Process: The Action of Going Forward or On

Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Process... To Make Ready

I'm experiencing some growing pains right now.

In my last blog post (more than a year ago) I talked about my progress in school. About how I was getting ready to teach a course, working on my dissertation, getting my ducks in a row. I taught the course and things went well. I got my ducks in pretty neat rows for all school related things except my dissertation. I couldn't make progress on that. I had a variety of ideas but couldn't get to the spot where they were more than just ideas.

My inactivity made me less successful in school than optimal and with encouragement from my department, I left grad school in May. I spent some time applying for jobs and working at a temp job in Georgia before being offered and accepting a position in Nebraska. Chase and I moved to Nebraska in the beginning of August and we've now been here for one month.

Things are going smoothly. I like my new job and really like and respect my boss. It's important to me to respect and value those I work with, especially because we'll be working so closely together, so I'm really pleased to be able to say that. Chase got a job in the same organization as me so we commute to work and can spend our lunches together. We're really liking having "adult jobs" and are happy to start planning for the future. We're in a nice house and we're starting to save up to buy a place of our own - though that might take a bit longer than we'd like. Linny and Cisco have adjusted well to the increase in space and love that we now have stairs to run up and down.

Today I went to a new employee orientation and was reminded of how much has changed in the last 6 months. I recently started having dreams about all of my Georgia friends, about leaving school, and about still being a grad student. I think they're only happening now because I feel like things are settling down and our life is peaceful. My mind finally has the space to begin to process all of the change we've gone through so recently. But I can't say I'm enjoying the dreams.

I'm unsettled today. We're closer to family now and we love that so much but I don't have many friends here and there's nothing that would feel better right now than to plan a poker night with my Georgia friends and sit around and bullshit with them. I miss them. I know things will change and I'll develop new friendships but right now I'm homesick for Georgia.

I changed the name of my blog and the address to it because "New Peach Old Husker" felt outdated, netogo.blogspot.com isn't me anymore and I want something more permanent. Something that reflects what's going on inside me now that I'm more than just a transplant in a foreign land. I want something I can grow with.

So here I hope to write (more often) about getting ready for what's happening next... For processing and moving on.

Monday, July 1, 2013

Brain Space

I'm spending the day cleaning and organizing things. I start teaching a summer course on Friday (what a weird day to start a course) and still need to finalize the syllabus and the outline for the course. But of course, before I really get to work on that, I've got lots of other stuff to clean and organize around the house. Laundry to do, bills to organize and pay, blogs to catch up on.

I've been on vacation for about the last three weeks, only getting little time sensitive things done, and I'm more than ready to get back to work. Last night as I was cleaning out my RSS feed (I've switched over to Feedly; damn Google Reader and it's sad demise), I came across a post by Kottke on inventions and inspiration. In the interest of maximizing my cleaning, I opened it in a new tab but didn't read it until today.

I still haven't figured out what I'm going to do for my dissertation. I need time and space to sit and wade through the ideas and literature I'm interested in. Time to get to my idea. This article feels like encouragement.

In a similar vein, yesterday I watched Hyde Park on Hudson and one of the scenes has stuck with me. Franklin Roosevelt and the King of England were talking, alone after dinner, and discussing the women in their lives. The women were always buzzing around them with ideas and worries and thoughts, and Roosevelt told the King that whenever he needed a little space to think about something he opened up his stamp collection and everyone left him alone.

I need space to organize my thoughts. My interests. To get my ducks in a row. To be productive. To come up with great ideas.

I'm back from vacation and I'm drawing out my stamp collection. I'm looking for the adjacent possible.

