New Kid on the Hallway

I'm so proud

I'm the number one result in Google for the search "wearing bright pink in law school."

I love that it gets light earlier in the morning now

But I hate that this also means that I drive home in the dark most days, because SOME PEOPLE clearly haven't figured out that high beams are NOT to be used IN TRAFFIC, on THE HIGHWAY.

Hmmph.

Just had to get that out of my system.

Now if you'll pardon me, I have to go write some minutes. I kinda thought that once I left academia, I wouldn't be writing up minutes for quite some time, but guess I miscalculated on that one!

Okay, I know I just posted something

But I HAD to share this with all y'all.

I just found the following message in my New Kid e-mailbox:

Our website [redacted to spare the spammers' delicate sensibilities] is a informational databases and online news publication for anything and everything related to science and technology. We recently ran a poll asking our website users regarding what online informational resources they use to keep up to date or even to simply find great information. It seems many of our users have labeled your blog as an excellent source of Space information. We have reviewed your blog and must say, we absolutely love the information you have made available to the public and would love to make your blog a part of our top science blogs. After browsing your blog, our research team has decided to award you a Top science Blogs award banner.

I'm honored, I really am. But anyone who's labeled this blog an excellent source of Space information is, quite frankly, on crack.

This is not a commitment to joining NaBloPoMo, or whatever it's called

But I feel I've been neglecting this space, so perhaps all the discussion of posting every day in November has been a little inspiring.

I can tell I'm out of practice blogging, though, because while I do semi-note things of semi-interest that might make up a blog post as I'm going about my day, by the end of the day when I have a free moment, they have all vanished from my head entirely. So I'm quite sure there was something this morning about which I thought, Yes! I'll blog about that! And now? Couldn't tell you what it was to save my life.

So I'll leave you with two random observations from my day:

First, you'd think that a guy driving a big-ass (doubtless American-made) pickup truck, encrusted with umpteen stickers about being a Vietnam vet and being in the Marines and so on, would feel secure enough in his masculinity not to need to hang a fake set of balls from the ball hitch on the back of said truck.

Second, I really like The Good Wife. But I'm not sure whether I like it because it's especially excellent T.V., or if I like it because I have to like any show that's about a close-to-middle-aged woman going back to work as junior associate at a law firm, surrounded by people fifteen years younger than she is. (For the record, Julianna Margulies is older than I am. But I'm not going to say by how much...)

My teaching flashback for the day...

(courtesy of I Can Has Cheezburger, of course!)

Today I resemble this LOLCAT more than I look at it.

Now back to the grind...

Some days it seems like the only good use of the internet is for posting cat pictures

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

(In honor of my own dear departed Basement Cat.)

I also recently enjoyed this one, originally seen on someone's Facebook:

And, of course, there is always the genius that is Maru.

Now back to whether it violates the Constitution to award someone $1 million in compensatory damages and $145 million in punitive damages.

Let's navel gaze metablog, shall we?

I've been struggling somewhat with the purpose and function of this blog for a while now. I recently came across a description of it as "self-absorbed," and while part of me wants to be outraged (what! how dare you imply my every thought isn't a precious jewel offered up for the greater good of humanity!!), I also have to admit that, yeah - this blog is pretty self-absorbed.

Because, you know, it's a blog. About me. And my life.

It got me thinking, though, and I do think this blog was less self-absorbed when I wrote from the position of a professor (although it's also possible that my self-absorption was just more interesting to my usual audience, since I was talking about the kinds of things they all encountered in their own academic lives as well). I would not be at all surprised--or offended--if some of you who started reading this blog when I was a professor find it less interesting now that I'm a student again, since I think most of my original audience were either academics or people interested in academia for whatever reason. 

I'll be honest, I think this blog was better when I was a professor, because by the time I'd started, I'd been in academia for thirteen years (counting all my time as a grad student). I wasn't an authority by any standard, but I had enough experience to offer commentary on the profession--commentary that wasn't all about me, myself, and my own experiences--and in which I could respond to some of the themes and issues that profession was facing.

It is very hard to maintain the kind of analytic distance that allows you to offer that kind of commentary when you become immersed in an entirely new endeavor, one that also places you in a the explicitly subject position of student. (I've talked about this before.) First, I don't feel like know enough about the law as a profession to offer any kind of informed commentary. Second, everything is new! and overwhelming! and coming at me a million miles a minute! (not quite as bewildering as last year, but still lots of new stuff, and just lots of stuff to deal with, period.) It's hard to maintain analytic distance when you're frantically treading water till the next wave comes your way--to totally shift metaphors, it's hard to separate the wheat from the chaff when you're buried under the harvest (I am abandoning this metaphor now). This blog becomes a way just to process what's going on, even though it's nothing remotely different from what every other law student experiences, nor is what I have to say about it remotely original.

