Winter Solstice

Hey, faithful readers. I'm sorry not to have kept up with blog series. I hope to finish it perhaps with a little less over-the-top sarcasm. I just underwent a small identity crisis about this blog, what I'm using it for, my "tone" and its content.

This has happened periodically over the 3 years I've kept Spiral Scratch but more frequently now that I have other people reading it. It was much simpler to keep my focus when I had no audience although I greatly appreciate the positive feedback I've received about the content & my writing.

It's just that when you're only writing for yourself, anything goes. You can indulge any whim, not care about how you are being perceived, jump from intimate & personal to grand statements about the world. It's an online journal for whatever thoughts you want to express.

When you are conscious that others read your content (and it doesn't matter whether you have 1 subscriber or 10,000), most people have a bit more hesitation about what they put out there because no matter how kindly they might be, people are passing judgment on you & your writing...was it clever? was it insightful? was it boring? was it funny? was it groan-worthy? Readers begin to form a mental image of who you are and what you care most about.

This thought process happens unconsciously, in the few minutes it takes to scan over a blog entry. Most bloggers claim to be just being themselves but don't believe it. The awareness of people reading what you write changes the way you write. That fact doesn't mean that writers necessarily censor themselves but only the most stubborn of them can not be influenced by the desire to please their readers, even if that means being cantankerous, it's still about meeting other people's expectations of you.

As a person with literary stage fright, I'm not immune to this pull whatsoever! I've dropped my more idiosyncratic posts about my personal life and focused on discussing social networks, especially Twitter. But I've resisted a pressure I feel to adopt a "professional voice" because my blog was never intended to be a vehicle for business or my career but a place where I could talk about experiences and ideas.

The current series about ways to become popular on Twitter was intended to highlight trends I've noticed among the top 1000 most followed people on Twitter that are in contrast to how people normally perceive one gets to be popular. So, I lifted the sales tone of get more followers spammers & tried to make my points in a humorous way (I hope!). But, unfortunately, not everyone got that I was being satirical and not actually giving advice by pointing out some of the more ridiculous aspects of Twitter popularity. I began to question whether I had adopted the best method to get my points across.

Those doubts just stopped me in my tracks even though I had actually mapped out the last segments of the series. I'd like to share these insights but am unsure if I'll just continue in the comic mode or just make the points more directly. It's unsettled but I'd like to finish it.

Since I'd received a couple inquiries about the blog, I just wanted to post this update. I hope everyone is enjoying the remainder of this holiday season, isn't feeling too much end-of-the-year stress, and can enjoy the company of offline and online friends & family. Happy New Year to you all!

What shall I be today?

I started this blog 3 years ago when I was in the middle of a 6 year long bout of chronic insomnia. I was having trouble with my dissertation and, consequently, had nights in which I never fell asleep. At all. I'd lie awake in bed, thinking, and get up once I saw light in the sky.

I'd usually force myself to stay awake and go to bed early but sometimes, at least once a month, I'd go two days/nights without sleep. I did my share of chemical experimentation when I was in college but nothing can compare with going without sleep for 40 or 50 hours. You enter a different stage of consciousness, between wakefulness and unconsciousness. I used to put away my car keys so I'd stay off the road...I think sleepy drivers are a bigger cause of accidents than drunk drivers.

So, I started this blog as a creative outlet, a place where I could put out random thoughts and ideas, sort out things in my mind. And it was mine alone, I think I wrote on and off for a couple of years before I had anyone read my blog and post a comment. I was frankly shocked. I know the Internet is about the least private medium that exists but I was lulled into thinking of this blog as a personal diary.

Against the common wisdom that bloggers want bigger & bigger audiences, I haven't known how to handle having people read my blog, commenting on my entries. In one sense, it is extremely flattering and I'm grateful for the interest and people taking time to read but most people act differently when they know they have an audience. Before, no one knew who I was so I was free to say whatever I wanted because no one was listening (that I knew about!).

