short note on rl

[lobelia321]

Yes, there is rl out there, beyond Mackenzie Crook and Draco Malfoy.

I am rethinking my career strategy. More publications and less focus on just the one major-opus book. More liaising with colleagues in the UK and the US. Just heaps more writing. Less angsting about my job situation. A more optimistic, measured response to my &@*11$!& institution. More publications! More publications! Work through the pain: self-doubt is like the weather or a sore throat -- just write despite it.

All of which means less of fic writing, I can't help but think. Because when to fit in the hours?

Comments

[msilverstar]

I like the plan to write more articles (reviews can be good too), and to liaise, especially with colleagues in, say, California. More publications is an excellent idea, you have things to say and you'll be much more interesting than most of your colleagues. Go you!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[brightest-blue.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes! More writing. I'll read it all!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

You will? You'll read my art-history stuff?

[brightest-blue.livejournal.com]

Of course I will! I've loved the little bits and pieces you've posted in the past. Educate me!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Okay!

[childeproof.livejournal.com]

That is more or less verbatim what I've been saying to myself of late. I should be writing a book. In fact, I should have spent the summer writing a book, but didn't for various reasons, while the one I did finish early in the year is creaking its way through the galley stage. Now I need to crank out the journal articles and reviews like a hamster on a wheel to make my CV look less emaciated, and combat feelings of appalling helplessness re academic future.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

But how is your health?

Remind me to email you my mobile number so that we can txt and arrange to meet up sometime! I can't believe we haven't met yet.

I look at colleagues' websites and I am of an age where a lot of the colleagues who are my age have reams and reams of publications. They seem to have 3-4 books (incl. edited and co-authored but still) and 4-8 articles and conferences organised and exhibitions curated and editorial boards they are on and what do I have??! A folder full of Dom and Karl, it's true but nothing to advance my career!

*stares at meagre CV* As t'h said, I need to increase my 'CV presence'. It's a bit like being offline: if you're offline you disappear off the face of the virtual world. Nobody knows what you are though your real self keeps on breathing and walking and perhaps even lurking. If you have no 'CV presence', you're offline academically speaking. Nobody knows who you are.

[childeproof.livejournal.com]

No wonder I'm always so pruriently fascinated by other people's feedback. This dastardly profession inculcates a terrible tendency to spend idle moments checking the MLA citations of rivals and then weeping at one's own superficiality...

Health continues much the same, but there seems nothing organically wrong. That my heartbeat is erratic because of stress is the consensus, but to make Lifestyle Choices to relieve this involves getting a job which isn't in another country to my home and partner, which in its turn involves pumping up my skinny CV, which involves working really hard and getting stressed...etc etc etc.

Do e-mail me your number, and we can meet to discuss how wonderful the world would be if writing intricately-planned smut counted as serious research, and writing scholarly articles was a practice indulged in only by a frequently misunderstood LJ-based underworld.