blogging grounds me

Its been so long since my last post that I don’t even know where to start. So much stuff has changed and I’ve also felt so many needs to blog during the past week, but because of my new work and the fact that I’m in front of a pc for like 8 hours a day, I don’t feel much like being in front of the pc in the evening. So, because there is so much, I’m just gonna try to list things to get them out of my head and in the blog so I don’t forget which direction I’m trying to take here:

New job: I am very happy to say that I am now working full time with benefits! No complaints. Looking back at my other posts, I have NO reason to complain. Nada.
Directions: I’ve got a lot of things that I want to blog about. I’ve been thinking about gender and power (language). I’ve been thinking about identities and how we construct our identity through names. I’ve also been thinking about how I might use a blog in my classroom. Well, technically I’ve not been thinking about that, but I am now.
Staying focused: whether it be through blogging or yoga or whatever, I’ve got to find ways to keep myself grounded. To help control my mind better. I’ve been suffering a great deal with anxiety and stress (mostly self-imposed) but I have come to a point where I totally know that I need to find a way to stay in control of all the flux and craziness that goes on in my head.
One day at a time: Its amazing how much validty there is to this old saying. When I start to get really overwhelmed I try to think of it like this and it does help. Really.
Focus: New work. Money. Study. Writing. Reading. Blogging. Preparing for my CNY move. 1 year to go.

i needed to do the wash

we live in an apartment complex w/out washer/dryer hook-ups, which means we frequent the local laundry. well, with an icky rash this week on my stomach and the dog's skin problems, i've had two bags of laundry sitting beside the bed for the past couple of days. dh said we'd get up and go down to the 'nice' laundry tomorrow morning, but i just could not stand looking at those dirty clothes any more. like the character in the Gap Creek book.

maybe i'm not as zainey-brainey as i thought...

There is a dude in Nevada who says he can summon UFOs. Wow.

He calls himself a prophet and said the Old Testament taught him how to summon UFOs. According to his site, he is going to go on a UFO-summoning tour. Hmm.

Not too much to say bout this one.

a formal announcement to get this out of my head!

i can honestly say that i both love and loathe the internet. i love the fact that i can get info quickly, look up random stuff, have a conversation via im with a friend, but all the same i hate the fact that i can look up ANYTHING! there are no barriers and for a self professed hypochondriac (probably didn't spell that correctly) its horrible!

arghhh....they should have online doctors, so you can scan your problem/image in the pc and they can look at you that way. they practically do that already with outsourcing.

must control my wiley internet searching ways.

from SOHH to the world of academia

I'm in no way a pro at the blogging world. I've been reading blogs for longer than I've been writing on one; but what surprises me is how quickly this community of bloggers and readers has caught on. To be honest, I had no idea how long blogs had actually been around. A quick google search seems to show that blogs have been in exsistence from round 99 or so. Rebecca Blood, author and blogger has a great history on her site. I think that one of the reasons I enjoy blogging is because there is that chance that someone outside of the folks who know I blog, will actually read and respond to something I've written, so I'm forced to think about audience.

Blogs have grown in popularity, one of the non-acadmic blogs I love reading is Dooce which chronicles a mother raising her two year old. This blog is great, the writer is funny and honest, she's got archives that also date back to before she had a kid, so lots of folks can jive with her feelings and experiences on many levels. I just finished reading an article about her and others from the BBC website that talks about how the net changes our ways of creativity.

Well, what I'm wondering and thinking about is how the net has changed modes of communication for African-Americans to participate in rhetorical discourse. For so long our voices have been silenced in so many arenas, and because of socio-political reasons we have not always had the benefit of keeping up with new technologies, but as the net and pcs become more and more like a TV (one in most every house) is this changing how we participate in the world around us?

