My Inner Blog

Word clouds generated by Wordle. Click images to enlarge.

Comments

Post a Comment

Thank you for taking the time to respond to my blog post. I look forward to hearing what you think!

F.B.

Popular posts from this blog

The Way of the Turbit

Okay, so in retrospect, that was more than a little bit manic last week.  Kinda like deciding to start exercising a little bit every day and then trying to work out four times a day and/or every chance you can get.  No wonder I crashed and burned.  And yet, oddly, I do think that the experiment worked.  Because, truth to tell, even in the midst of the flames, I did learn something.†  Several things.  One, and perhaps most importantly, it is possible to find a half hour a day for writing, even on what might otherwise feel like wholly impossible days.  And, two, doing so curiously means that the days themselves feel less impossible, less pressured .  But, three, and this is probably equally important as one and two, this does not necessarily mean trying to finish a piece of writing (no, not even a blog post) in any one segment of time that has somehow miraculously opened up.  What it means is allowing oneself to come back to the writing ev...
Keep reading

Fourth Thought of the Day

This feels a little manic.  I probably shouldn't be trying to write again today.  Three posts in a day is more than enough.  But I have found yet another twenty minutes that I never knew I had, so here I am, writing again. It's like finding a treasure in your sofa when all you thought there was was loose change.  Suddenly, I have all the time in the world for writing.  More than enough.  An abundance!  I am overflowing with time, just like the Virgin Mary overflowing with graces.  It is as if I have stepped into a whole other life, one in which there is actually enough time to do everything I ever dreamed I might want to do. And then some.  I have not only written three (and counting) blog posts today.  I have walked into campus with the Dragon Baby (i.e. exercised--she walks fast on those little legs!  Especially when we go past the vet's).  I have spent two and half (or thereabouts) hours finishing preparing for class....
Keep reading

Canticle of the Creatures

Image
(click to enlarge) Happy St. Francis Day! Statue: Francis of Assisi (d. October 3, 1226), Laudes Creaturarum , better known as the " Canticle of the Sun ." Prairie dog: Donovan, "Brother Sun, Sister Moon," from Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1972).
Keep reading

Glass Ceiling

I've been complaining a lot for a while now about feeling like I have reached the limits of what I am going to be able to accomplish in life, most viscerally (and vocally) in fencing , but more seriously (and melancholically) in my career, particularly my research . I have various theories about why I've been feeling like this: * delayed post-tenure depression brought on by the opportunity at long last to spend a year off actually working on my research; * fatigue brought on by working so hard this past year on my research, coupled with despair over the fact that there was no way I was going to be able to finish anything like a full draft of my next book in only a year, particularly since I was more or less starting from scratch on the research; * anxiety at the thought that my son is now a teenager, which means that he will most likely be leaving home for college within the next five years, leaving me without a reason to get to campus in the morning other than to work on my o...
Keep reading

Twenty-Minute Post

This is already a disaster.  I sat down at my MacBook a full five minutes ago, intending to spend twenty minutes just writing, as per Prof. Boice's advice on working in brief, daily sessions , and it took the stupid machine a full three minutes just to boot (what has my son been downloading onto my laptop?!!!).  And then I had the thought that I should check in iTunes for a recording of some of the songs that we have been talking about in my course on Mary , and while those were downloading, it took another two or three minutes for Blogger even to open.  How can I possibly write something effective in only twenty minutes under these conditions? Okay, now I've had to move so that I am sitting in a chair rather than at the dining room table, but I'm still not settled enough to start writing about what I wanted to say.  See, there seems to be a contradiction in the advice that Prof. Boice gives.  On the one hand, he says, and I do believe him, that we can write ...
Keep reading