the next big thing

The Daily Planet

since returning home to toronto from connecticut via new york city, I’ve experienced life mostly as a matter of trying to work out yet another new routine of self-care, work, and socializing.  things are going quite well, but after a busy and lonely, though productive, 6 weeks away, and a rather surreal at times return to nyc with Sean (trying to see old friends, “sight-see,” and re-visit old haunts, while feeling very distant mentally and physically from the life I lived there, and even resentful at times), I find myself back in Toronto pondering what is next for me almost incessantly, trying to sort out how I am going to manage getting this PhD done sooner rather than later, and what it is that will come next in my life, in our life (Sean and me), and where we will end up.

obviously, this is part of being a PhD student…  however, I feel the pull to complete and move on now more than ever, almost to a fault.  I still have loads of interviews to both FIND and DO, let alone TRANSCRIBE, ANALYZE, and WRITE about…  so far, 1 child and 1 adult are not going to cut it.  this is obviously frustrating.  beyond that are the other piling responsibilities:  a new course I’m teaching, continuing responsibilities for my fellowship, and other things I’ve taken on (perhaps foolishly).

but I have dreams about scenarios constantly…  Sean and I taking Penny out West to BC sounds particularly beautiful at this point in my life, my parents are still pretty young, as are we, and we have no big ties to Sudbury/Buffalo yet either financially or in terms of caring for them.  we love Toronto, but aside from the wonderful friends we’ve made and perhaps the sports we play (perhaps, though those things are elsewhere also), I often feel little in the way of genuine “roots” here.  its also expensive, crowded, noisy, and kinda dirty here…  we’d like more space, room, trees, wildlife, land.

first things first.  who knows what is next, but I feel oddly impatient right now, something I will have to learn to temper down a bit yet.  there are many things standing in the way between now/here and the next big thing.

Working from Home, Redux

i caught this video posted on dooce.com, one of my favourite and first read blogs…

good advice that i come and go with at different times.

since coming back from connecticut, i admit to having some difficulties with motivation and scheduling and distractions.  because of no dog, no real social life, and no partner, and because of expectations and deadlines and others working to help motivate me, i was able to make sure that every day, i got as much work done as i could and then got to the gym.  i have been hit or miss since coming home, which i allowed myself in the first few weeks and now is becoming a source of mid-afternoon frustration.  in an effort to stay positive, however, i’m still trying to figure out a good schedule now that i’m back and to keep daily to-do lists on a wipe board on my desk.  but it’s not always easy with a dog that moans every time you get up because she thinks its time for a walk, or when you’re easily distracted by negativity, facebook, and countless blogs.  i’m not even on twitter, that would just tip the scales a bit too much.

what do you do to motivate yourself when working from home?

K, I’m done with THAT…

Ok, that was fun wasn’t it?

In some sort of way I imagined that doing that 64-question blogging challenge would be motivational or fun.  It was fun for a minute.  Quick, whistle the chorus of the Macarena…  and when you get to that “Hey Macarena!” part, that’s about how long the fun lasted.  Then it got annoying, as in, “Bible Verse” + say something very profound annoying.  I’m gonna stop now…  or better yet, from time to time, I will peruse that list when I get bored with blogging and pull something out to answer.  But not every day (not like it happened anyway).

I guess because this blog has a rather fragmented identity, it was bound to run out of gas.  The blog has always been just a few things I think from time to time, sometimes school-driven, sometimes anxiety-ridden, sometimes a matter of public exposure, sometimes a forum to share photos or thoughts with friends/family, and sometimes just self-stroking.  Other things, too I’m sure.  Because of that, I don’t feel any strong need to maintain pace or forward momentum and I hope I never do…  although, if someone paid me to blog I would certainly do it.  But then again, your blog really needs FOCUS if you want to earn money and, well, see the rest of this paragrah.

Although I will say, the next challenge–“What are you looking forward to”–leads me to the rest of this post’s purpose rather nicely:

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I’m looking forward to this research fellowship I’ve been awarded.  6 weeks in Connecticut with other human-animal studies scholars and faculty from all over the world to work on my project, get ideas, feedback, commentary, establish my points of viewing the world/academics on sturdier foundations…  all a really great opportunity for me.  I will network, beef up my cv, and get an opportunity to really reach more people.  It should be amazing, if I really embrace it and I feel like I will.  Mindfulness + Energy Management + Time Management will be the keys to a successful venture, and I find that diving into a new environment, even if it is temporary, allows you to establish good habits.  I hope to bring those habits home with me when I return and maintain some work/life/love/health balance for the year ahead…  one that will push my work further toward completion and the next exciting phase of my life.

