On Contentment; Or, When Things Go Well

It's amazing how easy it is to be content when things are going well. I taught my first classes yesterday, and am once again delighted to rediscover that I do indeed enjoy life more in second semesters, especially ones in which I get to teach in 75-minute class period. (Oh, how I love a longer class period in which to teach.)

And then I went to my first creative writing class.

I like creative people. I enjoy talking about creative writing things. It was fun.

It was a long day, but I went to bed with thoughts of the beginning of my novel--and woke up with them still there after a nice long sleep. This morning, to keep to my discipline of teaching first, I finished my slides for tomorrow's teaching (and they're good lessons, I think--I'm going to enjoy carrying them out).

But this afternoon I'm going to sit down and get some of the first scene down on the page. My goal that feels manageable: 20 novel pages per week average, spending at least 3 days per week pounding out 6-7 page chunks, which would lead, if all goes well, to a completed first draft by the end of the semester. I have the arc of at least the first few scenes in my head and at least some sense of how they tie into the overall story, so the first (and probably second week) should be fairly low on the "I don't know what the heck's happening next" scale. And hopefully by that time I'll have the next chunk roughed out in my head.

It feels like a gift, how the seeds of planning have taken root--how seamlessly my prep tasks for teaching and writing have flowed into the semester. My life, at the moment, is both balanced and fulfilling, and I know that doesn't happen every day.

I'm keenly aware of how privileged my life is right now, to be able to spend time doing things I love.

I know I'm blessed during the tough times, too, but today I'm feeling my blessedness more keenly than ever. And I wanted to get that down so I could look back later when things might not be going as perfectly and remember that this is a privilege, to be doing these things.

And the Word of the Year Is...Discipline!

The other day (in church, if you want to know) I was given a slip of paper with a keyword on it meant to guide my year. I laughed when I saw the word "discipline." I laughed because I wrote a catapult magazine article about the concept this fall, and have been working in that direction anyway.

And yet there was also a hollow spot in the pit of my stomach when I saw it. I almost wanted to give it back.

But I knew it was the right thing. I needed this. This semester I'm not just juggling two roles--teaching and life--like I did last semester. No, this semester, I'm juggling teaching and writing a novel and life. And while the teaching part is a bit less intense than it was last semester, sometimes it's as much about the number of roles that you're juggling as it is the individual--or even combined--intensity of those roles.

And in this case, I'm not just dealing with that classic work-life balance thing where the "life" part can be easily shoved to the side as needed, but the work/work/life balance thing where both works will be important, and very different. It's not remotely the same as when one is trying to balance teaching 4 classes with life like one did last year, because there it's still one large chunk called "teaching" that's involved primarily. It's teaching and writing a novel, which is something one is used to pushing aside because one's internalized work ethic from one's heritage classifies that as much too fun to devote time to, even when one knows it's worthwhile and has specifically signed up for a class so that argument wouldn't be allowed to hold water.

Granted, the novel might still be pushed occasionally to the side, as teaching will ALWAYS come first for me. The students are the most important, and I am so glad to devote time to their growth. And it is and will be my primary job. But still. The novel, because I'm taking a class that keeps me accountable for writing it, won't be able to be pushed entirely to the side. And that means I'll need to do my teaching-related activities with more--well, discipline--to leave it room. 

It's funny--I know I can do this. I've done it before, many times, the juggling act, in many different types of configurations. I worked more than full time and at the same time did volunteer work editing a couple of online magazines. I wrote a novel manuscript while working more than full time and, incidentally, applying for grad school. And I wrote a dissertation while teaching and being on the job market. Etc. Etc. It just feels new, every time one adjusts one's life and mindset and habits to a new configuration. One has to learn (and re-learn) specific disciplines to create new habits.

And it never, for some reason, feels like riding a bike. But it's always achievable. One remembers eventually what has worked in the past for similar configurations and that one gets the hang of it. For now, here are some largely recycled disciplines I'm working to (re)integrate into my life since I'm now entering into this new juggling act:

• Removing a couple apps from my phone and giving myself stricter time limits when tempted by online and smartphone distractions
• Breaking large tasks into smaller bits and starting with the easiest/least seemingly onerous part when there's not a time pressure indicating otherwise
• "Procrastinating" using other things I need to do anyway (especially teaching stuff and life stuff like exercising, showering, cooking, and cleaning, since the novel will usually be the thing that tries to take over, I'm sensing)
• "Procrastinating" using things that will help me deal with my issues (especially journaling)
• Giving myself manageable self-deadlines that are believable, but sooner than ones others would give me, and will allow me to keep progressing on all tracks without ever (hopefully) having to go into panic mode
• Sometimes making myself simply start that task I don't like because it has to be done soon

This list actually gets me excited about my year of (re)discipline. New challenges really can be fun! (Remind me of that in coming months, eh?)

