Underneath

Being under review again is challenging, since I've started to make progress on my manuscript revision. The review can take up a lot of psychological and emotional acreage, leaving little room for focus on my current projects, if I'm not careful. And it gets scarier and scarier in the years leading up to the tenure decision. I'm only 3 years in and already I'm worried.

Reading one's colleagues' critical reports is a bracing experience, but I'm trying my best to take them to heart constructively by thinking about how I can use this as an opportunity to change as a teacher and as a scholar. I'm trying to read them as assessments rather than evaluations. And I'm hoping they'll keep me on.

I have also realized I am not a fan of certain words and phrases that tend to crop up in such reports. It's probably because right now my mind's landscape is being overtaken by thoughts about the review and its uncertain outcome. But for some reason the verb "evinces", even used in a positive way, freaks me out. It has nothing to do with what the word means. I think it has something to do with the way it sounds- kind of like a sharp knife slicing away at paper.

First Paycheck On Leave

30% of my half-pay has been withheld in taxes. I now make less per year than I did as a postdoc in Canada.

Ouch.

Back to grant applications for the spring.

Home again, home again, jiggety jig

. . . And it's pretty much the same. Except that the cat is trying to make up for 18 days without me by sticking her face in front of me every two seconds, and about 50% of the tomatoes were destroyed by caterpillars or blight or not enough water or all three. The first day of classes was yesterday but I'm on leave so I roll out of bed at 8 and spend the morning writing and listening to Bach in my pajamas. I feel kind of ill- like I'm playing hooky or I've got one long extended sick-day.

I've got to get out of here! And so I've devised a marvelous plan: who says I should spend my leave here just because I didn't get a fancy long-term fellowship? Here, where my house is full of distractions and I feel all wrong going to campus and hanging out around my colleagues who are not on leave, and thus envious of me? I have decided to try to sublet my place and move somewhere (avec chat) with bigger libraries, more rare books, more influential and important early modern scholars, and writing-friendly cafes, preferably late this fall, but I'll do January if I must. Can I afford it? Barely. But right now I think it might make a huge difference in my productivity and general happiness. Yes?