It's funny, because I read some of my old posts--often posts I've forgotten I even wrote--and think they were actually pretty good. This blog never was a work of academic scholarship, but it was about academia as much as it was about me. Now, I think it's more about me than it is about the law, or even legal academia. 

And I suspect many of you will say, "So what?? It's your blog! You write about what you want to write about!" Which, if you do, I completely appreciate. It's just been an interesting shift - I have met, through blogging, a whole community of wonderful people who are now my friends regardless of what we do for a living. But it changes this blog for me to talk to "friends" instead of to "fellow academics," and I miss the kinds of conversations that used to take place here, rather than just providing updates on my life.

Which is not to say that I have any magical plan for how to change what I'm doing. And you know, maybe it really isn't all about me, and my blog has changed because blogging has changed. (I'm thinking especially of what Laura wrote here, which I wanted to respond to at the time, but never got around to.) But these thoughts have been tumbling around my head for quite a while, so I thought I would finally let them out, and see what they look like in the light of day.

Even though this entire post simply proves the whole self-absorbed thing.

This is one of those posts I hate about how I don't have time to post

Seriously, this is the most pathetic post ever, because its point is to say, I don't have time to post!!, which you have all probably figured out, and since you probably read through an RSS feed, you'll know when I do post. But I felt a little rude just leaving the last (interesting) conversation in the air, so to speak, so wanted to assure you that it's not you, it's me -- it's finals here, and between Con Law and Property last week and Crim Law and Civ Pro next week, I've done nothing but study lately (well, study, and rotate between e-mail, blogs, and Facebook when I'm dying for a break. I can gauge the efficiency of my studying by how often I take these breaks; when I reach "write 2 lines of outline, check blogs again, repeat," I know I should just pack it in for the night).

Last night, in fact, I dreamed that I went to a review session for my Property class. Except that after it was over, I realized that I'd already TAKEN my Property exam. And I couldn't remember what other exams I had yet to take. Which made me very, very nervous...

Anyway. By the time I finish up this year my medievalist friends will be immersed in Kzoo, so have fun! I'll try to think of something coherent to say to sum up this first year of transition, for when I return.

The journal meme!

And no, this has NOTHING to do with academic journals.

Rather, the Bittersweet Girl (who is clearly good at this) has come up with a new meme: the Journal Meme. I've neglected my journals quite a lot since getting married (because my habit was always to write last thing before I went to sleep, which seemed odd with NLLDH lying beside me), and since starting this blog (YES, my blog is the navel-gazing substitute for keeping a journal, okay? satisfied?). But I still identify myself as someone who does keep a journal, and like Bittersweet Girl, I have a storage box full of old ones (sadly, they're in our storage space, so no pics available). So here goes:

1. When did you begin keeping a journal/diary?
I'm pretty sure I was nine.

2. Do you journal regularly or sporadically?
Now, sadly, sporadically - I was consistent about writing until maybe ten years ago, when I became much more sporadic. NLLDH has never once even intimated he wants to read my journals, but writing in them while lying in bed next to him always seemed odd. Plus, he'd make comments about me writing bad things about him in the journal (which I was never doing), and he'd always apologize, but it kind of interfered with the moment.

And, of course, once I started writing here, the journaling declined significantly. Kind of embarrassing, but there you are. I find I'm most consistent now when I travel, especially by myself, and I don't have anyone to bounce my daily observations off of.

3. Which, if any, of the following things do you use your journal for?: recording dreams, creative writing, arguing with particular individuals (your boss, your parents, your lover, etc.), listing books/movies, tracking your weight/diet/exercise, composing unsent/unsendable letters.
My journals are NOT repositories of elegant writing. Mostly I argue with particular individuals (I love that formulation), and/or rant about something awful (or, conversely, something wonderful) sufficiently to exorcise it from my system, which I know is usually at greater length than is socially acceptable to do in public. I have done the tracking of weight/diet/exercise thing, too, but that's never been super consistent. Mostly I used journaling as a way to work through something that was bothering me - if I went back and read them, most entries probably say the same basic thing about seven times, because that's how long I had to write about it to come to peace with it. This might fall into composing unsent/unsendable letters, too, though I never wrote explicitly to anyone else - when I journal, I'm always talking to myself.