New Year Relief; or, Not a Fraud Quite Yet!

This week and a bit, thanks to the timely completion of the syllabi, has been sponsored by the letter H for Holiday-ing and the letter N for Novel-Prep.

Between hanging out with family and friends and reflecting on the blessings of the year past and the audacious goal of writing a novel in the year to come, I've been reading more source materials for my novel, delighting in picking up a lot of useful facts and a few highly useful facts.

Hoping against hope that this huge amorphous project would eventually start to jell and I could think my way into a few characters and plot points.

And finally, yesterday, little bits of a sentient, moving novel began to squirm and kick within me.

Woohoo for not being a fraud for telling people I was going to write something this spring!

It's coming, folks. I'm going to have something to write. Love it!

Writing Lessons: Research Results Gymnastics

So this year I presented 4 papers and a poster at 4 academic conferences. This fall alone I presented two. The first one I presented at the Semiotics Society of America conference in Cincinnati in October, the second at the National Communication Association conference in Chicago in November.

Both of these papers started as course papers. The first started as a 30-page conference paper, and thence needed to be turned, Alice-in-Wonderland style, into a short abstract for submission. Then later, after acceptance, it needed to be cut down into 8-9 pages of coherent presentation. After the presentation, it needed to be cleaned up and the style converted to be submitted for the best student paper award.

However gymnastic these efforts sound, the other paper was even more convoluted in its parallel-bars-style revolutions. It started out as a 12-page course paper. Then it was converted into an abstract plus a description of how it contributed to the panel it was a part of (which was all people from our class). After that, it had to be extended to a 24-page paper to send to our eminent reviewer before it was cut to a 4-5 page paper short enough to be fit into the 10 minutes I had to present at the conference.

These gymnastic writing gyrations have at times made my writing muscles a little sore this fall--after all, it's not easy to sum up a 30-page paper in a few hundred words, and even harder to take a complicated French philosopher and express your ideas about his work in a 10-minute presentation.

But these exercises, like those for the physical body, have ultimately strengthened my writing skills. I even think they've helped my fiction-writing skills. For instance, previously writing from a plot outline, which previously felt unnatural, doesn't sound all that untenable after all these practices of research results gymnastics.

So I'm planning to work soon on some plot outlines for the short stories I've been wanting to write, since yes--forgot to mention it previously--I'm taking a short story-writing class in the spring. Since my course work is done, the course is for fun, and I'm definitely looking forward to it. I naturally think more in chapters of a bigger whole than in short stories, but after these gymnastics I've been doing this fall, it feels like my writing muscles might be just strong enough to pack a lot of oomph in those short pages. We'll see how it goes.

Writing Lessons: The Big Nasty Exams

So I'm still not sure whether Blogosphere has fully accepted my apology, but as a show of good faith, I plan to do a series of posts on writing lessons learned during my bloggy absence.

The first--what I learned about writing in general from my Big Nasty PhD Exams (which I passed, by the way--woohoo! I'm ABD officially!).

Okay, so as I think I explained a few months ago, my exams consisted of 20 hours' worth of written exams in the period of a month on a variety of subjects related to courses I'd taken, followed by a 2-hour defense of what I'd written.

As it turned out, most of my exams were 2-hour in-house exams, which meant that on Mondays and Wednesdays, I studied for a particular question during the day, then from 3-5 p.m., came into the department and wrote on a laptop as fast as I could for 2 hours.

From this, I learned that I could create 7 nearly-coherent pages of prose in 2 hours. A valuable lesson, indeed. I'm pretty sure I can repeat this project in other academic and non-fiction writing circumstances, now that I have this skill. In fact, I'm thinking about using a "write a bunch in two hours several times per week" strategy for drafting the early stages of my dissertation.