Since Twitter, all that has changed. I'm engaged in conversation with a lot more people online than I ever thought imaginable...and because I wanted to fill out the Twitter bio and there is a website link, I linked to this blog. In a sense, that was inviting, maybe even advertising, for readers.

So I've been trying to sort out in my mind what this blog should be...should I continue with the personal stuff that is more intimate and of limited interest? Or should I focus my writing on a topic like Twitter or social media and try to make an intellectual contribution, linking to other blogs and participating in a larger discussion?

The common approach now in social media is to blend ones personal and professional lives together but this goes against all of my training as an academic. I don't think that people interested in my social critiques want to hear me complain about my cat.

But I could be wrong! Let the experimentation continue!

Those who don't create, critique those who do

I've committed one of the cardinal sins of blogging: it's been weeks since I've written an entry. This has happened for a number of reasons but primarily due to my addiction to Twitter.

I've found this microblogging format and the people I've been introduced to incredibly compelling. Twitter is everything that academia and a dissertation is not: it is concise instead of wordy, it is flirty instead of measured, it is snarky instead of considered, it is timely instead of enduring, and it is fast instead of labored.

There is in both academia and the Twitter universe a great deal of self-promotion but where Twitter blares out self-referential Tweets in stark, bright colors, scholars indirectly tout themselves in lengthy and subdued footnotes. Twitter is bold, snappy and instantaneous and in academia, even after death, an author's work is ceaselessly critiqued for its worthiness and its potential contribution to the field. Bogged down in yet more dissertation rewrites, I was an easy mark to fall prey to Twitter's seductive urgency, its false sense of intimacy and its immediacy.

But since every quality that are Tweets, or messages, are aspects of writing frowned upon in my discipline, I've been a stranger in a strange land, out of my element. The people I've encountered online have been, by and large, kind and open to me but, to use another cliche, I'm a round peg in a square hole. I don't fit and many of my snarky remarks were observations of the worlds of the participants (primarily technology and marketing) that I found incredibly peculiar. I found and still find it difficult to hold my tongue when people are behaving in what seems to me to be a ludicrous manner. If I was physically present, I would roll my eyes and give a "what is WITH these people" shake of my head but since I was in the world of Twitter, I would fire off a random pet peeve of those I was "following" or remark sarcastically in a way that I thought resembled intelligence.

I was already to write another Tweet about how no one in the outside world really cares about political in-fighting in the world of technology when I got a terrible headache. Eventually, this led me to wonder, was I creating anything of value? Was I contributing to the problem instead of trying to understand the world and myself a little better?


Which, predictably, led me back to my neglected blog. I hope to take the energy I got from writing Tweets and channel it towards the creation of something more lasting and ephemeral than 140 character messages. I'm not aiming for profundity, I'd just like to contribute something relevant to the discussion going on online about how advances in technology and communication are changing the way we understand ourselves and the way we behave.

I know I won't be promoting myself on Twitter, that is a no-no that is just too ingrained in me over years of graduate school programming. But I can say with certainty that I'll probably lapse into talking about myself and my cat! That's a promise.

Alone again, naturally

It's hard to believe that I first started this blog in 2006 since it has been such an on and off thing. I see all of these visitors and I just wonder who on earth could have stumbled into this blog, out of the millions of blogs there are out there. I don't talk a lot about politics or celebrities or technology developments. My sense of humor is, well, let's generously call it dry. No videos or animations. Just my thoughts and an occasional photo or two.

When I think about this blog, I think of it as a journal not as a tool of self-promotion. I've only give one person a link to it and she was someone I met on the web, not a person in my daily life. I want to be able to say whatever I want without worrying what someone might think. Not that I'm outrageous or sacrilegious, I just have an internal censor in my head that keeps me from revealing too much about myself to people who will judge me. And my family and friends, God love 'em, can't help but judge. It's just human nature to have an opinion about things that concern those closest to you.

