My Tent on The Beach

A Reason Not to Feel Like I Just Wasted 2 Hours

Let me tell you a little story about academic posturing.  Every Friday in our fine department, we have a colloquium series.  In theory, it’s a place for the department to come together, share ideas, and engage in good ‘ol intellectual comraderie.  In reality, it’s a weekly forum for intra-departmental politics to continue to play out.

I would tell you today was particularly special but, alas, it was not.  I find it interesting and moderately funny that the more I witness sociologists at work, the more I realize that we are all bound by whatever particular lenses we use to approach the world.  Thus, today’s display of possibly the most masculine form of feminism possible in a woman was just another entry in the journal of “All Sociologists Really Are Freaks.”  I include myself, of course.  I just think it’s funny that every single person I’ve ever seen present something embodies the contradiction of their work.  So, while they’re talking about one thing, they’re embodying its opposite. It’s fascinating, but another post.

No, today what gave me a migraine was the bizarro questions of junior faculty who feel compelled to say something…anything.  No, I take that back.  Senior faculty did the same thing.  So really, when someone opens the floor for questions at the end, much like in a political setting, the questions are not questions but mini-speeches asking the speaker of the day to relate, oh, I don’t know…gender and medicalization, say, to…social movements, inequality, culture, politics, classical theory…to those posing questions, I just wanna say…stop putting your own work in the way of the agenda of the day.  We can all play, “6 degrees of Sociology.”  It’s uninteresting.  If you can’t move your mind around to consider the topic at hand on its own merit, then shut the hell up.  Thanks.

Even as I begin to really seriously think about my own work, I find it most disheartening that academia is only about academia and very little about the ideas.  I came to grad school, foolishly, to learn how to expand my thinking.  I’d say I accomplished that and for a time I could say it was part of my daily life–and that was wonderful.  I haven’t been at that place for 2 years…I’m now wandering in the desert of professionalization…and it’s not my kinda desert. When the quality of ideas is secondary to whether or not we can quantify that idea with a line on the C.V….that’s where I need to get outta Dodge.

In reality, I’m choosing to stay in Dodge.  But that stay is temporary…and I need to figure out how to have it not completely kill me.

"Oh the majesty of a frozen lake!"

Welcome to Chicago in February.  On days that I’m waxing eloquent, I would look at this picture and proclaim something like, “Oh the beauty!”  Today I’ve had it up to here (the imaginary equator line I’m drawing across my nose) with snow, cold, and days that usually look more like this:

The beginning of the end of my tolerance of winter.

It’s now the middle of the second straight cold month without a real holiday (I’m sorry…in no way do I count MLK, Valentine’s, or President’s Day as legitimate holidays as they bring with them no merriment or lighted shrubbery.), the novelty of the whole thing has worn off, and the snow left is brown and crunchy.  My jeans have salt lines running half way up my calf and my lips are hopelessly chapped. Even though it was sunny yesterday, I feel like we haven’t actually seen the sun in years, mostly because my skin, pale by most normal standards, is now become blue and translucent. Yet, all of this is superficial compared to the real reason that February starts to wear on me.

People are edgy.  I’m edgy. You’re edgy.  We’re all edgy.  My tolerance for mostly everything is low, low, low.  I’ve been snappish (some might say mean and I’m not totally in disagreement).  I find myself rationalizing not going out because of the weather which leaves me isolated in my tiny (relative to the rest of the world) apartment in my tiny mind without thinking about what’s going on outside of that.  I work especially hard to talk to new people.  In insulating my body (which also includes the growing layer of fat increasing 10-fold with each day), I’ve insulated my whole life.  It’s warm in here, yes, but it’s also testy and low-energy.

For me, there’s a mental shift when February ends.  I like March much better.  It’s 5 letters.  It’s one syllable.  Halfway through it magically becomes spring.  And then it’s winter again but in a manageable cycle of 3 days.  Of course, I’ll start ranting about the idiot college kids who break out the flip-flops pre-April, but that’s much more fun…and less gray.

February…don’t take this personally but we’re over.  It’s me and not you.

Update: I’ve gone back to the gym.

How’d I do it?  With the kind advice of many, I found proper motivation and her name is Rachel Maddow.

It was not coincidental timing that my Ipod Touch arrived a couple weeks ago.  Not only did I want it because I promised myself I could have one after my special fields were done but I specifically had that device in my sights because…it plays tv shows…whichever ones I want…whenever I want…and with better clarity than my regular tv.  This thing is truly amazing.

I knew I would use it to take to the gym because I can push through just about anything physically painful if I’m watching tv.  There’s something so very calming to me about it.  But I also knew I needed to find “just that show” that would motivate me.  And it had to be something I would only watch at the gym, so in order to indulge televisionally, I’d have to go step onto that crazy elliptical and get going.

Her name? Rachel Maddow.

I’m pretty sure I’ve extolled her virtues before, but I’m renewing my accolades.  This woman is just…amazing.  I am in no way a political junkie but now I want to be one just so in case I meet her on the sidewalk I won’t embarrass myself.  Oh man, she brings it.

And I was thinking yesterday as I was “ellipticalling” away that I find great comfort in her show because *it evens out the playing field.*  It’s no secret she’s progressive–she jokes about it openly–but it rights the balance (actually it “lefts” the balance) of the media coverage we’re fed unless we’re being really aware and listening only to NPR.  When I go to find the news (maybe sadly), I’m not vigilant about where it’s coming from.  So, I take in whatever happens to be around (unless it’s Fox News which I consider on the same plane as E! News)…Rachel Maddow serves as a “corrector” of sorts to a lot of mainstream media and I’m thankful for it.

PLUS…I love that she’s somewhat set herself apart from her counterparts Chris Matthews and Keith Olberman who really come across as loud, grandstanding foils to the Rush Limbaugh’s of the world.  I don’t think she does.  She just “breaks it down.”

The bottom line for me, though?  She’s very cool.  She makes smart cool.  She makes reason and fact-checking cool.  I can appreciate her commentary on particular issues but I appreciate even more that she’s teaching all of us how to de-mystify the political process (a lot of her fact-checking comes from public sources).  She’s teaching how to create accountability.  That’s amazing.

So, agree or disagree…I say watch her…at the gym if you have to.

I have a problem.

It’s motivation to work out.  I have none.  I currently have a fully functional gym membership, all the time in the world, and I live three blocks away and I cannot force myself to go.  Perhaps it’s the fact that I view it as “the worst thing I’ll do all day” (even though once I get there, I actively disagree with myself).  Maybe it’s because my gym clothes suck (but I love them…).  I don’t know–I just cannot force myself to get there.

So, here’s what I need.  All 3 of you who read this…I need to know how you motivate yourselves to go.  Respond in your inner monologue, using the exact phrasing you use to tell yourself the gym is a good thing and you must go.  Maybe I just need an inner monologue update.

Until then, I think I’ve talked myself into yoga as a workout again.  Yoga’s wonderful…but it’s not making my jeans any looser, if ya know what I mean…