Not to put too much pressure on these 6 weeks, but its certainly possible that I can experience real growth from this opportunity.  I’ll post while I’m there I’m sure…

elleve, a bible verse?

I don’t feel like putting a bible quote up here…  why the bible anyway?  Why not the upanishads?  The bhagavad gita?  The tao te ching?  The koran?  The torah?  The jedi code?

But, as I was raised Catholic, I remember many quotes from the bible and from Christianity’s “greatest hits”…  so, here’s a quote from St. Francis–that groovy, poverty-embracing, nudist, animal-conversing hippie–that I really enjoy:

“While you are proclaiming peace with your lips, be careful to have it even more fully in your heart.” 

I think that is a very touching reminder that we can often learn how to say things, the right things, without truly and fully embracing them with our inner selves…  and so if we can truly learn to feel goodness, hope, love, and peace in our hearts…  what we say will reflect that.  I truly believe that…

Beautiful

Symmetry from Everynone on Vimeo.

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A part of YouTube™ Friday!

wan, a photo of me and some facts

My Latest Photo Shoot

15 interesting facts? Tall order. But I will try to make them actually interesting. They are in NO particular order…

1. I’m 6’6″ tall.  When I was a youngin’, I really loved basketball, and wanted to be good at it. I remember praying once to be as tall as Michael Jordan. I am. I didn’t make it past JV Basketball in high school. Oh well.

2. I have played volleyball competitively for over 10 years now. I played club men’s volleyball in university at UNH, going to Nationals (in Reno!), and a friend and I started a team at Canisius College where we were co-captains and had 3 great years playing all over New York state. It was a challenge for sure, but I have so many great memories. I love playing and I’ll do it until my knees give out — hopefully in my 50’s. I always want to get better.

3. I grew up in a family of 4. My parents, my older brother, and me. When I was 15, my best friend in high school moved in with us because his family moved away and he wanted to finish high school at our school. It was great. We fought a couple times, once epically, but we’re close to this day. Family. Then, when I was 16, my parents adopted a 6 year old girl from Russia. I feel like I live in a family of 6, though we don’t get to see Kenny much.

4. I realized I was gay in high school, though I had experimented long before that… I guess I just didn’t know what gay was. When I figured it out, I tried really hard to suppress it. Growing up Catholic meant I believed that this could condemn me to hell for eternity. I’ve written about this before, but what’s most interesting is that my Godfather, a Franciscan priest, left the priesthood so he could be openly gay and in a relationship.

5. I drove from Seattle to Buffalo alone once. I didn’t stop much. I regret not stopping to see the World’s Largest Corn Castle. Or Badlands. Or Mount Rushmore. But I’ll do it again some day.

6. I am afraid of flying, but do it because I love to go places. The day before and the day of my flight are the worst. Once I’m on the plane and its flying down the runway, I’m more relaxed, and then I just get claustrophobic and uncomfortable until landing (See #1).

7. I play the piano and flute very well. I won some award in high school for it. I even played flute in a high school band when I was only in 7th and 8th grades. I can play the saxophone. I just started playing the ukulele. I wish I played piano and flute more, but aside from weddings I don’t know where to go to do that…  plus, my flute needs to be fixed and that shit is expensive. Also, I hate keyboards mostly, unless they have weighted keys and nice sound, and THAT shit is expensive, too. I’m a piano snob. Unapologetically.

8. I spent 2 years studying whales and dolphins at Marineland of Canada. I was doing my Bachelor’s degree in Psychology/Animal Behaviour and it was a tremendous experience. I went away one summer to work on a whale watch boat and had a great time, but when I came back the research project I had developed was given to some underclassmen in the lab and I was asked to do computer programming. I was hurt. I spent months on the project only to see it whittled away, and the professor really hurt me in many ways over those few months… I quit the lab. I tried to go away the next summer to do research in the San Juan Islands on wild Orcas, but it cost me a lot of money and time and the woman I worked for was… how do I put this nicely… useless? She was useless. She didn’t like  me, or people really, and wouldn’t listen to me. I had to drive a little tiny boat in the ocean and felt most of the time like we were going to die just to take some really useless data on killer whales. I then gave up my dream of studying whales and decided to take up education instead.

