Challenge: One Writing Session, Focus on Process

Your one job today for your writing: Focus on your process. What is working in terms of of how you write. If you worry less about your outcomes, and more on optimizing quality processes, you will, paradoxically, have better outcomes.

So today, have one writing session: 15 minutes, a half hour, or 45 minutes, during which you "observe" your habits, processes, way of approaching writing, and your thinking. Observe what facilitates writing, and what gets in the way.

Cutting Before Crisis

This week, I learned of two scholars that I care about that are taking medical leaves for emotional/family care/mental health reasons. I am thrilled that both fo them had the courage to take this step.  I am proud of them. I am sad it came to this

Yet, in both cases, and this is not to blame them, there may have been things that they could have cut/reduced before. This is not to say that they had total choice in the contexts that lead up to them making this wise decision, but both may have internalized demands and expectations that may not have been fully the demands of the institutions. 

Racism, sexism, and the intrusion of corporate capitalism into academic spaces all lead to the internalization of beliefs even when the structural barriers are not acting upon us. The same holds true for childhood experiences that have not been processed.

It is essential that we do the emotional work of teasing apart real expectations and demands verses those that we have internalized that no longer serve us.  

We also have to do the hard work of learning to cut what can be cut, say no to what needs to be said no to, and work on our processes so we can be as efficient as we can. 

Doing the internal work does not absolve oppressive and problematic institutions--there are changes that must be made--but we have to learn to control what can can control.

Writing Challenge: Start Over

Consider a paragraph that you have been tinkering with a great deal. It just does not seem to work, and you keep playing with it. 

Read the paragraph.

Stop. Leave the document, and wait five minutes. Open a new document. Write a simple sentence "the purpose of this paragraph is to..."

Now, write it, without looking again. 

At times, starting over is far more efficient than fixing something that does not work.

Stop "Lying": You Won't Have It Next Week!

We all do it. Tell colleagues and collaborators that we will have something done next week when we know darn well that we won't. We have learned to do this to avoid messy situations (confrontations?), assuage guilt, and hope and hope and hope that somehow we will magically get back to that article that we said we would do three months ago!

And yes, I do understand you are not lying intentionally. However, this defense mechanism leads to a great deal of guilt and anxiety--you know that feeling, hoping an email from the recipient of said "lie" does not pop into your email box! The cumulation of those little lies can lead to a great deal of email dread.

The solution? Getting real with ourselves, and with our colleagues about the actual nature of our writing agenda. It may make for some slightly harder discussions upfront, but decreases a great del of psychic toll.

The Pause Botton or the Gas?

In life, you need to learn when self-care means pressing the pause button, and when it means putting your foot down on the gas. If you do one but not the other all the time, you may be out of balance....

I've Returned

 I took a pause from blogging several months ago--pandemic, to reflect upon the racist violence and insurrection, some of my own writing projects, playing the ukulele. To cut myself some slack, it is not easy to keep up a blog after 8 years and over 800 posts. At some point, what do I want to say that is new?

That last question has been a sticking point for me that has somewhat curtailed my desire to start blogging again. Indeed. I am not certain I have a great deal to say that is new, however, how important is that, really? If I waited to say something new and earthshattering I would probably still not have done very much writing in my life. Such evaluations are to be done by others—not the self. I started this blog to explore academic writing, the academic life, and provide some guidance  for how to resolve the psychosocial barriers that block scholars. 

Most centrally, however, it has been less about providing guidance and more about using writing as a method of inquiry, to quote my friend Laurel Richardson. This is my space to engage in the practice of writing to penetrate the aforementioned topics. 

I wish to explore again. Anew.

So, no promises about how often, but, in the immortal lyrics and sounds of Squeeze,  I've Returned.

Productivity Versus Self Care is a False Dichotomy If...

.....you focus on healthy, sustainable practices and let go of attachment to internalized demands and expectations. Easier said than done, of course.

Video Helping is Real Help

This summer, I am a teaching a graduate level course on crisis intervention. Of course, there is no relevance to this course and our current national/global context!!! This week, my students begin working with each other in peer-counseling triads  For four weeks, they will get a flavor for what it is like to help and be helped via video, right now, in the contest of the pandemic, racist violence, uprising, and political/leadership incompetence.

While some of them may be skeptical that helping can happen via video, I know it can. It does, and after ten years of doing it, I firmly believe that I can establish nearly the same quality helping relationship that do when I work “live.” In fact, I have worked with so few client in person during the last decade, I am not even sure how I would do anymore with real live people!

I am writing this as I have seen some posts in social media about people needing help for anxiety and/or depression but not wishing to engage via video. I get the reticence—it is really weird at first. But please—reach out and seek the help you need—give this strange post-modern way of being engaged in help and helping a shot. You own it to yourself.

Lean into Processes, Let go of Productivity

It is one of the great paradoxes of writing--if I let you let go of the need to be productive, and focus on the quality of your processes, you will be more productive. And healthier. And more balanced. Needed in these times.

Healthy sustainably writing sessions. Day by day. Working on relationship to writing. You will be productive without worrying about productivity.

An Email From A Student

It has been a while since I have posted on my blog—I have been reflecting on how I wished to re-enter this space.

