THE MISADVENTURES OF AN ESOTERIC INVESTIGATOR

This has been a long, strange Thanksgiving weekend.

Ethan was here from Thursday through Sunday. That was great actually. He's been doing a lot better lately. He's got his heart set on being a chef. He's taking two culinary classes this semester and is looking at culinary school when he finished high school.



On Black Friday, we didn't spend a penny.  We tried to go to the zoo but it was closed.  So we went for a long walk along the lake and through the arboretum.  We talked, we laughed.  After the fiasco that was last year and all of the problems Ethan had, it was really nice.

Jacquelyn was telling Eric about how sophomore means "wise fool" and Ethan chimed in, "Like how I was last year."  Which is incredibly self-aware compared to last year's typical Ethan behavior.

We had two Thanksgivings.  One was a misfit dinner at our place.  Our roommate Eric's father is visiting for a week, so he was here.  Some people from Jacquelyn's lab, post-docs away from their families.  At the last minute the Chinese girl changed her plans, but if she hadn't, we would have had more non-USA people than USA people.   So we were definitely in the frame of mind to discuss all the good and bad about Thanksgiving.

The other Thanksgiving was on Saturday at my sister's house.  Which was nice, but filled with all of the things that make visits to my family cringe-worthy.  Poor parenting techniques, political quips, social awkwardness, my sister's amazing ability to make every sentence inappropriate either directly and antagonistically or in a back-handed compliment sort-of-way.  I love them dearly, but I feel like...like I don't understand how I grew up in that family.  There's this anthropological gulf between us, like we're not of the same culture, or even, at times, the same species.

My poem "Star-Crossed" was critiqued today in my writing workshop.  Apparently everyone really liked it.  It received praise as a "masterpiece" and "perfect."  There were some minor things, so I will likely ditch the enjambment in the first stanza, but otherwise, I don't think it will change much in revision.  There was some debate on exactly how heavy-handed I should be with particular lines, that maybe I can condense a bit, but I am skeptical.  We'll see how I feel in a week or so, when I start my revisions and I've had some time away from it.

Don't forget that you can vote for Jacquelyn every day.  So help us get her through her final semester of grad school without monetary stress hovering over us.  Help us retire her student loan debt.  Go vote, people!  It takes two seconds, literally.  Also, feel free to share that link.  Get your friends and relatives and relatives of friends and relatives of relatives to vote.

I also got an AB on my second Shakespeare exam.  I am no longer worried about that class.  I am confident enough that I'll pull off an AB in that class.  If I am lucky, I will pull off an AB in French, but it will be really, really close.  I'll likely be right on the line between an AB and a B, so there's that.  I think I'll get an A in creative writing.  I put in a lot of effort in that class, do all the assignments, all the readings, contribute and whatnot a lot, so I don't see why I wouldn't.  My only major worry is that the heck I'm going to get in my anthro class.  That's so up in the air.  It may very well be my first grade below an AB in my collegiate history.  I know, first-world problem, but there you have it.

Go vote for Jacquelyn!

When I first tried to read A People's History of the United States, I had to stop when I got to the part where governments were sending out troops to kill striking workers.  I was so disgusted, I couldn't read any further.  So when I see pictures like this:



I get that same feeling in the pit of my stomach.  It's the same thing.  We've traveled through time and nothing has changed.

Hey there, faithful readers.  My darling wife is a finalist for the 2011 College Blogging Scholarship, which is like $10,000.  It would be pretty badass if you took two seconds (seriously, it's two seconds) to go here and vote for Jacquelyn Gill.

I ate so much Shakespeare in the last four days that I dreamed in iambic pentameter last night.  Next up, devouring so much human evolution between 1.8 million years ago and 300,000 years ago by Tuesday that everyone in my dreams are homo erectus and trying desperately to start a fire.

[Error: unknown template qotd]Sleep.  Been there, done that.

Fuck you, sorethroat.

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.” 

For the first time in my writing 'career', I received a comment during my previous workshop that alluded to my writing having that "special thing" that Ira is speaking about.  As soon as I read this quote, it resonated.  It synched up with Stephen King's proclamation to just write.  Write all the time.  The only way you'll ever get better is to keep writing, to keep doing the work.  It synched up with I forget who, some famous singer-songwriter who said to throw away your first thousand songs and then you'll be good.  They're all getting at the same thing––that real talent isn't really talent––it's work.  And I think tentatively that I'm finally getting to to point where all this polishing is finally producing a shine.