I've got STACKS of books in my office that don't belong to me. I have Buffalo, SUNY Fredonia and UW Madison library books in neatly (artistically? not sure) assorted narrative skyscrapers in my office according to content...one stack is about the New Deal, another about Buffalo, some contribute to my Diss "theories," whatever those'll end up being. One of the greatest lessons/tools I learned in grad school was how to "read" a book in under 30 minutes....start with index and table of contents, browse the intro to see the author's point, find the pages needed for my topic, read back a few and forward a few from that, and BAM! That book makes it into a stack or not. Then, they sit perched, waiting for me to really go digging as the gobbledy-gook I'm writing needs them.
But, in the midst of some are books about Buffalo, a few that fall under the category "Historical fiction." The book City of Light was this, and although recommended because it provided a snapshot of Buffalonia history, was poorly written, thin and somewhat bizarre in plot, and not the best way to spend a few late nights. Felt like the author was trying too hard and left all sorts of nuggets twisting in the winds of Lake Erie. Oh well.
Another is The Birth of the Erie Canal, written in 1960, extremely romantic and "imaginative" with characters' characteristics, but sort of fun to read. That's what I did last evening after getting the kiddo to bed and still having energy (where it came from, not sure. It was a long day....). So, I buzzed through this ol' beauty and enjoyed it. There wasn't a single mention of music at all, but the historian in me often dukes it out with the musician, and I found myself fascinated with the history. What a chore and battle is was to tame western New York (after, of course, wiping it clean of the Five Nations....but that is another story, not fictional at all, and probably not fun to read...). Holy canoli. There is a sketch of the Buffalo Harbor from 1815, and I just can't get my head around it. And, because the downtown library and Historical Society are so ship-shape around here, I've looked at A LOT of historical pictures of The Buff. I think conceptually, I can't imagine being a pioneer--in the literal sense--and viewing this wild mane of a region as it was back then as navigational and livable. Phew.
So, as I weed out distractions, I figure that historical fiction will present itself as a viable way to entertain, invite sleep to come, and still keep me in the pocket of my research when the day is done. Once finished with The Diss, I think I'll expand into other areas of the country.....the California coast, Rockies, New England, etc. Any suggestions welcome!
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Distractions, distractions....
One of the things my adWiser suggested (or sort of told me, actually) that would be essential in executing Plan A--turning in a full draft by Jan. 15--was to work on eliminating distractions. Hmmm. Yes, that certainly would help. I nodded, said, "yes, that certainly would help," and smiled tentatively. "I'm serious," she said. "Do you know how much time you spend NOT focusing on this because it is very easy to focus on things you think are important, but are not?" Yes, I do. "Yes, I do," and I smiled tentatively. That conversation happened 10 days ago.
Since then, I've been feeling good about my writing and researching progress, and have been scrutinizing my days, what I "do" in them, and how to clear the clutter. In these 10 days, several things have crossed my path that make this notion of "streamlining" very do-able.
To help spur the above conversation along, my adWiser posed, "For example, I know you love your life in Buffalo and are very busy, but have you had conversations with the people close to you about how your time is going to more focused on YOU for the next three months, and that there may be times you are "unavailable" for various things?" Ummmm, no. So I did that. And it went over well (still have some more people to talk to, but I'm getting there) and everyone so far understands the urgency of my own timeline, what it means to me, what it means to them in the long run and the implications for the short run. "It's OK to say 'no' to things sometimes," said my adWiser. She is right.
Then, Monday, in a moment of downtime and cleaning the house during the 15 minutes I had before my son's bus came roaring down the street, I was sorting through magazines and newspapers and assorted whatnot that had accumulated on my front room table. I found a Rolling Stone magazine with Stephen Colbert on the cover from a few weeks back, and realized I HADN'T READ IT! I asked myself, "What the hell have I been doing that I can't even read my fave mag?" So, I finished my task, still had 7 minutes, and buzzed through the article on him. Interesting guy, but anyway, the way that he approaches his "work" and "life" is that he thinks of two things and two things only: work and joy. If what he's doing doesn't have both, he doesn't do it. And I realized that even as arduous as this Dissertation is, it does--for me, but I'm crazy--fit under both work and joy. Using that model, I've eliminated even more distractions.