9. I’ve been in school now, including Kindergarten, for 24 years. I took one year off after undergrad and about 6 months after my Master’s. I love it, and as much as I will sit and tell you that money means very little to me, I have a ton of student loan debts and things I want to do in my life that require money that I don’t have and that I’m not earning. So, I’m looking forward to the day I’m done.

10. I’ve been on several TV shows holding animals for my friend, Jarod. Some of those shows do not exist anymore (Tony Danza Show? Late Night w/ Conan O’Brien (original)? Hannity & Combs? Carson Daly Show?), but others do (GMA, Today Show, Letterman, Maury Povich, Rachel Ray). It was fun, and I had good times… but I now feel a lot of regret for probably scaring the shit out of those poor animals, and for probably teaching people nothing that I would currently find of value. I did meet lots of celebs, but I learned I could care less about celebrities really. They always did and said weird shit when I showed them animals backstage… Sharon Osbourne was cool, though.

11. I love yoga and secretly wish to be a yoga instructor some day. Problem is, it costs money. See #9. I also can never seem to get into a good enough groove with going that I see really big improvements. Someday… I also love tai chi and miss it, but that shit — it’s expensive.

12. I am a inside-my-own-head minimalist. By this, I mean, I’d like to get rid of almost everything I own just to have some clean, orderly, spacious, movement-friendly rooms in my house. When it comes time to throw things out, I turn into a BIT of a hoarder. Then, once things are back on the shelves and NOT in the garbage, I instantly regret not throwing them out. The cycle continues…

13. I am an academic hoarder. Being in an interdisciplinary department, I’m happy to say that I don’t JUST study Biology, Anthropology, Philosophy, etc. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that…) But, I tend to love some portion of everything I read, and so my academic interests are immensely diverse. If I had enough time, I’d be proficient in Ethics, Psychoanalysis, Animal Behaviour, Animal Studies, Politics, Educational Theory, Anthropology, Literature, and probably more…

14. I am insanely unsure of myself in most things, despite any accomplishments I might have in school, sport, love, life…

15. I consider myself to be a spiritually questing person, with needs that I often neglect. I love aspects of Buddhism, Taoism, Shintoism, Ancestor Worship, Christianity (yes), Paganism, Pantheism, Hinduism… you name it, I’ve at least read some of it. Problem is, I don’t commit fully to anything, and so I lack a real sense of spiritual community and tell myself that I’ll get around to it someday, when I know it could really help me out NOW.

In the muck of a PhD

I’ve come to acknowledge that a PhD rises and falls in many ways.  You have moments of total clarity that swell up, driving you into periods of prolonged interest in a topic/trend/theory.  You find critiques, have conversations, and wane in those directions.  You have moments of certainty where this is the life you’re meant to live and that you will always belong in this world — academia/research/writing; but you grow tired of varying thoughts on “achievements” and constantly proving yourself or playing the role, and so you look at other options.  You have months of progress and lots of work followed by weeks of …  well, of nothing?  Not really nothing.  Thinking is something, but nothing to show for all the thinking…  so…  weeks of thinking.  This could be obsessive, relaxed, deep, shallow, whatever.  Its likely to have driven you insane at some point.

Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of reading, including a lot more blogs than I used to read.  I came across a small series of posts on Ecology Without Nature, a blog by the environmental literary critic/professor Timothy Morton.  The series is categorized as PhD Advice. Its been a good read, though I have to admit, being 5 years into my PhD some of this might have been most useful at the beginning.  We did get similar advice, but Morton’s broken things down a bit more concretely.  Our advice (which has evolved institutionally) was to explore for a while (now the incoming students are told to FINISH FINISH FINISH!!!  Always be finishing).  Nice, but here I am, still catching up on all that “exploration” and the anxiety it gave me.

I’ve been thinking in particular about one question that Morton asks:  “What Kind of Expertise Do You Want?”