The only downside? If you have to add citations, it can be a royal pain to go back in and add them afterward, as I learned when I tried the same strategy for my take-home prelim. So if I do this with my dissertation, I'm planning to have all my references pre-loaded into Zotero and clear in my head, ready to pull in clearly, BEFORE my 2-hour sessions begin.

I do like this idea, though--I think it would work better for me than the also-interesting "write a page a day" strategy mentioned by a colleague. See, with research and editing rhythms, it doesn't always work well to write something every single day. If I plan to do two or three 2-hour sessions per week (more if I'm feeling inspired), it will get a lot of pages out there, leaving me lots of research and editing and simmering time between. I think it just might work, both for the upcoming dissertation and in the future for other potential non-fiction drafting.

Woohoo! The Big Nasty Exams have both been successfully completed, AND have given me another writing skill. This is a beautiful thing.

My New Writing Practice

I used to have this wonderful routine down, back before I went back to grad school. I was working more than full-time, so I'd work my 10 or 12 hours in a day. Then I'd come home, maybe play some piano, maybe take a walk (with or without my friend across the street) to clear my head from the stresses of the day.

And then, around 9 or 10 p.m., I'd sit down in the living room with the TV off, I'd journal out whatever thoughts were running around in my head, and I'd think and write at least 100 words of my creative project (often several pages). The writing would sometimes take me up till 2 or 3 a.m. And then I'd get up at 7 and start over again.

Retrospectively, I'm not sure how I had the stamina. But it worked well.

The problem with grad school is in part that I often work at home. It then becomes harder to find practices that clear my head and help me to move from one thing--and one kind of thing--to another. Especially when so much of my work of all kinds is done on the computer.

But I've begun exercising again (sans iPod because it died) and that is helping. And last night I discovered that lighting a few candles in my living room and staring at them for a few minutes also helps.

Which is good because I have to switch back and forth between heavily academic tasks, errands, and this creative project for my assistantship for the rest of the week. And the creative project has passed most of the research phase and moved into the writing stage. And there's a pretty strong deadline, so I need to get into the creative writing mode pretty frequently. And quickly. And well.

You go, candles. You go.

New Article about Facebook; and, on Lack of Laptops

So I'm back from my road trip (just barely, but that's a story for another time). What I've been wanting to tell you since Friday is that I have a new catapult article up. This one's about Facebook...

The other big thing I noticed on my trip is that I don't do well trying to write on trips without my laptop--at least when I want to work on something that's already in an on-computer form. During some of the more techie conference sessions, I got some great writing outlines and brainstorming done. But a few stubborn writing projects that had already migrated into Word got very little further.

I've noticed this before--I can start in handwritten notes. And, once started, I can brainstorm further in handwritten notebooks. But once I've gone digital with a project I simply find it impossible to write new material fully in a handwritten form. Not sure if I can "fix" this process, but it's worth remembering in the future, especially if I continue laptop-less.

Forgot about THEM--and they got stronger

Okay, so going along more-or-less merrily during my school year, in which I HAD to write because things were due (the joy of extrinsic motivation), I'd completely forgotten about THE CRITICS. Now that it's summer, I realized that, despite my pretty lists, they're back with me in spades.

If you're not sure what I'm talking about, Anne Lamott's fabulous writing-neuroses book Bird by Bird puts it best:

What I've learned to do when I sit down to work on a s***ty first draft is to quiet the voices in my head. First there's the vinegar-lipped Reader Lady, who says primly, "Well, that's not very interesting, is it?" And there's the emaciated German male who writes these Orwellian memos detailing your thought crimes. And there are your parents, agonizing over your lack of loyalty and discretion; and there's William Burroughs, dozing off or shooting up because he finds you as bold and articulate as a houseplant; and so on.

She suggests visualizing each voice as a mouse, picking up each by the tail, and dropping them in a jar.

I'm going to try it. My critics are different from hers. In fact, most of them aren't criticizing my writing at the moment, but at the moment are taking on other things in my life. No matter the object, they're completely blocking off most of my ability to do stuff (ironically, academic work as much as anything else). Something must be done, especially since I'm pretty sure they've strengthened their muscles, what with the critic growth that's encouraged in grad school.

Now that I've recognized I have a critic problem, it's all about triage. I think a bout of Julia Cameron's morning pages are in order.