THEN, yesterday, after leaving the downtown library, I gave myself 30 minutes to run errands. I loathe running errands. Traffic, in and out of the car, delays, money spent (usually), etc. But, my printer was out of ink (bad), my winter comforter still sat at the dry cleaners from 3 weeks ago (weather's turnin'...need that bad boy) and I had no lettuce for dinner. 30 minutes. Right....my last stop was Office Depot, where at that time of day, should have been empty. I refill my cartridges which saves me money (and is "green") but adds about 5 minutes while they do it. Not today, however. I backlog of printer cartridges sat waiting in a long line before mine. Sheesh. So, I wandered the store pondering the research I just did at the library and browsing things that I neither needed nor could afford. These things happen.
On a shelf near the front sat a book that I have heard of, been interested but never purchased: Tim Ferriss's The Four Hour Workweek. This title appeals to my sense of "work" in that I want ALL of the things I do to be productive yet joyful without losing my soul to someone else's dream. I plunked down in a random on-sale office chair (at least I was in the right place) and started to browse the text while watching and waiting for my little black ink cartridge to make its way to the front of the line.
On page 68, Ferriss says (if you don't know him, give him a glance. His blog is in my favorites here),"Doing something unimportant well does not make it important. Requiring a lot of time does not make a task important." BINGO. More distractions gone.
I don't want to fully admit that I have been inefficient, but I did waste a wholelotta whoo-ha this summer making unimportant things very important, and musing over stupid crap that has nothing to do with my life whatsoever (usually some sort of celebrity-related B.S. or news story, gossip, etc.).
Clearing some distractions has been easier than others. Turning off my email until I am "done" for the day was harder than I thought---what is something "big" happened that I need to know about (it never has, why would I think it would?)? What if someone has something urgent to tell me (that's what phones are for)? How to feel connected to the world while sitting in The Chair writing (make better use of free time and hang with friends instead of dealing with them digitally)? and the excuses go on and on. My world will not end if I don't get my 29 messages of goofiness until 3pm each day, yes? And those "waiting" for my answer (they probably aren't) will get it. After 3pm.
Grocery shopping in bulk at undesirable hours (8:30am) as opposed to convenient (3pm) to avoid a busy store, not cleaning the house until I can do it in a full 15-minute swoop, planning time to do tasks and actually DOING THEM AND GETTING THEM DONE in that time, etc. Interesting. Oh, and no Crack News---CNN, MSNBC, FOX, etc. Garbage. If something really big happens, someone will email (and I'll get it at 3pm and the walls won't come a-crumblin' down) or call. It takes a village, afterall....
AND, my brain is ON FIRE lately, and I think it just took that little nudge of confidence, perspective and, of course, a deadline to get it to where it should be. Focused. Not cluttered. Or, at least not as much as before.
So, I took care of some business stuffystuff already, said I wanted to post on M(MotT) today, and hit the library by 11am (if any of you care to join me in the ol' Grosvenor Room and search old newspaper reels from the 1870s...mmmm.......tempting, yes?). I know what I want to find today, will be home by 3pm and ready for the second half of my day. Baby steps. On a clear path, though.
Any more distraction tips are always welcome!
Since then, I've been feeling good about my writing and researching progress, and have been scrutinizing my days, what I "do" in them, and how to clear the clutter. In these 10 days, several things have crossed my path that make this notion of "streamlining" very do-able.
To help spur the above conversation along, my adWiser posed, "For example, I know you love your life in Buffalo and are very busy, but have you had conversations with the people close to you about how your time is going to more focused on YOU for the next three months, and that there may be times you are "unavailable" for various things?" Ummmm, no. So I did that. And it went over well (still have some more people to talk to, but I'm getting there) and everyone so far understands the urgency of my own timeline, what it means to me, what it means to them in the long run and the implications for the short run. "It's OK to say 'no' to things sometimes," said my adWiser. She is right.