Monday, January 7, 2013

Record Keeping

Books I've Read in 2012 (AKA I Read 18 Books This Year!):

(March) part of MacKinnon and Heise – Self, Identity, and Social Institutions

(May) Veronica Roth – Insurgent

(May) Robert Whitaker – Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America

(May) Mental Health, Social Mirror (edited volume by Avison, McLeod, and Pescosolido)

(May) The New Blackwell Companion to Medical Sociology (edited volume by Cockerham)

(May) Advances in the Conceptualization of the Stress Process (edited volume by Avison, Aneshensel, Schieman, and Wheaton)

(June) Handbook for the Sociology of Health, Illness, and Healing (edited volume by Pescosolido, Martin, McLeod, and Rogers)

(July) Michael Marmot – The Status Syndrome: How Social Status Affects our Health and Longevity

(September) John Green – The Fault in Our Stars

(September) Timothy Pachirat – Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight

(September) Mary Blair-Loy – Competing Devotions: Career and Family among Women Executives

(September) Susie Orbach – Bodies

(October) Tanner Colby – Some of My Best Friends are Black

(October) Anne Lamott - Bird by Bird

(November) Erving Goffman – Stigma

(December) Caitlin Moran – How to be a Woman

(December) Baratunde Thurston – How to be Black

(December) Chad Harbach – The Art of Fielding

Saturday, January 5, 2013

New New Camera!

I got a new camera again! Woo! Remember three posts (or almost five months ago, ha) when I got my last new camera? Yeah, well it broke within a week and I returned it. It was a Canon 310HS and had a switch to go from automatic shooting to programs to use to shoot with and the switch didn't reliably actually make the switch between modes.

I bought the camera after a long (broke) summer and as soon as I returned it the money was needed elsewhere ($1200 of car repairs/new tires this fall!) so I couldn't actually afford to replace it until now. Instead of getting a new Canon 310HS (which they seem to have stopped making??) I went for something that will help me (hopefully) transition into a DSLR someday. I got the Canon S100 and it has automatic modes as well as manual modes and allows me to set up the aperture and shutter speed. I've used it a bunch in the short time I've had it and really love it.

Here are some shots from this weekend. (Unedited and all shot with the automatic setting) (Click on the photo to see the large size)

Us, last night

Gaming

Sugargum seed

Linny with a long neck

Afternoon date (my meal)

Chase and his meal

Linny after a lot of ball chasing at the soccer field

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

In with the New

In 2013 I hope to do a few things differently, hopefully better, and one thing I'd like to work on to help me accomplish that is blogging. I've got a handful of goals for the new year, some travel goals, school goals, body goals, etc, and I'd like a place to house my progress and struggles so I can look back and see tangible evidence of growth towards my goals.

I've tried blogging here in the past and have gotten disenchanted when I didn't get many comments and felt like no one was reading my stuff. This year I hope that'll change a bit but mostly I just want to document life for my sake.

When I write here I often feel like I need to hone what I'm writing... to put my best foot forward and work from there, and I'd like to work on changing that a bit this year. Yes, it's important to be able to effectively communicate your point, but sometimes that point takes a while to figure out and in the meantime you might learn from just talking it out. I plan on doing some of that talking here.

(I think some of this stems from my professional background... I'm in a sociology graduate program and I'm being taught to say very specific things with very specific words and encouraged to read and revise until exactly what I intend is written on paper. Words that seem similar, like disparity and inequality, or mental health and mental disorder, are written on extensively and often the subject of intense debate. I tend to shy away from some of these words because of the... crap that surrounds the word... the tradition that uses it, what they mean when they say someone has mental health, etc. Here I'm going to try to leave that at the door and talk about what I think regardless of the multitude of things it could mean. And hopefully my intended meaning will be clear, and if not, I'll say more if that's requested.)

--
To begin:

Right now I'm hiding at school while Chase (my boyfriend) and his dad, stepmom, and sister invade my house. I'll have it back in less than 16 hours. Time could not pass fast enough tonight. I'm so happy Chase's parents split when he was younger, if only so that I can easily have a favorite future-in-law (his mom). And with those few words, I'll stop before I say something (else?) I shouldn't.