The Fake Commute and Other Writer's Block Tips

I just found this great assortment of writer's block tips. My favorite, actually, is offered in the comments--the idea of a "fake commute to work." That is, whenever you've decided it's time to start writing, purposely walking a few blocks and back home, not to exercise, but as though you're walking to work. I imagine this might just work for me--may have to try it sometime this summer.

Writing Practices: On the Beauty of Lists

So yesterday I made a list.

It's a beautiful list.

It contains all of the things I want/need to get done this summer, complete with estimates of how long I want/need to devote to each item.

It includes studying for the Big Nasty Tests and work for my assistantship at the top. But fun stuff is on the list too, as are my creative projects.

It's remarkably lovely to have a list. Before, it felt like the pressure of the unwritten things to do was clogging the artery my motivation was supposed to be spouting up from (sorry, gross metaphor, there).

Anyway, I even pencilled in time for sleep.

It's a lot like a time budget, really. You know how they say that having a budget means you get to spend a certain amount each month for those things on your list? That's how I feel.

Now we'll see if I can do it. That's another story.

But it feels more manageable now that I have a list.

A Fresh Take on the Inspired/Hard Work Dichotomy

There's a great posting over at Good Letters on the classic question of whether writing is inspired or whether it's something you do, whether or not the muse shows up. I've never been the person who can entirely drudge along whether or not the muse shows up. There are limits, and at least some writings definitely need their simmering time. On the other hand, I find deadlines to be a remarkably effective tool, at times, for summoning inspiration.

In my view, the mix is there, and quite mysterious. Sometimes I wonder whether I try to control the process too much or too little--I'm usually wondering about one or the other of these variations, in some form. Writing practices are often a good way to balance the two sides, I've found, though there are days I totally forget about them in the heat of deadline-stress.

I'd talk more about this, but I have a bus to Chicago to catch in a few hours to go to a conference, and I'm still finishing up my presentations based on the papers I wrote. Since I won a Top 3 Student paper award for one of them (woohoo!), I'm feeling the pressure to be impressive... Ah well, as Eliot said, "For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business."

Since my laptop died a few months ago, I won't have it with me, so likely I won't be posting again until at least Saturday, when I'll be back. Have a good few days!

And She's Ba-ack!

So yesterday mid-afternoon I was the grumpest of the grumps. Woe was I and all that.

I decided I was facing post-semester stress disorder, the result of trying to downshift from 80 hours per week into 40 without losing steam entirely. The summer's prospective projects were overwhelming me, and I felt incredibly guilty about allowing myself to do something other than academic work.

By the evening, I was pretty whiny.

But then, over the course of the evening, things worked. Having decided I would do no academic work for the evening--definitively--worked like magic. There was nothing on TV, so I turned it off and didn't try to replace it with movies for several hours.

I pulled out the Swahili books I had put away (read: taken back to the library) last fall and looked over the first lesson again, rehearsing the now-unfamiliar, yet familiar, sounds. I looked up how to say "post-semester stress disorder" in Swahili in an online dictionary and felt ridiculously happy about it, even though I had no idea how to put the individual words together in the way that made sense. I exercised a bit to my newly discovered and fabulous Exercise TV on-demand channel, getting my muscles moving again bit by bit.

And, as a result of these writing practices, my brain too started to loosen itself up and use muscles that had lain dormant during the school year. And about 1:30 a.m., inspiration hit. I started a creative project I'd been thinking about for awhile. It flowed, and it was beautiful.

Considering last year this barely happened at the end of summer, this is a beautiful, beautiful day in the neighborhood. Woohoo! I'm back in the land of creative writing!

Sure, I still have many academic tasks for the summer, but I'm beginning to envision how a certain amount of, dare I say "balance"? might be possible in the next few months. Ah, frabjous day...

Ah, the Facebook 25 Thing Bleeds to Writing Blogs...

It was inevitable (the leap from Facebook to writing blog articles with lists of 25 thoughts about writing for the week).

Quite nice, though. I don't mind the 25 lists at all, for similar reasons to the ones mentioned here (though I noticed the positive points sooner than the author of the latter article, particularly because of the similarity of the phenomenon to a typical writing priming exercise). Thanks to John for the latter link.

So True, So True...

"The two hardest things about writing are starting and not stopping."
--Stewart O' Nan, quoted in today's Writer's Almanac

Of course, that's particularly when it comes to writing big things that we have to write or things for which we think are big (i.e., writing a novel). Writing other things that have no pressure on them are easier, usually. Ironically, sometimes we won't consider that we've "written" anything unless it's got pressure on it.