Then, Monday, in a moment of downtime and cleaning the house during the 15 minutes I had before my son's bus came roaring down the street, I was sorting through magazines and newspapers and assorted whatnot that had accumulated on my front room table. I found a Rolling Stone magazine with Stephen Colbert on the cover from a few weeks back, and realized I HADN'T READ IT! I asked myself, "What the hell have I been doing that I can't even read my fave mag?" So, I finished my task, still had 7 minutes, and buzzed through the article on him. Interesting guy, but anyway, the way that he approaches his "work" and "life" is that he thinks of two things and two things only: work and joy. If what he's doing doesn't have both, he doesn't do it. And I realized that even as arduous as this Dissertation is, it does--for me, but I'm crazy--fit under both work and joy. Using that model, I've eliminated even more distractions.
THEN, yesterday, after leaving the downtown library, I gave myself 30 minutes to run errands. I loathe running errands. Traffic, in and out of the car, delays, money spent (usually), etc. But, my printer was out of ink (bad), my winter comforter still sat at the dry cleaners from 3 weeks ago (weather's turnin'...need that bad boy) and I had no lettuce for dinner. 30 minutes. Right....my last stop was Office Depot, where at that time of day, should have been empty. I refill my cartridges which saves me money (and is "green") but adds about 5 minutes while they do it. Not today, however. I backlog of printer cartridges sat waiting in a long line before mine. Sheesh. So, I wandered the store pondering the research I just did at the library and browsing things that I neither needed nor could afford. These things happen.
On a shelf near the front sat a book that I have heard of, been interested but never purchased: Tim Ferriss's The Four Hour Workweek. This title appeals to my sense of "work" in that I want ALL of the things I do to be productive yet joyful without losing my soul to someone else's dream. I plunked down in a random on-sale office chair (at least I was in the right place) and started to browse the text while watching and waiting for my little black ink cartridge to make its way to the front of the line.
On page 68, Ferriss says (if you don't know him, give him a glance. His blog is in my favorites here),"Doing something unimportant well does not make it important. Requiring a lot of time does not make a task important." BINGO. More distractions gone.
I don't want to fully admit that I have been inefficient, but I did waste a wholelotta whoo-ha this summer making unimportant things very important, and musing over stupid crap that has nothing to do with my life whatsoever (usually some sort of celebrity-related B.S. or news story, gossip, etc.).
Clearing some distractions has been easier than others. Turning off my email until I am "done" for the day was harder than I thought---what is something "big" happened that I need to know about (it never has, why would I think it would?)? What if someone has something urgent to tell me (that's what phones are for)? How to feel connected to the world while sitting in The Chair writing (make better use of free time and hang with friends instead of dealing with them digitally)? and the excuses go on and on. My world will not end if I don't get my 29 messages of goofiness until 3pm each day, yes? And those "waiting" for my answer (they probably aren't) will get it. After 3pm.
Grocery shopping in bulk at undesirable hours (8:30am) as opposed to convenient (3pm) to avoid a busy store, not cleaning the house until I can do it in a full 15-minute swoop, planning time to do tasks and actually DOING THEM AND GETTING THEM DONE in that time, etc. Interesting. Oh, and no Crack News---CNN, MSNBC, FOX, etc. Garbage. If something really big happens, someone will email (and I'll get it at 3pm and the walls won't come a-crumblin' down) or call. It takes a village, afterall....
AND, my brain is ON FIRE lately, and I think it just took that little nudge of confidence, perspective and, of course, a deadline to get it to where it should be. Focused. Not cluttered. Or, at least not as much as before.
So, I took care of some business stuffystuff already, said I wanted to post on M(MotT) today, and hit the library by 11am (if any of you care to join me in the ol' Grosvenor Room and search old newspaper reels from the 1870s...mmmm.......tempting, yes?). I know what I want to find today, will be home by 3pm and ready for the second half of my day. Baby steps. On a clear path, though.
Any more distraction tips are always welcome!
Friday, October 2, 2009
"...It's the final countdown..."