I wasn't sure what to expect by putting this all out on the Internet and so far, it's been a monologue. It creates the illusion for me that this is a very private forum when the fact is is that it is open to anyone to read and comment upon. So, I weave back and forth between intimacy and having my guard up, pouring my heart out and then worrying about it getting stomped on. Such is the arena of a personal blog. Maybe I'll make it less about "me" and more "other" focused, whatever that other might be.

Show or tell?

I can't believe it but it turns out that I've spent most of the day working on this blog, fine-tuning the template so that all entries look standardized. It isn't a complete success...the font is larger in Internet Explorer than Mozilla Firefox which is the browser I always use. So it has been a lot of small adjustments on each entry, altering spacing, italics and the like. I hope no one has this blog on a feed or their probably got a hundred entries as I published and republished each entry.

I have mixed feelings about all of this. It's been fun to have a place I can go, write and experiment but I can't imagine the amount of hours someone with an active blog would need to invest in maintaining their site. Maybe they get contributors to provide them with content and the blogmaster just handles the formatting and uploading of pictures and such.

I'm trying to add some functionality to this blog (why? don't know) which has led me to some blog directories and I can't quite fathom the range of stuff that is out there on the Internet, the level of sexuality on display. Everyone from young girls to old men, mostly white folk though. And the people don't seem to be making money off of it, it's just exposure for exposure's sake. Do the individuals think that no one they know will ever see the photos? That there is something called privacy on the Internet? I have a terrible feeling that these are private photos that some ex-boyfriend decided to share with the world. But I guess the alternative--that these people want to flash their private parts--isn't much better.

Oddly enough, you see enough body parts and they start looking generic, like drawings in an anatomy book or like you're looking at farm animals. I feel curious about the people who are posing more than aroused by their bodies. The volume of what's out there is just so overwhelming that any individuality is completely erased. I guess that's why I'm a sociologist and not a pornographer. Well, one reason.

No one would ever accuse me of being an exhibitionist. That might seem odd for someone who writes down their thoughts for anyone to see but this forum seems relatively anonymous and I have yet to pass on the URL to anyone know in my real life. I think I'm afraid that I'll let their opinion (which WILL be expressed) to influence the content of the blog and right now it's free to be whatever it is....in other words, a blank page where I can reveal as little or as much as I want. In that regard, I guess I'm a verbal exhibitionist.

The spotlight

It's been about two weeks since I last posted. I was going to try to post something every day, then got busy with a new job. And then I read on another webpage that someone had actually read this blog and it threw me for a loop even though she was perfectly polite about it.

I mean, it shouldn't have shocked me. If I wanted to write for myself alone, I could keep a journal. But the fact that I haven't had any comments to what I was writing lulled me into thinking that I was only writing for myself and it gave me pause to think of someone else reading the words I'd put down.

That thought led to my mind freezing every day when I thought about returning to post something to the blog. I began to second guess myself, thinking, "what would someone else think about what I was writing about", "someone" being no one in particular, just a friend or foe or the unknown reader. I know an author is always supposed to consider the audience you are writing for but I have found it completely inhibiting.

Part of the reason for starting a blog was to get over this useless kind of paralysis, and be open and vulnerable enough to share my ideas, come what may. A lot of this blog has been "fluff", not serious contemplation or controversial opinions but it has revealed part of who I am right now and so the fact that I was able to do it at all I count as an accomplishment.

So, I'm going to try to revive it and keep going on, aware that there might (or might not!) be an audience for my words and just try to be myself...the insightful parts as well as the ordinary, mundane parts. I'll try to keep it interesting but, more importantly, I'll try to keep it honest and real. See you tomorrow!

Feeling wistful

All of this beautiful new snow that blanketed the city just five days ago is all melting away. You can even see the grass peeking through in some places. Hard to believe that it was covered with 18 inches less than a week ago. It's going to be 53 today but down to 23 tomorrow so I hope it doesn't melt and then ice up or traveling will be worse tomorrow than it was last weekend with all of that snow.