Dormant with the Bears...

So in case you were wondering, these past few weeks weren't only time off for me from school and from blogging, but they were also time off from creative writing as well. Actually, they were pretty much time off from all types of writing.

And most of the time, I wasn't even in that mode where I felt like I was collecting writing material. When I did think about my creative writing projects, I felt rather "eh" about them, like all my creative energy and confidence had leaked out my little toe or something, and I wasn't even sure where it had leaked to. I mean, you'd 'a thought there'd have been a puddle of creativity somewhere on the floor, but not so much.

It wasn't pretty. But I think it was necessary. I've been dealing with a lot of stresses of various kinds lately, and I think I needed time off, even from creativity. I'm pretty sure what I was going through was what Virginia Hampton Wright calls a "period of dormancy":

In just about every cycle there's a period of dormancy, when it seems that nothing much is happening. Sometimes this is when you think your well has dried up. You can't imagine ever having another good idea ever again. You're not interested in your work. Creativity doesn't mean as much, or if it means anything, you can't really connect with it. (The Soul Tells a Story p. 206)

Ironically, during my time of dormancy I was in a warm place, and now that I'm back in the cold, I'm feeling energized again. Naturally, now that I'm feeling better, it's back into the swing of a busy semester, which means less time to spend on the creative writing parts. But c'est la vie, eh?

Anyone want to swap dormancy stories?

(Re)Creating Writer's Block?

So I'm back, but in a rush, what with school starting today and getting ready to teach my first class in almost 2 years tomorrow, but I wanted to share this link to a fabulously funny article at the Atlantic. It's a faux ad for a "writer's re-blocking" seminar, to cure people who can't stop writing their blogs, Twitter updates, Facebook statuses, etc. Anyone who's read or attended any sort of motivational writing seminar will appreciate this one.

One of my favorite parts of the "schedule" for the workshop from the article:

“Re-embrace Your Inner Critic.” Using advanced transference techniques, you will pretend to read your work to the most discouraging person you know: the relative who says “Who do you think you are? You’re not funny”; the friend who never got around to reading your short story; the scary professor who always gave your essays a D. You will learn to love them all as they do their best to keep you from typing out another word.

Perhaps that little voice that keeps murmuring in your ear that you have nothing of worth to say is really onto something!

Anyway, I'm off to school. Enjoy the article!

An "Open Source" Online Limerick Dictionary--Need I Say More?

Okay, I'm totally writing a few of these for part of my NaWriMo word count--what an absolutely wacko-but-in-a-brilliant-way idea! For those of you doing NaNoWriMo (such as you TextFIGHT folks), you might try playing with one or two word-defining limericks to prime the pump when you need, well, pumping up...

Hm, what word between Aa- and Dd- could I play with to disperse the stress of Election Day? I'll have to play with a few while glued to the election news tonight...

Zen and the Art of (Public) Transportation

Okay, so I don't believe in the whole Zen thing, but the title still gets at what I'd like to talk about, and a good part of I like to travel so much.

And I do like it. Despite the feeling that your skin is layered in some sort of film by the end of the day, despite unidentified foot-long smudges your jeans pick up somehow, somewhere, along the the way, despite the delays and the frustrations and the missteps, and the tired back and feet and the required watchfulness over one's ambulatory possessions, I appreciate travel, particularly that by public transportation (though as my friends know, I also wouldn't slam the door in the face of a good road trip that came calling--Alaska, anyone?).

Of course, public transportation is time-consuming and I'd be annoyed with it if I had to do it everyday (witness my driving to school), but on vacation, my writerly self quite enjoys it for three reasons:

1. Serendipity. Although I've been traveling "alone" this weekend, I've never lacked for companionship. Airports, airplanes, and trains are fabulous breeding grounds (liminal spaces, some academics would say) for fabulous conversations. I've certainly experienced that this weekend. Beyond giving me good material, this stretches me and reminds a girl who spends a ton of time beyond a computer screen that there are other people out there. Sure, there was one ride where the person was a bit too much of a chatterbox, but forbearing is part of being part of community, and I like that public spaces are spaces where I get to exercise my community muscles.
   
