mimsy and outgrabe

"STOP MAKING 'ART' AND START MAKING YOUR WORK. This is at the top of the list for a reason -- namely, because it's so easy to make things that look like art, act like art, get sold like art, yet in the end aren't really art, but are phantoms, mere commodities or quantifiable, digestible sound bites. And unfortunately, you'll be encouraged to do this. In general, these are the things that art schools and the art world push you to make because they're legible and can be spoken of in ways that make sense to everyone: collectors and curators alike. This "art" has the correct visual markers and can slip easily into exhibitions and catalogue entries. At first, it seems really exciting to play this game, and it could get you a lot of mileage if you play it right, but in the end, these are really boring things that don't have a lot of depth to them. Try to resist this approach, because it's unsatisfying in the long run. Be prepared to be unpopul...

Friday I received news that yet another of my spring semester classes wasn't going to run because of low enrollment. So for the second time this month I had to change my planned office hours and email the bookstore about textbook orders and do some kind of triage with the little bit of class prep I had managed to do before this point. I suppose the one good thing about being drastically behind in terms of class prep is that you haven't wasted *too* much time when those classes are canceled.  It's generally brighter and less cave-like during the day. In some ways my new teaching schedule is far more simple -- I'm teaching two sections of Intro to Lit, which is usually one of my favorite classes. However, I've always been wary of teaching two sections of anything -- everything feels a little more stale by the second time around. Also, I have to teach three classes back to back on Tuesdays and Thursdays now, which is exhausting and laborious and generally so...

This week has been a strange one. Actually, the month has been a little strange thus far. As per usual, I had "big plans" for January -- lots of writing, reading, and preparation for the spring semester, along with getting my household in order. Also as per usual, too, none of that happened. Or, it has yet to happen. (I mean, perhaps I should be optimistic. We're not quite at the halfway mark, right?) A. was told at the end of December that he was being sent to Puerto Rico for a month -- and they told him, yeah, right after New Year's, be ready to go. And then New Year's passed, and he was still here. He was happy about that, but also a little exasperated. They gave him a new date: Thursday, January 18. And then yesterday he received a call on his way to work, oh, we might leave tomorrow. Friday, January 12. Be ready.   And, naturally, nothing was ready. So A. called me, asked me to help him with some laundry and errands so that he could pack quickly...

Sometimes -- okay, most of the time -- these things (submission & publication statistics) can be depressing. They are helpful, however, when you're trying gain an unbiased, more or less accurate perspective of where you stand -- or if you stand, period -- in the writing world.  For instance, in 2017 I submitted my book manuscript to 41 contests and small publishers and garnered zero acceptances. Yes, that's depressing  -- particularly because of the rejection of a little book I love and believe in, but also because of the amount of money I spent on entry fees. Out of those rejections, however, I managed to gain some acknowledgments or recognition. The manuscript was a semi-finalist in five different competitions and a finalist in three others. (Making a total of eight semi-finalist and five finalist nods since I first began submitting the book.) And for more on the topic of spending $$ for a chance to publish, please read Rachel Mennies' excellent article ...

Vampire Kid has been sick for a month, seriously, with some kind of gross disgusting congested ear/nose/throat thing, and on Wednesday she had a reaction to the antibiotic we gave her, ON THE LAST FINAL EXAM PRESENTATION DAY for one of my classes, and my ass had to be saved by M.S., who kindly and with no small amount of trouble took MY students into HER classroom and videotaped their presentations for me while also providing feedback/art crits to her own students while I stayed home and fielded questions from Vampire Kid while grading a sum total of three papers all day. She's pretty much an American hero . . .  M.S., that is, not Vampire Kid. This time of year blows, and I hate writing that, because I actually kinda love the holidays. But it's always complicated, for me, by End of the Semester Madness, and I reach the end of the year exhausted and grumpy and demoralized and that's . . . not great. I mean, sometimes I bounce back quickly and by New Year's I...

Today is a day when I will do all the grading.  I just needed to write that sentence, in the hopes that uttering it out loud and sending it flying into the inter-web-verse will make it good and true and actual, and that by the end of the day I will have all of the things accomplished and checked off my list and I will begin the weekend calm and happy and everything will go perfectly and according to plan. And and and. My day of completing residency applications last week was hijacked by a student who met with me for what SHOULD have been a 10 minute conference about his paper but turned into an hour long conversation about his personal history (relevant to the paper, relevant to the class) and ended with him making a wildly inappropriate comment about my appearance (not relevant to the paper, not relevant to the class) disguised as audacious flattery but really most likely just a desperate attempt to improve his grade. Or maybe an underhanded attempt to put me in my...

It is amazing how good you feel about 24 hours after being sick, simply because you aren't sick anymore. Good health sure is underrated, isn't it? That was the beginning of last week. A. and I came down with some gross 24-hour virus thing but thankfully none of the urchins we live with came down with it too, and now we're better and we can return to the business of, well, you know -- busyness. It was around this time that I was attempting to reinstate some past habits/behaviors simply to help me get through the end of the semester -- scheduling blocks of time for grading and avoiding all other commitments, doing quick and brief journaling in the mornings just to get my head wrapped around what I needed to accomplish for the day -- and then boom, sick, and a lot of my motivation deflated. I'm going to try and get back into it, though, because for as much as I kind of loathe the gimmicks and jargon of the Productivity world (read: market), a lot of their tips an...