Get glued to your seats....
Friday, January 16, 2009
Sunday, January 11, 2009
The world continues to turn
I admit that I thought I would be writing more often than I have been, but I'm still on writing holiday it seems. Tomorrow course #2 starts, and it is a writing course, and I'm writing about me, so there will be lots of writing writing writing. It's a course wherein one improves one's written communication by writing about oneself, which seems pretty one-sided, but who do we know better than ourselves?
That's a loaded question.
It is my impression that a lot of people choose not to know themselves, and choose instead to know the person they want to be. Me, I have to admit, I know myself. I ponder what I think, I ponder why I think the way I do...and yet, even when given the opportunity, my brain will not stop my mouth from saying stupid things in public. Give me a glass of wine, and the brain just sits back in its chaise lounge with a crossword puzzle and tells the mouth to carry on, go about its business, we'll deal with you in the morning.
At one point, a couple of years ago, I was under a great deal of stress. I generally react pretty well to stress, I keep things organized to minimize the problems, I drink heavily, I write things down so I won't forget them, I get people to help me out if I need to and I don't sleep or eat too much because those things just get in the way of all the stuff that needs to be done. Believe me, when I say that I was under a great deal of stress, I'm not talking about your every day ordinary stress...and I'm not talking about your ordinary every day workload. That stuff? piece of cake. To give you an idea of where I was, let's pretend it was January. Oh, like it is now, except that it was three years ago. Hub was here in Ontario, I was still being an associate professor on the east coast. My course load: fourth year organic spectroscopy and lab, inorganic chemistry (someone else did the lab) and first year chemistry (small class, only 35 students, other people did the labs). I was chairing academic appeals, and a provincial/regional NMR users committee, I was on the university's health and safety committee as well as the science safety committee. I had one child in daycare and one in kindergarten with before and after-school care. I had two honours theses students and two other people working for me in my own lab. I ran the X-ray diffractometer and did outside service work also. Hub was making it home every two or three weeks, but he would get in the door and I'd head into work to try to catch up with everything that I'd let go. Is that it? Oh, no, I also was applying to a creative writing program and had to produce a portfolio. I was working on cleaning/packing the house so we could sell it. Out of the blue, after 10 years, BF2 contacted me. The kids were sad because their dad wasn't here all the time, Big One was having nightmares all the time, Little One was sad, and he is never sad. It was not good for any of us.
Anyway, there was a lot of stress. One day I was driving home from work, Little One in the back seat babbling away (he was three) and I was thinking about a story I was writing for the creative writing application, and thinking about supper and marking I was behind in, and a meeting I had the next day and whether we were going to get snow and if I would make it to class for 8:30 the next morning, and what the hell with the BF2 thing, and on and on, many things, and then I realized AH! this is what it's like to be crazy! because I was very close to my subconscious, I could feel it and I did not like it one little bit. I can't explain what I mean, except that I knew that where I was going would not be a good place. Stress is one thing, a very difficult thing certainly, and anxiety is tough, and depression (I've been there too, and it wasn't that) but this was different. This was like dropping off the edge of a cliff but not into a dark abyss or anything like that...just a drop to something, to somewhere I didn't want to go.
So I stopped it, but it gave me a couple of seconds of crazy, the real kind. I often say I'm crazy when people ask why I do things the way I do them, but I'm kidding of course. I don't think the way many of my colleagues do, and that has (finally) ceased to bother me, but I'm not really crazy. I know what crazy would be. You don't need more than a second or two to know full well exactly what it would be like. Not good. Not good at all.
I bring this up because one of the things that we have to do for course #2 is keep a journal using the proprioceptive writing techniqe. You probably won't find that word in relation to writing if you look it up in a dictionary, but what some people (I can't remember the authors, I don't have the book in front of me but the title is Writing the Mind Alive) have done is use the word proprioceptive to describe this technique. The idea is that you light a candle (I am so not doing that, I hate candles) and put on the baroque music (we got Yo-Yo Ma doing some Bach suites as part of the course package. Good thing, because even without my hearing aids, I can hear a cello.) and write for 25 minutes. Not mindless writing. You write down a thought, something in your head, and then ask the "proprioceptive question": what do I mean by ___? (whatever the word is). Let's say I say something like: I remember what it felt to be crazy. What do I mean by crazy? ........ and then I would continue to write, and explore what I mean when I say certain things. Words have concrete meanings, but they also have personal connotations and that is what we're exploring in the journal-writing. By hand. Not using the computer, because then you don't think deeply enough. You use the candle to signal the beginning and end of the session; the authors say that the candle is lit to mark something sacred, that the writing is sacred, but since I take the word sacred to mean something a whole lot more important than journal-writing, and since I hate the candle thing, I won't do that. The writing isn't sacred. It's important perhaps, but sacred? no, not at all.
I resisted the whole notion of this writing practice while I was reading the textbook, because I did not like the way the authors were "selling" the technique. The first few chapters are a total sales pitch, because everyone who has taken their writing practice courses has benefitted, everyone has come away with better writing skills, better self-knowledge, better whatever. Me, I'm slightly skeptical about that. Actually, I think it's crap (or carp, which is what I wrote the first time) and I think that they are ignoring the people who remained ambivalent or for whom the writing practice was nothing more than self-indulgence, as well as the people who just hated everything about the technique. Apparently, it works for everyone, and if it doesn't work (of course, it always does) then maybe the people for whom it doesn't work just aren't doing it "right". There were comments on the open discussion board that indicated that some people really didn't like this course or the journal-writing.
As far as myself, I think it'll be a fine practice as long as nobody makes me light a candle.