For example, I know of lots of young folks who participate in forums and discussion boards about music, but I can't also help but to think that some of these forums and boards also bleed over into other areas as well. SOHH for example, seems to have lots of places to discuss a broad range of issues. There have been lots of discussions about how race is viewed/is an issue in cyberspace. Not always because of what is presented on line, but because of who has access to the information, who can synthesize and respond, and who reads. USC had a conference dealing with some of these issues awhile back, they are asking some of the same questions.

I dunno, I'm interested in why some people dismiss the importance of being net savvy, and I'm really interested in how younger folks are gonna claim the net as a place to participate in the world around them. I just took a peek at one such converation over on SOHH concerning Oprah.

I think that BBC article has it right, the net and modes of communication and creativity are just gonna keep changing and thats what its all about. The problem I see is that because of socio-economic issues too many of us might be left behind.

VA's finest

D'Angelo was probaly at his finest back in the late 90s. Now, he has been plagued by a series of most unfortunate events. The local news reports that he is in fact getting some help. My bro, who could quote to you every song this man ever made, co-signed on, or hummed in his sleep is jumping for joy at the fact that he is getting help and about to put out something new.

I'm just happy the man is getting help. He could never sing again, but he needs to conquer his demons.

thinking about my thinking

Ilnizzzah's Blog-o-sphere

I have done something I don't usually do. I read over previous blog postings (not all of them, but a few) and I think that I'm coming to some new answers for myself.

I wrote this on 7.15:
but i feel like i'm standing at a crossroads now, trying so hard to decide what i want to do next and the truth is, at this point i don't know. what i thought for so long, what i thought i wanted i'm uncertain. as i look at new opportunities and prospects that have been presenting themselves, i'm not quite as certain i *know* anymore.

Well, now that I think about it and process a bit more, I'm not sure that is true. I still know what I want, still know what I'm working for. The problem is that I get caught up in short term vs. long term goals. I also read when I wrote
because i want to start living my life for myself, and not for other people. because so much of my life has been doing what other people think is right or appropriate,

Now, while this is true, very true, what I also need to realize is that there are folks out there who have been doing this thing called living for far longer than I have existed. So, lots of time there advice is based on experiences that I have yet to have, which gives them far greater reach and potential to make decisions or to see things that I can't.

I'm thinking now. I'm thinking that it might not be quite as complicated as I thought it was yesterday.

doing the laundry is a wonderful thing

Robert Morgan, author of Gap Creek, created wonderful characters in this book. My mother in law gave it to me a couple of weeks ago and I just picked it up over the weekend, but I’ve not been able to put it down. Morgan weaves a tale of a young couple struggling at the turn of the century to live. They are both mountain folk who don’t come from much, but the wife is extremely resourceful. At a young age (I believe she is only 17 or 18) she is able to learn how to manage a household and a husband. She has to learn to be his rock (without him knowing it) and at the same time, she is struggling to come into what it means to be a woman.
At one point in the book she talks about why she likes washing clothes. I love this part so much, because it resonates with something I’ve felt for such a long time, but just haven’t been able to put into words:

There is something chemical about the heat of washing, like the fire burns away filth and the soap turns the dirt into something clean. The bitter sopa melts grease and soil. The slick soap eats away filth and oily stains. Much as you hate it, doing washing makes you feel you're starting out new. You have put your face in the smoke and steam, and your hands in the dirty slick water. And then you lift the pieces out and rinse them in fresh water and wring them out in the wind. (61)

***Now, I'm not washing clothes by hand like they did back then, but for some reason, I still feel this way. Washing clothes, going to the laundry makes me feel good. Like I'm really getting something done, starting new. Its like a bapitism.

no complaining....for right now

i remember some time ago where i heard you should keep a 'thanksgiving journal'. well, today i am going to start by listing things that i am feeling very thankful for:

1. shelter: i complain about my apartment, but we do have central ac/heat and you need it in this virginia humidity.
2. cool sheets, warm dh, and warm puppies
3. cereal
4. a hair appointment that will mean i get my hair washed and i don't have to do it!
5. a day with 0 pressing things to do