Occasionally I had aspirations of using the journal to hone my writing and set goals of commenting on at least one interesting thing per entry (where interesting ≠ my current obsession), but I never did this especially consistently.

I've never used journals for actual creative writing or listing books/movies.

4. What other purpose(s) do you use your journal for?
Hmmm, think I mostly answered this above. I'll add that I did a lot of analysis of interpersonal relationships in my journal (which is a fancy way of saying I'd write about, "He LOOKED at me today!!!!!!" Or, "I don't know why she's been so cranky lately." That kind of thing).

5. What kind of material text do you use for a journal? (For example: leather bound hard-cover, cheap spiral notebook, etc.)
It can't be an "ordinary" notebook, like one you'd use for taking research notes or the like. My very first journal was in a very teen-girl type "diary" - there was a lock and a key, and a picture of a unicorn on the front (hey, it WAS the 1970s), and the paper was sky blue. I might have had at least one other journal that locked, but usually they're just "blank books" like the kind they sell in Barnes & Noble. I have to have lined paper, because left to my own devices, I can't write in straight lines, and it bugs me for my journal to look "messy" (although frequently my handwriting degenerates into a scrawl). But I didn't much like actual leather-bound books because they were too "dark" - I like bright and cheerful colors for my journals. I also prefer journals that stay open easily, so quite a few are spiral bound. And they MUST be fountain-pen friendly. There was a stretch during my senior year in high school when I typed my journal on onion-skin paper, but I think those all got thrown out when my parents moved.

6. Where do you keep your old journals?
I have a banker's box full of completed old journals in our storage space. I also have a bunch of half-used journals sitting in the drawers of my nightstand. (These are the ones I am theoretically using now.)

7. How often, if ever, have you read through your old journals?
Pretty much never. Ugh. I can't quite bear the thought. Since I pretty much used my journals for self-therapy, I really don't really want to go back and see how messed-up I was over a given issue at a certain time. (For instance, I remember when I went through a horrible bout of bullying in the seventh grade, I wrote about wondering what would happen if I drank a whole bottle of Nyquil. I don't want to go back and relive that. Seriously.)

I have occasionally glanced through the earlier entries when I've picked up a half-used journal to write in again many months (or years) later. But usually I try to avoid doing so.

But then, I'm quite good at cutting my losses and walking away from bad things in my life, on a range of levels.

8. Have you ever allowed anyone else to read your journals?
No. If historians find the stash sometime a few generations from now, go for it. Otherwise, not going to happen. They are NOT for public consumption by anyone who knows me.

9. How has your journal keeping changed since you began blogging?
Sadly, I really have stopped writing in a journal with any regularity. Like I said, I think that means this blog has replaced my journals as a means of self-therapy. On the other hand, I promise you that the writing here is at least somewhat more professional and focused and, hopefully, has some appeal to others, and believe me, my journal writing is NONE of those things. So the two kinds of writing do serve different purposes, and I keep planning to pick up the journal again. I do tend to write right before going to sleep, though, and because I get up so early to commute to school, I'm always trying to preserve sleep time. So it hasn't worked so far. And I also think there's only so much non-assigned writing I can produce at a given time - I can write either in my journal, or here, and more recently, it's been here. (And sometimes it's neither.)

10. Upload a picture of your journals (or as many as you can).
Well, most of them are in the storage space, and as for the ones that are here - so, if I dug them all out of their drawers, stacked them somewhere to photograph (after cleaning off whatever place that was), searched for the camera, made sure it has working batteries, wrestled its sticky buttons into place, took pics, downloaded the pics to my ancient laptop (because this one doesn't recognize the camera), then found my flash drive so that I could put the pics on my flash drive, then transfer them to this laptop and uploaded them... it would be June by the time I finished. So I'll pass on this for now, but if I get inspired (or we get a new camera), I'll post a pic sometime in the future. Sorry!

Like the Bittersweet Girl, I don't know who out there does or doesn't journal, so I'm not tagging, but if you do keep a journal, I'd love to see your answers!

(Final aside: I actually hate "to journal" as a transitive verb. I know I've used it above, because "to keep/write in a journal" gets really cumbersome. But "journaling" always seemed like a weird word to use to describe what I did. I never think of it as a specific genre - I'm just writing. For me, in a place no one else will see. That's perhaps why I've never been behind any of the structured "journaling" exercises one can do. I write when I feel like it, whatever I feel like writing, and if I don't feel like it, I don't. No offense meant to anyone who does think of it as "journaling.")

Blame NLLDH for ruining your childhood memories

But this is one of the most hysterical things I've seen in a looooong time: