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, July 1, 2013
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
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
Linny with a long neck
Afternoon date (my meal)
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.
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.
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