Realizations or Realisations.

Preparing for change can almost be as daunting as the actual event.

I've started moving in a direction that could radically alter my life in several ways. Well, it would be radical for me.  I'm not sure how everything is going to work out in the end, but I think it will.  This is going to involve my working a lot more in the next several months.  I have to set out all of my responsibilities at work on paper.  Every last thing I do and every last thing I have done in my four and half years on the job must be accounted for and put into an easily digestible form.

Universities aren't really stable places anymore.  They haven't been for years.

***

I went to an academic talk on Friday and was both surprised and disappointed by the material being presented.  I know many lovely people who are doing cutting edge and thought-provoking work.  This work presented was far from cutting edge and even further from compelling.  To be completely honest, I was also a little unsure about how I would feel attending the talk as I am truly unsure of my own connection to my former department and a discipline which I have claimed to love.

I won't bore you with the details of the talk, but I will say that I reacted strongly to claims that I found troublesome and misleading, and then I thought, "In the world that I know, maybe fifty people will read this  stuff if it ever gets published. So who cares?"

And yet, I still did.  I still cared that the work was sloppy and uninteresting.

So I thank the speaker for making me care enough about her work to think it was craptastic, but I still remain extremely skeptical of everything she did.

One thing is for sure. I will always be interested in work about Christopher Marlowe. He remains my 16th century friend (not in a creepy, stalker way--on my end--of course).

***

I think that I've not done as well this year with setting goals and accomplishing them as I hoped to have.  Quite frankly, I've never been a goal oriented person. I've been motivated by fear of failure,  fear of disappointing other people,  and this bizzare need to be nice and accommodating no matter how much  it inconveniences or upsets me.  I'm through with that.  Failing doesn't really hurt that much, people have disappointed me more than I care to admit, and I'm quite through with being accommodating all of the time.

I know that I wouldn't be myself if all of a sudden I just checked out on everything, but it is so tempting.  Sometimes I wonder if people would even notice if I just sort of stopped communicating and pulled a Thoreau.  If they didn't, then I guess my experiment would be successful, eh? 

I have set out a few short term goals for myself.  I've never really done that.  I've never been a list maker, and I've never tried to push myself towards anything in particular.

I'm thirty three years old. I suppose now is the time for all of this.  Lists? Here I come.