February 25, 2023

Something I thought about:

• In the next two weeks, I have several deadlines for very different things, and I’m also processing the trip and travel and everything we saw, and I’ve been thinking about integration (in an epistemological sense) — balancing processing with production. The trips were a massive shift in gears / mind frame, and I’m sparking with ideas and raring to do things with them. I’m trying to document and capture what I can and let things percolate without rushing while I work on what’s on the front burner (also exciting, but I need to access previous headspace).

Something I did:

• Returned from Italy after more exploration and deliciousness and a (thankfully) short round of illness.
• Rentrée! Uni reopened, and I taught three back-to-back sections of first-years.
• Attended a talk on Zoom by Sara Ahmed, which was amazing. The talk was called Feminist Killjoys at Work and was a preview of her upcoming book.
• Went to Zurich and visited with family.
• Switched languages so frequently that by the end of the week, I had no idea which one would pop out of my mouth.

Something I read:

• I liked this personal essay on home, immigration, and identity.
• A taxonomy of writer’s block.
• For some reason I hadn’t known the hotelier Ritz was Swiss — let alone the 13th child of a farmer! So I thought this bit of background was interesting.