How I Imagine Experts

Morton seems to be implying that when you are granted your PhD it is because you have become an “expert” in something.  I’ve never been a big fan of the word.  Expert to me always sounded too “final,” or authoritative, or complete.  The cliche that the more you know the more you know what you don’t know (or something along those lines) seems more fitting to me, but never the one to just dismiss someone else’s word choice out of hand, I looked up the definition…  an expert, according to Oxford, is “a person having special knowledge or skill.”  Okay, I’ll take that.  Though, “special” might be a word I take issue with…  I mean, a PhD in a way builds and builds on other peoples’ work and knowledge until you’ve created a nook for yourself, your dissertation, that a select group of people has decided is fresh and new and…  special.  Special enough.

I bring this up because after successfully defending my proposal in December, and while waiting so far to hear about my ethics review from the University, and after a particularly busy January with teaching, applications, and lots of “busy” work…  I’m trying to dig out again.  I have time now to sit down and read and write…  I’ve been making lists of questions that drive my dissertation, of tasks that I need to complete, and of books/articles/authors I want to and need to read to get all of my writing done.  The next step is, how do I prioritize?  I’ve never been a good schedule-maker or schedule sticker-to-er (beyond a week or two), but I’m a persistent little guy…  I’ll probably make another schedule in the next few days in order to feel like I have a plan.

Its just that the idea of becoming an “expert” makes me anxious.  Special knowledge, yes…  but special knowledge and skills are never completely finished/polished in my mind.  My knowledge is always just a matter of what is apparent to me now, it is always changing.  Yes, Morton is right, a dissertation is a transitional object.  And to quote a friend, part of the reason I get anxious about publishing or submitting work is that “when you write something, it fixes what you’ve written” — I’m always encountering strange new ideas that throw me off my chosen path (which is always tentative at best).  Still, it needs to be done and over with…  and the quiet, softer side of me knows that even a PhD dissertation doesn’t have to be entirely serious/stressful/threatening.  I can enjoy it.  I often do…

Meanwhile, I have my poetry class that I’m taking as well as some work to do in helping to organize a conference to distract me.  I’m also re-reading Mind Over Mood by Greenberger and Padesky, a book on CBT that I was encouraged to use/write in a few years ago.  Plus, I’ve been meditating a bit more regularly again and am currently half-way through a talk on meditative practice and neuroplasticity by Mingyur Rinpoche which I will post a link to later.

I sense a rising sun ahead on the horizon.

The Poet Within

I used to write poetry.  It started with a heavy dose of journal writing in my teens, largely working through my despair and frustrations and isolation.  When I go back and read those journals now, I feel some amount of sadness to know that I so often overlooked how joyous my life was in many ways…  how lucky I was compared to other teens at the time.  We don’t think about that stuff when we’re “in it” though, we never do.  We just complain.  I wrote a lot about my meandering sexuality, my troubles with my friends, my fear of going off to University, my disappointments, my striving…  lots of striving in youth.  I listened to a lot of Ani DiFranco while I wrote in those journals, and eventually that became David Gray.  I think Ani inspired my poetry writing…

But I got away from it.  I don’t know why…  I read poetry now, I enjoy it, I try to use it when I can in what I write about world-making, becoming, being, experiencing, melancholia, love, trust, community…  its all poetry, because its all so incredibly indescribable.  Yes, I write about narrative because it is how we actually organize our experiences, but poetry is THE experience, AN experience, or ATTENDING to experiences…  so close, so close, but not quite it most of the time.  Sometimes…

I’m trying to figure out how to start up again.  Admittedly, my “monkey mind” has grown more insistent, though my tools to quiet it have as well, to an extent.  The monkey tells me “You are not a writer” and “You know very little” and “You ought to let others take up these tasks, you were not meant for them.”  I don’t really believe it, but its enough to make me postpone (indefinitely) my own attempts…  so I think I’m going to take a writing class.  I mean, I TA a writing course and lead my students through all kinds of writing activities to get the most out of their own writing.  Shouldn’t I write as well?  Couldn’t I learn from myself?  Ironic, isn’t it?