***
Turns out that I did extremely well on my last paper for the first course, well enough that the instructor suggested I publish it in a journal that she's on the editorial board for (yeesh, what a sentence. There weren't any of those in my paper.) I think it's quite amazing that I did so well, but I'm not going to make her re-read the thing and drop the mark from "orgasmic" to "good try".
That's a loaded question.
It is my impression that a lot of people choose not to know themselves, and choose instead to know the person they want to be. Me, I have to admit, I know myself. I ponder what I think, I ponder why I think the way I do...and yet, even when given the opportunity, my brain will not stop my mouth from saying stupid things in public. Give me a glass of wine, and the brain just sits back in its chaise lounge with a crossword puzzle and tells the mouth to carry on, go about its business, we'll deal with you in the morning.
At one point, a couple of years ago, I was under a great deal of stress. I generally react pretty well to stress, I keep things organized to minimize the problems, I drink heavily, I write things down so I won't forget them, I get people to help me out if I need to and I don't sleep or eat too much because those things just get in the way of all the stuff that needs to be done. Believe me, when I say that I was under a great deal of stress, I'm not talking about your every day ordinary stress...and I'm not talking about your ordinary every day workload. That stuff? piece of cake. To give you an idea of where I was, let's pretend it was January. Oh, like it is now, except that it was three years ago. Hub was here in Ontario, I was still being an associate professor on the east coast. My course load: fourth year organic spectroscopy and lab, inorganic chemistry (someone else did the lab) and first year chemistry (small class, only 35 students, other people did the labs). I was chairing academic appeals, and a provincial/regional NMR users committee, I was on the university's health and safety committee as well as the science safety committee. I had one child in daycare and one in kindergarten with before and after-school care. I had two honours theses students and two other people working for me in my own lab. I ran the X-ray diffractometer and did outside service work also. Hub was making it home every two or three weeks, but he would get in the door and I'd head into work to try to catch up with everything that I'd let go. Is that it? Oh, no, I also was applying to a creative writing program and had to produce a portfolio. I was working on cleaning/packing the house so we could sell it. Out of the blue, after 10 years, BF2 contacted me. The kids were sad because their dad wasn't here all the time, Big One was having nightmares all the time, Little One was sad, and he is never sad. It was not good for any of us.
Anyway, there was a lot of stress. One day I was driving home from work, Little One in the back seat babbling away (he was three) and I was thinking about a story I was writing for the creative writing application, and thinking about supper and marking I was behind in, and a meeting I had the next day and whether we were going to get snow and if I would make it to class for 8:30 the next morning, and what the hell with the BF2 thing, and on and on, many things, and then I realized AH! this is what it's like to be crazy! because I was very close to my subconscious, I could feel it and I did not like it one little bit. I can't explain what I mean, except that I knew that where I was going would not be a good place. Stress is one thing, a very difficult thing certainly, and anxiety is tough, and depression (I've been there too, and it wasn't that) but this was different. This was like dropping off the edge of a cliff but not into a dark abyss or anything like that...just a drop to something, to somewhere I didn't want to go.
So I stopped it, but it gave me a couple of seconds of crazy, the real kind. I often say I'm crazy when people ask why I do things the way I do them, but I'm kidding of course. I don't think the way many of my colleagues do, and that has (finally) ceased to bother me, but I'm not really crazy. I know what crazy would be. You don't need more than a second or two to know full well exactly what it would be like. Not good. Not good at all.
I bring this up because one of the things that we have to do for course #2 is keep a journal using the proprioceptive writing techniqe. You probably won't find that word in relation to writing if you look it up in a dictionary, but what some people (I can't remember the authors, I don't have the book in front of me but the title is Writing the Mind Alive) have done is use the word proprioceptive to describe this technique. The idea is that you light a candle (I am so not doing that, I hate candles) and put on the baroque music (we got Yo-Yo Ma doing some Bach suites as part of the course package. Good thing, because even without my hearing aids, I can hear a cello.) and write for 25 minutes. Not mindless writing. You write down a thought, something in your head, and then ask the "proprioceptive question": what do I mean by ___? (whatever the word is). Let's say I say something like: I remember what it felt to be crazy. What do I mean by crazy? ........ and then I would continue to write, and explore what I mean when I say certain things. Words have concrete meanings, but they also have personal connotations and that is what we're exploring in the journal-writing. By hand. Not using the computer, because then you don't think deeply enough. You use the candle to signal the beginning and end of the session; the authors say that the candle is lit to mark something sacred, that the writing is sacred, but since I take the word sacred to mean something a whole lot more important than journal-writing, and since I hate the candle thing, I won't do that. The writing isn't sacred. It's important perhaps, but sacred? no, not at all.
I resisted the whole notion of this writing practice while I was reading the textbook, because I did not like the way the authors were "selling" the technique. The first few chapters are a total sales pitch, because everyone who has taken their writing practice courses has benefitted, everyone has come away with better writing skills, better self-knowledge, better whatever. Me, I'm slightly skeptical about that. Actually, I think it's crap (or carp, which is what I wrote the first time) and I think that they are ignoring the people who remained ambivalent or for whom the writing practice was nothing more than self-indulgence, as well as the people who just hated everything about the technique. Apparently, it works for everyone, and if it doesn't work (of course, it always does) then maybe the people for whom it doesn't work just aren't doing it "right". There were comments on the open discussion board that indicated that some people really didn't like this course or the journal-writing.
As far as myself, I think it'll be a fine practice as long as nobody makes me light a candle.
***
Turns out that I did extremely well on my last paper for the first course, well enough that the instructor suggested I publish it in a journal that she's on the editorial board for (yeesh, what a sentence. There weren't any of those in my paper.) I think it's quite amazing that I did so well, but I'm not going to make her re-read the thing and drop the mark from "orgasmic" to "good try".
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
