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The Third Estate
What Is The Third Estate?
 Everything
What Has It Been Until Now In The Political Order?
Nothing
What Does It Want To Be?
Something

Checking In

Tuesday, May 17, 2011
So for the last few weeks I've been going through one of those predictable cycles in which I have lots of things I'd like to blog about and so many obligations to fulfill that by the time I have the time to write I don't have the energy.

My paying job has its ups and downs (or is that flats and downs? or downs and further downs?) and is involves a lot of tedium. It's not that my day to day tasks or inherently boring. It's more that I just don't care. I'm not sure if it's the nature of the management (amateurish) or my office (bleak) or the topic (depressing), but* whatever the case I find myself spending much of the day counting the hours until I can go home. Oh well, this is what happens when you go looking for a paycheck rather than a meaningful career. Maybe next time I'll learn. Probably not though.

In terms of my own research, I've finally sent a draft of my very own version of The Paper That Will Not Die to my collaborator. I proceeded to do a dance of heroic joy around my desk, screaming "Freedom!" like Mel Gibson in Braveheart. Well, I imagined I was doing that anyway. Then I looked at the other six papers I have lined up to work on next and sighed.

I'm making excellent progress on my novel, which is approximately 4 chapters from a completed first draft. Now if only I hadn't noticed that I had developed a writing tick and then obsessing about it. I use "but"** as a conjunction far too often, or rather I started wondering if I use "but"** too often, and now I careen between using it when I shouldn't and not using it when I should. I always heard that writers were a bizarre species of unhinged introverts with a pathological obsession with grammar. I just never thought I'd be one. To make my writing time even more enjoyable, I have a well-developed case of whatever you call that syndrome where you think everything you write is crap.

Political news these days is depressing, and non-political news is even worse. In the face of the dreariness of public life, after a great deal of encouragement from my lovely spouse I've resumed my personal involvement in electoral politics. To be a bit more honest, BH declared that I was totally miserable about my job and needed to do something I enjoyed, and then offered me as campaign manager to a candidate I'd been advising here and there. And of course I'm glad she did it. It's not a paying gig, but*** it's a start. I'm hoping maybe in a year or two I can land a full time staff job or something. We'll see.

No I haven't given up on my series of posts on education policy. Yes I have one outlined. No I have no idea when it will be finished. Yes I feel bad about it.

My allergies have kicked in again and I'm taking allegra. I was extremely excited to discover that it's available over the counter, but**** I seemed to have made a slight error. Allegra-D was so expensive that I bought a generic sudafed separately from regular allegra. Now that they're so much less expensive I've started taking them as one pill again. Oops. When I take the stuff at night I wake up after a few hours and don't get back to sleep. When I take them in the morning (like today) I feel incredibly groggy (and bloated) all day. So either way I'm exhausted all the time. Wheeee.

And that's my life. Oh, and I just noticed that 9 days will be my 7th anniversary as a blogger. Holy crap.



*You'll realize what this asterisk is for in a minute.
**These don't count
***Is one "but" a paragraph too much?
****I'm really becoming convinced I have a problem.
Posted by Arbitrista @ 1:55 PM
2 Comments:
  • "Yet" makes a nice alternative to "but." And* I definitely* have my own writing ticks, too.* Let's just say* they lend character to our writing. :)

    * These, for example. Especially the "and. . .too."

    By Blogger Leslie M-B, at 1:44 PM  
  • "after which" is something I've been writing way too often... "afterward" is next. I definitely agree with the "yet" suggestion from above.

    By Blogger Super Babe, at 9:03 PM  
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