The Write Every Day ethos has taken something of a hit. Things are apparently too distracting at the moment—are those carrots still good? what was I going to do with them, again? is it a good idea to wear a white jacket to work when I work with things that tend to have dirt all over them? how can I convince the neighborhood bats to move into my yard? will anyone notice if I take the last piece of pie?—you know, the usual stuff.
Confessions:
I have taken to using a faux-antique typewriter font for my work reports. It looks like my old Smith-Corona typewriter from high school (and college and, unfathomably, grad school as well). This is comforting to me, and comes with the plus side of Word making it impossible to lose track of where I am and type clean off the bottom of the paper and a line or two onto the roller before looking up and realizing I’ve done it yet again; touch typing is a recently acquired and still dodgy skill. I pretend it makes the writing better.
Everything is dusty. My nightstand at home looks like the base of an unshaken snowglobe. Then I blow on it and I’m inside the snowglobe for several seconds. My work desk isn’t faring much better. I sneeze a lot. We need new windows and Pledge by the gallon.
I still don’t know if I’m a processualist, post-processualist, or something else. Nor am I particularly clear on what middle-range theory is and whether I subscribe to it, although I suspect I do and would say oh, is that what that is? were someone to explain it to me and point out it’s what I’ve been doing for the past fifteen years.
Should I have gotten a doctorate? Possibly. Could I have put up with the requisite hoop-jumping (and processualism/post-processualism discernment)? Almost certainly not. Half my professional mail comes addressed to Dr. Boltgirl anyway, so if my colleagues can’t tell the difference, well, that saved me five years and a world of annoyance.
And baseball season begins for the Cubs on Friday. They got rid of Carlos Silva, but unfortunately still have the other 23 guys on the roster besides Ryan Dempster and Starlin Castro, so the season will effectively be over by mid-May and I can get on with waiting for football.
Write Every Day. Maybe tomorrow will be worth reading. The font can only help.
1 comment:
Good luck keeping one step ahead of those incessant archaeological theory revisions. It can be challenging sometimes! IMHO, you get used to the beaurocracy and hoop-jumping as a PhD student, do one's best to save cash when possible, and your reward is the knowledge that you're taking part and contributing to fascinating and cutting edge research in our field, occasionally digging in excellent places, and perhaps even sharing what you've learned with others. I know it's not the only way to do archaeology, but it suits me for now... And then? Back to the "other side"? TBD.
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