Thank you God! :-)

aloha

this evening DH and I said bye to a really cool couple headed to Hawaii for grad school. The husband is a painter (and a very awesome one at that) he was ever so kind to give us two paitings, I'll post a link to his website as soon as I can. The wife was a good friend, we went to graduate school together, graduated together, and have taught together for the past two years.

they lived about seven or eight blocks away, so really in the same neighborhood. now they'll be miles and miles and miles away from us. i will miss them.

we are at an age now where most of our friends are either settling down (marriage, house, kids) or moving on to try different things, several of my friends from school are leaving this summer for graduate school in the fall. we still have one more year before we head to CNY and its hard because there aren't lots of folks around (well, my family counts) but still, its like the feeling you had as a kid, when everyone's parents came to pick them up from school, but you are the last kid on friday evening to be picked up. yah know your parents are coming...you just don't know when.

how do I compose thee, let me count the ways...

When I write in my journal, I don’t do any pre-meditative writing. Usually, I just open up the page and let it all come out. I also don’t normally re-read that writing, ever. There have been a couple of times where I’ve gone back and done some reading because I wanted to try to track down a certain day, or I was just board, but normally that’s just it, I do the writing, and leave it.

Now, when I’ve got a paper to write for school, work, publication, etc the process differs greatly of course. Usually I procrastinate (which I’ve recently learned from faculty in departments outside of Humanities is really a faculty thing to do), but I try to think in my head about what I want to write, who my audience is and what the end product should feel like. Then I start by making a list. The list can be long or short, but usually just outlines what my goal(s) is(are). If I’ve got a specific question that I’m trying to answer, I normally go over it and try to break it apart so that I can figure out what kind of answer I’m looking to get. Then, I do my research if necessary. Next, I start to write. I don’t usually have a preset agenda with this writing, its more or less just to get everything I have in my head about the subject out. Sometimes I read over this writing, other times I’ll have DH look over it and see if he can pull any seeds of good thought out of the pile of manure. And most of it is manure, but I still have to see the poop in order to figure out what I’m doing. Or maybe a better way to put it, is to see what I’m thinking. This process occurs so many times its not funny, more reading, more re-writing, more talking, more reading, more re-writing, until I’m close to a point of completion, then I start to read my work aloud and work on the more superficial level of fixing it up. Peter Elbow discusses this in his Introduction to Writing Without Teachers (1998, Second Edition). Elbow writes:

I had to write down without stopping whatever came to me in my thinking about my general topic, and above all I had to stop worrying about whether what I was writing at the moment was any good. I had to invite chaos and bad writing. Then, after I had written a lot of thinking, I could go back and find order and reassert control and try to make it good. (xviii)

I don’t think I really realized how important this step is for my writing process until I read Elbow. Another Elobowian thought that I’m just coming to realize is the idea that writing is a process that should free you:

Writing is, in fact, a transaction with words whereby you free yourself from what you presently think, feel, and perceive. You make available to yourself something better than what you’d be stuck with if you’d actually succeed in making your meaning clear at the start. (15)

I think this is important not only for growth in professional writing, but also with personal more ‘emotional’ writing. (I put that word in parentheses because all writing is emotional, but I just can’t find a better way to express what I’m thinking). So often I feel like I don’t get much out of my journal, but as I said before, I don’t go back and re-read or more importantly RE-THINK what I’ve written, its just there and that’s it. Now, I wouldn’t necessarily go back and change what I’ve written or erase anything, but it could be valuable in both a spiritual and emotional way to read and then write about what I’m thinking, as a way of growing from that original thought.


