Resolve
It's something I need to exhibit right about now. Try though I do to simply write off the unbearable wretchedness of being to factors beyond my control, I still need to exert some kind of agency over my own life.
No, that doesn't mean that I think simply working hard and longer in search of a job will improve my chance markedly. It might enhance my odds slightly, maybe get my foot in the door at a couple of more places, but really, I think the most effective strategy is just to e-mail my resume to even more places and sit by the phone, hoping someone calls.
Despite my unavoidable pessimism, I'd like to move forward with other aspects of my life, rather than allow my joblessness to provoke a general malaise that paralyzes my ability to be productive in other venues. It's a thought I've been kicking around upstairs the past day or two, and as yet it's unformed, but I have some general ideas as to what I hope to accomplish with my abundance of time:
• Read more. Back at the beginning of the year, I determined to read voraciously, making my way through virtually all the books in our apartment: mine, Joe's, Dick's. It was an exceedingly ambitious goal to set for myself, one that would require me to tackle probably a little more than a hundred books in roughly seven or eight months' time, and one that I knew even then was likely unattainable. But still I must resolve to trudge forward. Off the top of my head, I think I've read one book in the intervening time, which I finished just this morning. Granted, it was Jon Lee Anderson's superb if lengthy biography of Che Guevara, a nearly 800-page tome. But I'm capable of plowing through something like that in less than five weeks, for sure. And even though the subject matter merited more careful contemplation than the typical book -- I got misty-eyed at the conclusion, when Che was finally murdered, lamenting the premature death of such a dynamic, visionary personage with such promise to forge a true new world order -- I took so long in completing it mainly because I just went through several periods of multiple days where I didn't pick it up at all. So I need to be a bit more disciplined about reading regularly, and voluminously, even if I end up leaving dozens of unfinished books on the shelves.
• Learn some foreign languages. Another objective I identified when I got back to town a month ago (it seems like I'm taking inventory of all the New Year's resolutions I've been neglecting). I really, really want to not only maintain my Czech and German, but improve upon both. Word came this week that, once again, I'm a finalist for the Fulbright. While this doesn't come as any great surprise, and though I'm not expecting a better fate to become me this time around, I do need to prepare myself academically for the task should it come through this year. More broadly, even if I don't end up in Prague for a year just yet, there's a good possibility I'll be starting grad school this fall, and I'd really prefer not to be spending too much of my time there boning up on languages. So long as I'm not working, I should resolve to devote an hour a day to both Czech and German, sharpening my command of the grammatical structure of the languages and building my vocabulary so that I might be conversant by the summer. Granted, I'd ultimately like to learn Russian, and Esperanto, and brush up on my Spanish that's rusted a big hole in it from almost six years of neglect. But those are projects to pursue later, when I've built a working proficiency in Czech and German.
• Write for myself. Those big fiction projects I keep imagining will surely remain in the conceptual stages if I don't put finger to keyboard. Admittedly, I don't think myself capable of anything grand or worthy of publication, at least not at this juncture of my life. And I do delve into all sorts of subjects penning entries for these pages. But I can still gain a lot by writing solely for myself. I think I should pay more than lip service to the idea of creating art for art's sake, simply by keeping some sort of private journal of thoughts and ideas and stories that are written for my eyes only. Later, if I think any of them merit further work, I can always rewrite and revise and disseminate them. In the interim, however, I think it best simply to write what I think and feel and not need to worry about audience reaction.
• Revise my thesis. For the love of God, this should've been done almost a year ago. To my credit, I have periodically spent time with my thesis, revising it and mainly retyping it so that I have it in word. But as presently constituted, it's a lot of pages -- maybe 20 or more -- too long for journal publication, which means I need to do some substantial rewriting. The nice thing is, I don't think I really need to do new research for it; the feedback I got didn't have any real suggestions in this regard, other than recommending that I draw out some of the other characters better. But given that there weren't any adequate documentary materials for this purpose the first time around, and that I need to concentrate on cutting, not adding, prose, I'm not going to focus on that. Instead, I need to sit down with a notebook and read my thesis, marking it up with corrections but also constructing a general outline and then figuring out what sections to jettison in order to pare it down to a publishable length. That may be a challenge, and an agonizing one at that, but, dammit, it's some really excellent scholarship and it really accomplishes most everything I want in my own scholarship. Other scholars should read this. I want the world to learn about my topic, and to learn from it.
Beyond that, I'm sure there are plenty of self-improvement tasks I could assign myself. But I'd rather not. I think I've got quite a plateful as it stands, and frankly all that self-help book crap isn't my bag. At least if I set out on this and start making some real progress, I'll have something to show for myself from this period of my life and won't have to feel like it's been entirely wasted (though, ironically, probably any job I could or would find will leave me feeling like the time I've spent working it was wasted).