   
2. Eavesdropping. This wouldn't work for academic research, but for my creative writing self, public transportation is a great place to overhear conversations of people, keeping my ear open for interesting types of dialects and bits of characterization through dialogue. Besides, sometimes overhearing on public transport is inescapable, so one might as well keep its useful purposes in mind. :)
   
   
3. A Step toward Peace. Sure, if I did this on a regular basis, I would feel the need to be fully productive during my public transport time, but this same liminality, disjointedness from what's come before and the place you're going to, is a great space to relax and allow one's brain to calm down, to either give oneself space to dig into a book deeply without so many distractions or just to be still, to stare. As Eliot put it so well, that point when "an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations / And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence" (Four Quartets, "East Coker") can be a jumping-off point into that stillness, that listening mode, that in my everyday life I can be so bad at. That point from which both prayer and writing can grow so well.
   

And that, I think, is at the heart of why, despite the hours and hours spent moving around this weekend, I can go home retaining a level of stillness and a measure of refreshment, ready to plunge back into the page and the screen. (Of course, remind my jetlagged self of that Wednesday morning when I have to get up early and go to school after a final day of buses and airports and airplanes tomorrow.)

What to Read, What to Read

So yesterday both Mark Terry and Terry Whalin posted about reading the kinds of books you gravitate to, and then writing those kinds of books. I find this a fascinating concept that's probably true, to a certain degree. But I'd like to point out that reading entirely different kinds of books than the ones you gravitate to, and trying to write different kinds of genres than what you're reading, can be pretty amazing.

That, of course, is said from a girl who's been reading a lot of theoretical tomes lately. I have to admit that theoretical tomes haven't necessarily always been the first book I'd pick up when strolling through Borders, and yet, I'm finding that material incredibly enriching. Yes, I've been writing papers that respond to that theory, but I've also been finding it's been raising desires in me to write creative non-fiction, to try new fiction genres, to add deeper layers to my thought and to my characters in my fiction.

See, the theory I've been reading has touched on some pretty basic questions about who we are as humans. About meaning and communication. On the nature of story. On how we conceive history and why we like to keep and throw things away. About how we influence one another, and questions of agency and free will. This semester, I've been busy theorizing and writing academic papers in response, but I can feel my confidence toward other writings improving as I feel my ponderings on these topics gathering me lots and lots of writing material.

So yeah, I'd like to encourage you writers out there to, sure, read what you want to write and write what you want to read, but here's my two cents: don't limit your reading to that. Don't shun the hard stuff. Stretching your comfort zone is good, and can stretch your imagination along with your understanding.

Oh, and one more thing--don't forget to "read" the "texts" around you in your quest for figuring out what to write. Pay attention to what stories you like to listen to from other people and watch on TV, what locations you like to visit, what your interests are. Observe how people communicate with each other and how the cultures around you work and how they interact with each other. These things, beyond what you like to read, could open up whole new universes of kinds of things to read and to write, and add new depth to what you do write.

On Journals and Journaling, Part 1

"Journal is from Old French jurnal, or 'belonging to a day.' At first, it was a sort of reference book that contained the times of daily prayers. In the 1600s, it acquired the meaning of 'diary' and later became associated with newspaper titles and lent its root to journalism." From Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac

This quotation came through to my inbox the other day, and it struck me as being chock-full of interesting tidbits:

1. That the first journal recorded the times of daily prayers. As a Protestant Christian who, (like Kathleen Norris, whose book The Cloister Walk encouraged me in the practice), loves visiting monasteries, my "monastery geek" side comes out full force for this one. Particularly since my "diary-style" journal entries so often turn into prayers by their ends--I find talking to God so much more interesting than talking to myself.
   
   
2. That the first journals were also reference works. I still find my journals to retain a touch of this character--I try to capture thoughts, observations, emotions, etc., partly so I can refer to them immediately and figure out what's going on in me, but also for reference later on to remember snippets of what my life was like at an earlier time. And my journals specifically used to capture writing inspirations are even more reference works.
   
   
3. The reporting, or journalism, aspect is interesting, particularly as I don't often think of other people reading my journal. However, last week I had to do a finding aid for some of my papers for my archival theory and practice class, acting as though future researchers would be using my papers for research, and this gave me new insights into this journaling aspect (and made me feel quite vulnerable). But more on that in a day or so (hm, there really is an ancient connection between journals and what many blogs have turned into).