Life in the house is so quiet now that we don't have an ailing cat to fret over. Lucca, the Golden Retriever puppy, swallowed a toy mouse and ended up in intensive care and had to get surgery to remove the obstruction. I guess you can't watch babies or puppies close enough because they both put everything in their mouths.

I had a visitor, Asa, from Germany in town this week. It is so hard when old friends move away. It is like there is a hole in your life that emails just can't replace. It was great to see her but it reminded me of those frequent times when we would just run into each other on the street and talk. It just happened as part of our daily lives.

I wish more people wrote letters these days...they seem much more personal than email messages of a line or two saying "I'm busy. Will write later". I'm one of the few people I know who save old email messages from friends but they are de facto letters and I want to have something I can read later and get all maudlin about when I miss their presence.

I once scored high on a personality test (professionally administered, not in Cosmopolitan) on a scale of devotion (it also measure other characteristics) and I'm afraid I get terribly attached to the people I become close to. But it has been a recurring theme that people get opportunities elsewhere or the cost of living here is too high and they move on.

Luckily, there is a professional conference I attend yearly where I can see most of them (though, unfortunately without spouses and children) so I guess I should cherish that instead of wishing for things that existed in the past. I have to consciously try not to live in the near past as much but it is easy to reminisce about good times with old friends when your current life feels full of frustrations.

Time to plan for the weekend...

Becoming a pyromaniac

When I first started this blog last month, I had to limit myself to writing only one entry a day. I had so much I wanted to write down. Now, a month later, I find myself with so little worth saying. The enormous snowfall? So what. My teaching? I don't want to reveal too many details about that. My writing problems? How self-absorbed. My health issues? Everyone is dealing with something going wrong in their lives.Same old, same old.

How could I go from bursting with ideas to being intellectually bankrupt so fast? The muses are indeed fickle. And it has been quite a while since they smiled upon me and showered me with their blessings.

Right now, my ass has been called on the carpet (is that a real expression?) because it's been so damn long since I've turned in any of the work I'm supposed to be doing. It is almost like the pressure has to become unbearable in order for me to work and who wants to put themselves through that kind of stress? It's like being an actor who has stage fright who signs up to do 8 performances a week...almost like I have to force myself to do what terrifies me because I know somewhere in there there is a payoff. And that payoff is a long, long ways away.

The funny thing is is that I'm good at what I do. I think so and I've been told so by others. But I'm not "brilliant" and that apparently is the standard by which my advisers are judging me by. And the prospect of getting yet another rejection of my best efforts is demoralizing.

Ironically, intellectually, I know that this is something every writer goes through. I have books that tell me so! No artistic effort ever matches the ideal in your head (everything that exists is imperfect) and it is impossible to please every critic. All of these books tell me that the writers who are successful just work on despite the rejections that anticipate receiving, writing through the anxiety. But most people who want to generate creative work let themselves be stopped by the frustrations which are real and painful.

So, I guess I need a thicker skin or a bigger ego or a singlemindedness that will keep me working despite knowing that whatever I do will fall short of my advisers' hopes for me (this attitude is not me being a fatalist but what I've experienced over four years of working with them). I guess I need to stop seeking their approval and yet I literally can not move forward in the process without it, I can't take the next step until I get their okay.

So, I think I need to put on my bitch face and channel some of this despair into anger and put that into my work. Not the most positive approach but maybe it will help to light a fire from these burnt coals of my career.

Hey, I guess I did find something to write about...a good size dose of self-absorption but isn't that what blogs are really all about?

Bracing for snow

Ahhh, the snow is coming, finally! We're due for 6-13 inches so there will be a fair share of shoveling. I can hardly wait....it's been more than two months since we got a decent snowfall!

It has crimped my plans somewhat though. The students who signed up for the trip to the Korean church tomorrow all bailed on me, which is allowed as long as they do one of the other field trips this weekend. But I will show up on behalf of the group, no matter how bad the "blizzard" (which is what they're calling it) is because the minister was kind enough to invite us to come and participate in their service. It should be an interesting experience, both getting there and the service itself.