Something interesting I’ve noticed with my blogging is that it seems like I do a combo of both composing methods. Its part “let it all dump out of my head,” and part think, write, read, think, re-write, read, re-write, publish. I’m interested in how blogging might change the way we think about writing, or the process we use. In some ways, I like my blog better than my journal, but there are definitely things I wouldn’t blog about that I would journal about. Though, I have noticed here lately that my journal has become a place where my primary focus =s worrying, so its good for my mind to have a place where I can think about something else, or write about something else. Not that I haven’t vented worries and frustrations here.

I just can’t help but to notice I would have never journaled this entry. So is a blog just what you make it? What makes it different from what you do in a journal? Is it what is written or is the blog inherently different from a journal?
I don’t quite know exactly where all this came from today. I was talking with a friend who graduated at the same time I did with her MA in English (she was lit, I was comp/rhet) and I told her I was a bit afraid of how I’d do in after a PhD program, when you really have to write and publish. We both agreed that it feels easier when you have deadlines imposed upon you. But, I’m not in school and with one year before I start school, and being 2 (3 years) out, I really feel like I need to do more writing. I don’t even want to say at this point that the blog will serve as a place for me to do that, but who knows.

Welcome to Busey World

so, i'd never heard of him before until last week when i was watching VH1's celeb fit club. but i guess he's an actor. gary busey is a very interesting man, he does this cool thing with words where he makes acronyms. there doesn't seem to be any real rhyme or reason, but he just randomly does them.

Last week he did several, I only remember one though:
FEAR: False Education About Reality

I don't know what it is about this dude, but he is just way cool. There is just something about the random-ness of the acronyms and the fact that everyone on the show thinks he's a bit odd, but the acronyms really make sense.

i'll keep updating because i'm watching right now and i don't want to forget any of them.

sunday nites

sunday nites have always been hard for me. i don't exactly know why, but i think it has something to do with the fact that as a child i once had to go to the emergency room on a sunday nite. it was late, cold, and dark outside. the er was warm, white, and bright. i'd been suffering with stomach pains that would not cease (later, about a year later, we found out i had a spastic colon). but i think for the longest time i've just associated sunday nites with that one evening in particular. sometimes it really bothers me, and other times it doesn't.

blogs make me depressed

the first time i ever read a blog before was when i was waiting to hear back from the school i applied to for a phd program. because i was so nervous and anxious, i would read everything i could on the school. this included faculty and student webpages, and inevitably, blogs. reading the blogs did provide me with some interesting info on how the administration worked, the application process, beurocracy, etc. it also gave me a good look into what students were like.

well, reading the blogs also hurt me. lol and that was because of much of the insecurities i have. as a perfectionists i constantly try to compare myself to others who are where i "think" i should be. i know, its sad and sick, because i'm a 27 year old woman, but thats just the way it is.

so, of course because i saw that everyone in that program had a blog, and that lots of other *important* folks had blogs, i figured, that means i need a blog! and so i've started at least 3 or 4, this one i was actually gonna trash and try to start a new one, but i thought no, i'm going to try to keep plugging away, and i'm going to try to do this for me. not for anyone else.

i've noticed that i seem to read blogs or blog on my own mostly when i feel down on myself. its like i do it for some weird kind of punishment, to show myself that i'm not doing nearly as well as everyone else. how crazy is that? i know, again it makes no sense. but you know what? i'm working through this, i really am trying to. because i want to start living my life for myself, and not for other people. because so much of my life has been doing what other people think is right or appropriate, and its not to say that i am really sorry about that just because i have done a lot, and lots of it has been good.

but i feel like i'm standing at a crossroads now, trying so hard to decide what i want to do next and the truth is, at this point i don't know. what i thought for so long, what i thought i wanted i'm uncertain. as i look at new opportunities and prospects that have been presenting themselves, i'm not quite as certain i *know* anymore.

i've been through a lot with the job market here latelty, applying for postions and getting rejected, has made me wonder what it is that i really want, and how bad do i want it? a lot of the questions i'm asking myself are difficult to answer. but i have to. i don't know what i want anymore and i've got to work hard to come up with some answers.