The Log in My Jam (repost)
What follows is the first post from my previous Wordpress blog. I’ve done some editing - added a couple of sentences, shortened or streamlined a couple of others. A quick explanatory note: my now-defunct blog was called “Eat Light,” a reference to photosynthesis: the elegant, interlocking set of metabolic pathways by which plants make their own food out of sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide. It’s the best kind of magic I know about: an evolutionary wonder.
I guess I felt like my blog was a place where I could take in bits of information - ideas, facts, my perceptions and feelings - then shove it all together to feed myself, maybe even heal myself.
I know it doesn’t really work that way, but I still like the metaphor.
the log in my jam:
originally published 13 June, 2018
I’m here because I want to write, but like someone who has been bedridden for months and has to learn how to walk again, I need to learn how to write again. Step by step. One foot in front of the other. Journey of a thousand steps, etc.
I’m an ex-academic, terminally ABD, carrying the kind of baggage you’d expect. It’s the same story that’s been told by a stampede of ex-academics on blogs and in articles and books: variations on a theme that people started calling quit lit. It’s an established genre, at this point. Nothing new.
Academia is dying. This is happening for a bunch of different reasons, but it doesn’t mean that ex-academics have to die – or to fall silent, which feels like death. Maybe I’m too pessimistic. Jaded. Academia may yet survive, perhaps even become something better, more equitable. Who knows? But those of us who’ve left will not be here for that. We are on shorter, more urgent timelines.
Academia’s exit is paved with quit lit. I tried to skirt along the edges of that street because the genre is so…done. So much ink spilled, so many hearts laid bare, etc. What value could I possibly add? I wanted to write something else, something fresh and interesting. But the genre exists – and persists – for a reason. I’m beginning to understand that I’ll have to hack out my own “Quitter’s Tale” if I ever want to be able to write about anything else. The road out is through. It didn’t kill me, so it will make me stronger. Cliché-cliché-cliché. Whatever.
So that’s what I’ll do with my first few posts. I don’t know how it’s going to turn out, but I’m sick of the logjam. I have to dislodge the key log or die trying.
Q: How many metaphors do I need to torture in one blog post?
A: All of them! This is a bricolage road.
Someone may ask, “Why make it public?” Well, why not? That’s my bird-flip response. My earnest answer is that I’ve tried pouring this story into my analog journal and the key log hasn’t budged. I jab with my pen, but the subject sticks in my craw. It chokes me. I choke. Every fucking time. I’ve filled notebook after notebook with crap. Even when I hit a promising vein, it leads nowhere. Fool’s gold.
My working theory is that a paper journal is too private for this kind of story. It doesn’t let in enough light and air to dissipate the shame. (NB1: shame, it turns out, is one of the quit lit genre’s defining features. NB2: this is why I chose “light” and “air” as the founding concepts for this blog project.)
Fact: My last officially academic act was to submit final grades for my Spring 2015 courses. I did that electronically, so there wasn’t even a door to slam on my way out. Talk about an anti-climax. Well, today is the day that final grades were due for the Spring 2018 quarter, so I guess it’s been three years.
Long enough.