I wish I had something more interesting to write about but it has been a pretty lazy week as I've eased up on the workload to tend to this lingering cold. So, lots of cups of tea and wearing of the bathrobe way past the time I should be dressed. It's the kind of time when you wish, if you are single, that there was someone to take care of you, to fix you soup, insist you lie down, and feel your forehead for fever. Kind of a combined lover-mother, if that isn't too inappropriate. But my family is far, far away and my housemates, while perfectly decent people, have their own lives to lead. So, I will baby myself and not berate myself too badly for having nothing interesting to say today.

Time to go out and forage in the supermarket for food before the storm hits. Then, I can burrow in tonight, listen to Prairie Home Companion (yes, I AM that boring), do some writing, and watch the snow fall. Maybe if I'm inspired by the snow, I return to this blog tonight.

Otherwise, wish me luck slushing through the snow in the city on Sunday.

Blah, blah, blah

I've been wrestling with a cold the past few days and so far, the cold has won. That, plus losing the cat has left me logy (one of my mother's favorite words) and uninspired. No witty thoughts or keen observations or eccentric musings have come to mind so I've basically been shying away from this blog. I mean, we all have our blah-blah days and who wants to read about someone else's?

The only news in my life worth commenting upon is that my class is now taking trips to visit churches in NYC. Last Sunday we went to a Buddhist (BCA) service that was pretty conventional (English language, hymn singing) but was different enough for these primarily Christian students. They seemed to find it interesting which was the whole point of the visit, to get them to "see" church environments with new eyes. We start with the unfamiliar and then they take this keener vision and apply it to their own religious communities.

The people at the church were exceedingly welcoming to us and had fixed a nice meal for us after the service. This Sunday I'll take a different group of students to a Korean church which should be a bit more unusual (all in Korean language) for them to experience. After that, I'll start visiting my student's churches which are spread out throughout the city from Harlem to the Lower East Side.

This should keep me busy as I'm supposed to be doing my own field research at the same time. I have yet to find a church to work with but since there are thousands of churches/temples/synagogues/religious centers in the NYC metro area, it is just a matter of finding a good fit. The variety can be a bit overwhelming though.

I hope that somewhere there is some time during the week to devote to my writing. But it is clear that I'll have to MAKE time for it as there are only 24 hours in a day and right now the schedule seems pretty filled...quite a change from just a month ago!

Oh well, time to take my next dose of Vitamin C and "Emer'gen'C" (tangerine flavor).

A distant good

"For present joys are more to flesh and blood, Than a dull prospect of a distant good." John Dryden

Oh, yes. This sentiment explains much of human behavior. Right now, for example, instead of working on my writing, I am watching "Spirited Away" on TV, a movie I wasn't able to catch in the theaters when it was released (it won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature in 2003). Unfortunately, I tuned in to it midway into the movie but hopefully the Cartoon Network will replay it and I can see the first half.

I'm not sure whether watching a film qualifies as a "joy" but it is a more pleasant alternative to endlessly going through my notes, trying to come with original perspectives on well-worn material. It is indeed part of a long process of attaining a "distant good" and I hope I will persevere because my slow progress on it has been discouraging.

The signs are not good that I will ever finish and yet, I can't give up trying. I've stopped and then returned to my writing many times...it's like a relationship where you keep breaking up and then getting back together with the same person without much movement forward in the relationship. I don't think I'm in any kind of denial...I think I know that I CAN do it and the little willpower I have won't let me give up.

The obstacles are real but I know in my heart that they are not insurmountable. I just can't let myself quit when I get discouraged (which I think is most people's first instinct) and carry on with the dull prospect that one day in the future, I might finish this project and close this chapter of my life.

But, hey, it's Friday night...so, I'll allow myself a present joy and return to work in the morning!