Today, it became clear…I present to you an unedited email from a student (with permission), the kind of student that makes all of what we do worthwhile… it also is a reminder of why compassion should trump rigor night now..

Rich

I appreciate you reaching out as a safe place for students to process. I would like to preface my words with the statement that as a white person, my feelings are not even comparable to the utter grief, anger, and exhaustion that my black brothers and sisters are experiencing and have been experiencing for generations. In response to your question, I am angry and overwhelmed. I am tired that our society STILL hasn't figured out how to bring inclusion and equity in society based on race. I got into social work to make a change structurally with my professional and personal efforts. THIS is exactly the type of inequality that I want to see eliminated in society.

I listened to a video recently of a black man explaining that to wake up to the news of a black man being murdered shatters him, yet as a human, he has responsibilities that he must attend to, work to go to, ect. Existing normally in public spheres in the midst of grief and trauma is something that I believe to be almost impossible. I wept at this video, knowing that though individuals experience grief in their daily lives, nothing compares to the collective grief that black individuals feel daily. There is no bereavement for this grief, no opportunity to take a moment, just an expectation to be peaceful and contained.

Needless to say. I am grieved for my nation right now. I am afraid of the future, and I am employing every ounce of my being to be a good ally to my community right now. This quarter has driven me to the edge of myself, and it has been a struggle personally, but more so, nationally, in the last few weeks. I am feeling mentally TAPPED OUT. I'm distracted and have been unable to form thoughts to complete assignments in proper APA format. For many, this is the biggest thing that we have experienced in our entire life. A pandemic, and a nationwide outcry for justice to be served, and for racism to cease in structural oppression. I am at a loss for words, but I know that you are watching the news, and maybe even protesting. I know that you know that things feel unreal right now.

Thank you for reaching out. It means a lot. I am here, trying to give my all, but it doesn't feel like I have much to give, and it definitely doesn't feel like enough. Nevertheless, here we are.

BASW Student, UW Tacoma

Monday Challenge #2

Let two people know when you are going to really be able to get to their work. Be honest with them. We often say, "this week" and know there is no way. Being real allows us to put those tasks aside and focus on what we really have to work on this week.  This is not an easy challenge, as many of us dread disappointing others, so instead, we lie to them (although we never see it as such). Consider.

A Very Simple Model for Article Writing

Forward. Fix. Forward. Fix. Forward Fix.

Monday Challenge # 1

Write at least 100 words on your primary writing project. Decide you are going to do that today, no matter what.

Obey:An Essay

My latest creative nonfiction piece, published in the literary journal, The New Southern Fugitives, Obey. 

The Should Within Shame

In Karen Horney’s work on anxiety and depression she explored what she termed the “tyranny of the should.” She posited that our internalization of social demands is part and parcel to what  traditional psychoanalysts referred to as the super ego. Her work helped psychotherapist from all disciplines and traditions to begin to consider the mechanisms by which the self encounters the other in regard to experiencing shame.

Horney’s work has had an important influence on the development of various systems of cognitive behavioral therapy, including Albert Ellis’s Rational Emotive Therapy (now referred to as Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy). Ellis believed that at the core of all irrational thinking lies an oft-hidden, unrelenting-difficult-to-change “should” or “must.” He coined the term “musterbation” to refer to this type of thinking.

We often do not recognize or “hear” our thinking easily at first, until we develop the ability to “think about our thinking” but when we do, this type of thinking often sounds like “I must do this.” I should have done that.”  The internal experience is shame.

The shame that many academics feel about their careers is very much linked to this phenomenon. Shame is very much musterbation, or the internalization of should, about that which we should or should have not done or accomplished in the past. Some shame is highly pro-social, and keeps us from doing harm to others. 

When applied to one’s careers, the internalization of this demandingness often sounds like:

By now, I should have….

I should have been a great scholar by now..

I should have published X books….

I should have a citation count of x…..

I should be more cited than X (insert internalized competitor)….

What is most insidious about these "shoulds" is that there is usually a secondary evaluation.

Since I should have done X by now, and I have not, I am therefore X (harsh evaluation)

The last X can be filled in by some pretty hard judgments: unworthy, not smart, not good enough, useless, worthless, or perhaps less harsh but often still-debilitating variations: not as really as smart as people think, not as competent as people think,  not as good a writer as, etc.

It is hard for me to know how to end this post—I usually like to end with a nice pithy statement of hope. However, when it comes to such “shoulds,” it often takes hard work with someone well-trained to help you reprogram yourself. You deserve it.

Timer-Defining the Undefined

Some tasks can take as long as we give them. Take grading student papers, for example. We could literally spend hours on each paper--there is always more to comment on (although, the more feedback we give, the more likely students are to pay attention to none of it, from my experience).

However, taking hours on each paper is not possible regardless—we have too much to do. Yet, how do we insure that we don’t spend too much time on grading (and other such tasks, like writing letters of recommendation or service-related writing)?

Use the timer. Decide on an amount of time that you are willing to spend and set the timer for one minute less than that number, and go. Feel the pressure of time. Just a bit. When the timer goes off, it is time to start writing it up.