant for a copy of the rules but she said they did not have them on the plane (which seems strange and makes it clearer how malleable the rules are in fact). Sensing our displeasure and seeing Paul's interception of our scone, in consolation she provided us with $2 trail mix for free-- no coffee but we got nuts.