The smell of chalk dust

Today I went into NYC for an organizational meeting for a class I will be helping to teach that starts tomorrow. I'm part of a "teaching team" which is a real euphemism because it's not a democratic, collaborative arrangement and the adjunct instructors make less than 1/10 of what the professor in charge makes. But it sure sounds good, doesn't it?

What I thought was just a morning meeting actually ended up being a talking session that lasted from 10:30 am until 4:30 pm with lunch brought in so we didn't need to (couldn't!) take a break. It is a good thing I'm a low maintenance person because by 1 pm I was ready to leave and by 3 pm, I started checking my watch every 20 minutes. Grumble, grumble. But I need this job and I'm glad to be working again.

I haven't worked since August when my last job ended and I decided to concentrate on my writing. Now I'll have to emerge from my writing cave, take off my working pajamas and dust off the business clothes, and reacquaint myself with a makeup brush. The solitude and unstructured life had turned me into a bit of a hermit...if I'd been a man, I'd have a beard down to my collarbone.

Being a writer (or trying to be one) is a dangerous life for an introvert...it reenforces our isolationist tendencies and leaves too much time for brooding self-reflection. Anxiety has free rein except for those moments in which you manage to corral it and put it back in the closet.

This class, while it will take time away from my work, will get me back out among students (I taught for six years) and walking the streets of the city. There will be a lot of fieldwork--taking students out into NYC neighborhoods, looking at new and historic churches--and that will be the best part of the position. I look forward to getting to know more about areas of NYC that I haven't ventured into before. The adventure starts tomorrow night...

Enmeshed in Significance

Clifford Geertz, paraphrasing Max Weber, famously wrote that a human being "is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun". Thinking about my writing problems, I'm wondering if I have spun webs where everything is of equal significance and I can no longer distinguish north from south or inside from outside. My writing project should be a forest I manage but it has become acres and acres of trees I need to tend to and prune. I take care of one and there are still miles before me.

Even though my interest has never flagged, it often seems overwhelming. I can become riveted by the smallest of details that seems, for that moment, to have been imbued with significance. Distracted by a million tangents that have become crucially important for that moment, every aspect becomes invested with significance that is usually completely out of proportion to its ultimate importance.

This trait annoys me in my theologian friends because it seems like they project their own religious views into objects or moments or persons that rob that entity of its own identity and ability to define itself. Human beings are symbol-making creatures but that should be something that enhances these entities/events and doesn't impose a meaning upon them.

The ethics of nonfiction writing. The whole process is one of interpretation, of making distinctions, analyzing consequences, passing judgments. At times I think a touch of arrogance would help me handle this responsibility better, to care less about properly representing the perspectives of my subject(s) and care more about accomplishing the goal at hand.

Then I realize that it is actually humility that I probably need, to realize that I never need claim to be the definitive voice but just one offering some truth and insight as I see it. That doesn't help entangle me from these webs but perhaps I'll be more patient with myself during the process.

A new year...thank god

In lieu of a new presidential inaugural (damn it), I'm inaugurating this website. I hope it won't be your typical self-indulgent "life is hell" blog but sometimes, sigh, ya just gotta vent.

Right now, I'm a struggling writer (is there any other kind?) and ever since I've been blocked, I've been reading about the nature of writing, composition, and other creative endeavors whether they are in art, science, philosophy, or design. It all seems so mysterious, cryptic, unpredictable and a matter of luck. Yet, I know that breakthroughs only come through a LOT of trial and error and I guess I'm frustrated with this part of the process. It is not that I want things to come easily but it is difficult when you don't see a light at the end of the tunnel.

I can see how frustrations with creativity can lead to addiction problems (drinking, smoking, reckless behavior, etc.) as the whole process seems fraught with anxiety. Hence, the insomnia. Luckily, I've been able to limit my vices to online surfing and Sudoku having wasted a portion of my younger years in more risky pursuits. When you realize how short life really is, it sure wakes you up and helps you get your life together. Or, hopefully, it does.

Time to log off and return to the frustrations at hand. Cheers!