Writing Day To Day

Hello Friends.

I’m feeling a bit more chatty and less polemical, which means that you get real journal writing and less ranting. I had my last class on Wednesday, and I designated Thursday as a “do nothing day,” which is good, because I haven’t had a day like that in forever. So this was a good thing. Unfortunately I’m still feeling incredibly behind in terms of TealArt writing, but I suspect this will change soon. I only have 15 more pages to write as an undergraduate total, so my plate is pretty clear. I’m looking forward to spending some quality time figuring things out this summer before I start school again in the fall.

Anyway, I have an interesting snip-it from an early draft of the introduction to a portfolio that I wrote earlier this week.

Earlier this semester when discussing a paper that I had written for a class on cognitive psychotherapy about existential psychodynamics, I noted to one of my Women’s Studies classmates, that my revisions were mostly minor, except for a paragraph that I needed to write connecting existential approaches to cognitive therapy and theories. In response she expressed relief at the realization that my apparent reluctance to engage “women,” in my Women’s and Gender Studies coursework was not born out of some sort of backward political project, but rather a more global tendency toward contrarianism.

While I think that I’ll probably submit a more clear delineation of my goals for the summer later on I have already started thinking about the things that I’d like to accomplish this summer. For your amusement, then…

• I want to get Station Keeping underway.
• I want to start the new TealArt series.
• I want to make a couple of sweaters.
• I want to read a bunch of articles and perhaps begin to have a more coherent idea of what I want my grad school project to be on.

One of the things I’ve (re)realized this semester is that I have to write. I think that I’ve had a happier and more fulfilling semester because I’ve found a method and a habit for writing not just my school work, but also for myself¹. I remember when I was writing Circle Games, I said things like “I need to write,” and “writing makes me happy,” and then school and life happened and I stopped really writing things and I think I suffered for a long time because of it. Similarly, when I started knitting, I found that I tended to spend my breaks from school knitting feverishly, and with school being what it is, and all together I feel like this has put me out of the game for too long. But I think and hope that I’m back, and I hope that I can remember this. I may not be a perfect writer, but any trip through the archives of this site will show that I’ve gotten better, and the only way to get better is to keep up. And I will.

I’ll post tomorrow’s hyper/digital text article a bit later in the day, so stay tuned.

cheers, tycho