You know I love quoting music lyrics--even in my daily conversations with people--and the above snippet from 80s hair-metal band, Europe, fits my motivations for the next few months. As silly as that song was/is, with the quirky synth line and hairspray and spandex, I find that most people know that song. It refuses to die, and the lead lyric (above) is more fun sung than spoken every time. AND, the song found a new life in the short-lived TV series "Arrested Development," (the best TV ever, for real) as the background music for Gob's ill-fated magic shows. I'm giggling as I think about it. May have to pull out those DVDs later.
Ok, so I'm digressing already. Coffee's kicking in.
Anyway, my trip to Wisconsin over the weekend was exactly what I needed to feel the push and urgency of this Diss project...the never-ending Diss....until NOW. Holy canoli do I have a lot of work to do, but I soaked up some academic ju-ju by meeting with old friends, wandering about the beautiful campus, working in the Wisconsin Historical Society (which has A LOT of interesting Buffalo materials that our fine archives here in The Buff do not possess) and discussing a reasonable plan of final deadlines with my adWiser. She is a realistic person, and told me straight that this is a big, huge, weighty amount of work that I've proposed for myself. But, those of you that know me understand how wonderfully I work with deadlines, so GAME ON.
What I enjoyed most about the weekend, besides seeing some of my old buddies, was being able to finally articulate my project to those that asked about it, and feeling that I have a handle on it. I've been working on this thing for freakin' ever it seems (ok, this is the third year, which is a reasonable amount of time for diss work for a crazybusy person like myself) and I see that its presence and subsequent completion marks a concrete "end," but is really only the beginning. What lies beyond the Diss defense (so far scheduled for May...fingers crossed) is an expanse of possibilities that is probably the MAIN factor behind my renewed optimism and motivation. This project sits on my shoulders like a colossal albatross, squashing the potential to engage in other projects (or money-making efforts) and blocking the view toward the horizon. Time to unwrap it and lift the weight. Heave-ho.
I will probably start using this blog to write about non-Diss stuff as a way to get the brain flowing before whatever is on deck for the day. I've been whining and bemoaning this thing too often here, but.....these things happen. Thanks for hanging in there. I teach interesting classes at my college gig, and they often spawn more questions for me than those that I pose to my students. Which is a good thing. I find cultural events often puzzling, surprising and exhilarating. This forum may be where I ponder them, hit "publish post" and move on. Small nuggets of musicological whoo-ha. Hope you are ready.
I am!
Ok, so I'm digressing already. Coffee's kicking in.
Anyway, my trip to Wisconsin over the weekend was exactly what I needed to feel the push and urgency of this Diss project...the never-ending Diss....until NOW. Holy canoli do I have a lot of work to do, but I soaked up some academic ju-ju by meeting with old friends, wandering about the beautiful campus, working in the Wisconsin Historical Society (which has A LOT of interesting Buffalo materials that our fine archives here in The Buff do not possess) and discussing a reasonable plan of final deadlines with my adWiser. She is a realistic person, and told me straight that this is a big, huge, weighty amount of work that I've proposed for myself. But, those of you that know me understand how wonderfully I work with deadlines, so GAME ON.
What I enjoyed most about the weekend, besides seeing some of my old buddies, was being able to finally articulate my project to those that asked about it, and feeling that I have a handle on it. I've been working on this thing for freakin' ever it seems (ok, this is the third year, which is a reasonable amount of time for diss work for a crazybusy person like myself) and I see that its presence and subsequent completion marks a concrete "end," but is really only the beginning. What lies beyond the Diss defense (so far scheduled for May...fingers crossed) is an expanse of possibilities that is probably the MAIN factor behind my renewed optimism and motivation. This project sits on my shoulders like a colossal albatross, squashing the potential to engage in other projects (or money-making efforts) and blocking the view toward the horizon. Time to unwrap it and lift the weight. Heave-ho.
I will probably start using this blog to write about non-Diss stuff as a way to get the brain flowing before whatever is on deck for the day. I've been whining and bemoaning this thing too often here, but.....these things happen. Thanks for hanging in there. I teach interesting classes at my college gig, and they often spawn more questions for me than those that I pose to my students. Which is a good thing. I find cultural events often puzzling, surprising and exhilarating. This forum may be where I ponder them, hit "publish post" and move on. Small nuggets of musicological whoo-ha. Hope you are ready.
I am!
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