I’ll let you know how it goes…  in the meantime, here’s a poem that I wrote and used in my first comprehensive on Environmental Ethics/Phenomenology.  I don’t think I wrote it specifically FOR the comp, but it was relevant for some of the nuances I worked in from Don McKay on poetic attentiveness and aesthetic experience:

“Landlocked”

 

I dream of the sea

a white capped tumultuous opening

a rocking cradle

a spirited partner in natality

in passing away

I stand by the sea

a living breathing pulsing giver

a living god and goddess

a desolate façade of untold beings

of phantoms

I immerse myself in the sea

my creator

my sustenance

my reaper

I am pulled by the sea

floating among currents

glimpsing endless horizons

the arc of the sun, unhindered

the stars, unfettered

The sea devours me

I am pulled into its depths

I choke upon its saline waters

I surrender to waves of death

to waves of rebirth

I will become the sea

my blood flows endlessly toward it

a riparian citizen

landlocked yet fluid

dried up in life

cracking…

absorbing…

falling…

my own atomic odyssey

ending upon a rocky shore

seeping into a more likely entirety

a more likely existence

I’ve dreamt of the sea

On Seeking Approval

I mean this in the most obvious way:  try not to seek approval from others.  Constantly, at least.  Or, to the detriment of your own self-worth, self-valuation, self-love…  whatever it may be.  I should also note I’m directing this mostly at myself.  So, hey, self…  you’re good.  They may or may not agree, but regardless, you have some shit to say.  So, you know, say it…

I’m giving a lecture friday on “Writing Childhood Geographies” in the course I TA for…  should be good.  My problem is that the course director, a friend but also a mentor, is someone whose opinion I value greatly, someone who has been appropriately critical of my work up to this point, pushing me in new directions and actually, forcing me to take stronger stands on those things we disagree upon…  yes, I want to do a good job for the students in the class.  I really want them to enjoy what I say, to be forced into new ways of thinking about their writing/reading, but mostly I’m intimidated by the CD.  Still, its a good opportunity for me to once again practice and hone my “lecture” skills, though I’m not a fan of lecturing for more than 30 minutes if that…  she’s asked for up to an hour.  I think I’ll shoot for 40 minutes.

So, I’m trying to do a bit of free association just with the title of the topic.  “Writing Childhood Geographies” seems to me to imply:

Childhood is about place.

Childhood is written about, written to, and written of…  it comes to be through writing (among other things).

Writing has an effect on the locations, places, and experiences of children and childhoods.

Implicit in all of this is that this all has something to do with adulthood as well, right?  I mean, there’s no such thing as childhood with adulthood…  so, clearly, when we say that childhood is x, then it must lead to some adulthood, y.  I’m not a fan of this linear, progressive, modernist kind of thinking.  So, I’ll say that childhood is multiple, leading to versions of adolescence, adulthood, and regressions back into childhoods…  that is x, x1, x2, y, y1, y2, z, z1, z2…  ∞

Also, authors of childhood aren’t just adults, but children themselves, and animals, and plants, and geologies, and cultures, and religions, and imaginary creatures, and chemicals, and quanta…

How the hell do I say all of this?  Explode those ideas.  Its all webby or to bastardize my pretty new pet terminology, its all rhizomatic… children, adults, animals, plants, rocks, comets, strings of energy…  language only alludes to this or ignores this.

Okay, so the post is about approval.  I guess this tangent goes to show that there’s clearly too much to say anyway, so whatever I say is just a piece of a greater puzzle…  leave it at that.  How could it go wrong?  Its just my interpretation of the material in front of me, with the help of friends, mentors, students, readings, authors, thinkers long since dead…  blah blah blah.

Breathe.

Excuuuuuuuse Me?

In line to buy “shit bags” for Penny at BINZ…

A lady at the register with her wares out is clearly still shopping, and I’m waiting.  There’s an employee behind the counter.

I ask shopping lady (in green “Blossom” hat and loooong black coat), “Are you still shopping?  Can I check out?”

Shopping lady replies, “Oh, the gentleman is getting something for me…  but you go ahead.”

“Thanks!”

Employee girl behind counter, “Oh sorry, its my first day, I can’t check you out yet” (she’s reading the training manual now, I notice)…

“Ok, that’s fine, I can wait,” I say with a smile on my face.

Shopping lady turns to me, with slightly downturned corners of lips and says, “Shouldn’t you be at work?”

…

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(deep breath)…

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