No, that doesn't mean that I think simply working hard and longer in search of a job will improve my chance markedly. It might enhance my odds slightly, maybe get my foot in the door at a couple of more places, but really, I think the most effective strategy is just to e-mail my resume to even more places and sit by the phone, hoping someone calls.
Despite my unavoidable pessimism, I'd like to move forward with other aspects of my life, rather than allow my joblessness to provoke a general malaise that paralyzes my ability to be productive in other venues. It's a thought I've been kicking around upstairs the past day or two, and as yet it's unformed, but I have some general ideas as to what I hope to accomplish with my abundance of time:
• Read more. Back at the beginning of the year, I determined to read voraciously, making my way through virtually all the books in our apartment: mine, Joe's, Dick's. It was an exceedingly ambitious goal to set for myself, one that would require me to tackle probably a little more than a hundred books in roughly seven or eight months' time, and one that I knew even then was likely unattainable. But still I must resolve to trudge forward. Off the top of my head, I think I've read one book in the intervening time, which I finished just this morning. Granted, it was Jon Lee Anderson's superb if lengthy biography of Che Guevara, a nearly 800-page tome. But I'm capable of plowing through something like that in less than five weeks, for sure. And even though the subject matter merited more careful contemplation than the typical book -- I got misty-eyed at the conclusion, when Che was finally murdered, lamenting the premature death of such a dynamic, visionary personage with such promise to forge a true new world order -- I took so long in completing it mainly because I just went through several periods of multiple days where I didn't pick it up at all. So I need to be a bit more disciplined about reading regularly, and voluminously, even if I end up leaving dozens of unfinished books on the shelves.
• Learn some foreign languages. Another objective I identified when I got back to town a month ago (it seems like I'm taking inventory of all the New Year's resolutions I've been neglecting). I really, really want to not only maintain my Czech and German, but improve upon both. Word came this week that, once again, I'm a finalist for the Fulbright. While this doesn't come as any great surprise, and though I'm not expecting a better fate to become me this time around, I do need to prepare myself academically for the task should it come through this year. More broadly, even if I don't end up in Prague for a year just yet, there's a good possibility I'll be starting grad school this fall, and I'd really prefer not to be spending too much of my time there boning up on languages. So long as I'm not working, I should resolve to devote an hour a day to both Czech and German, sharpening my command of the grammatical structure of the languages and building my vocabulary so that I might be conversant by the summer. Granted, I'd ultimately like to learn Russian, and Esperanto, and brush up on my Spanish that's rusted a big hole in it from almost six years of neglect. But those are projects to pursue later, when I've built a working proficiency in Czech and German.
• Write for myself. Those big fiction projects I keep imagining will surely remain in the conceptual stages if I don't put finger to keyboard. Admittedly, I don't think myself capable of anything grand or worthy of publication, at least not at this juncture of my life. And I do delve into all sorts of subjects penning entries for these pages. But I can still gain a lot by writing solely for myself. I think I should pay more than lip service to the idea of creating art for art's sake, simply by keeping some sort of private journal of thoughts and ideas and stories that are written for my eyes only. Later, if I think any of them merit further work, I can always rewrite and revise and disseminate them. In the interim, however, I think it best simply to write what I think and feel and not need to worry about audience reaction.
• Revise my thesis. For the love of God, this should've been done almost a year ago. To my credit, I have periodically spent time with my thesis, revising it and mainly retyping it so that I have it in word. But as presently constituted, it's a lot of pages -- maybe 20 or more -- too long for journal publication, which means I need to do some substantial rewriting. The nice thing is, I don't think I really need to do new research for it; the feedback I got didn't have any real suggestions in this regard, other than recommending that I draw out some of the other characters better. But given that there weren't any adequate documentary materials for this purpose the first time around, and that I need to concentrate on cutting, not adding, prose, I'm not going to focus on that. Instead, I need to sit down with a notebook and read my thesis, marking it up with corrections but also constructing a general outline and then figuring out what sections to jettison in order to pare it down to a publishable length. That may be a challenge, and an agonizing one at that, but, dammit, it's some really excellent scholarship and it really accomplishes most everything I want in my own scholarship. Other scholars should read this. I want the world to learn about my topic, and to learn from it.
Beyond that, I'm sure there are plenty of self-improvement tasks I could assign myself. But I'd rather not. I think I've got quite a plateful as it stands, and frankly all that self-help book crap isn't my bag. At least if I set out on this and start making some real progress, I'll have something to show for myself from this period of my life and won't have to feel like it's been entirely wasted (though, ironically, probably any job I could or would find will leave me feeling like the time I've spent working it was wasted).
posted by Alexander Dubcek | 21:57
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