I have once again been having thoughts about establishing a bit of a schedule here. I know it wasn’t long ago that I ditched that, and it was the right decision for the time, but now that I’m on the other end of that, I can’t help thinking that the lack of a deadline or expected cadence is making it easier to just not do the writing. I also mentioned how I want to write about a bunch of different things, and I still do. I should really start linking to the posts I’m referencing, but not today. I should also really start keeping a list of everything I want to write about, which… actually, I think I might have started. I should find that. And also update it. Anyway, I think not giving myself any deadline at all might be keeping me from making the time to do the things I want to do, which has me rethinking the super free form nature of this. I don’t know, I feel like I’m in the part of every journey, at least all of them I’ve done so far, where I can see that this is a thing that I can do but I’m just in utter awe at how those that are doing it manage. I mean, there is a whole lot of shit that goes into just putting some words on a page. Or screen, whatever. Related, I still haven’t finished that second essay for English Comp.
Hey, side note – What the hell is going on with Miley Cyrus’s voice? Sorry, I’ve got a youtube video on in the background and a commercial just came up. Also, I do not keep up with her or the internet discourse on her. I don’t say that to downplay, but rather, ya’ll can fill me in if I’m missing something here. So now I’m going to be a little snide – did she gargle lava at some point? Has she been smoking a carton a day? Was her singing so intense that it blew out her mid-range the way my brother blew out the bass in his first post-high school car? Can you imagine the show if that happened mid-performance? Either very sad or absolutely incredible. Yeah, you know what? I’m going to choose to believe that one. She sang so magnificently that as if Vocal Icarus she got too close to the sun and something something. Metaphor!
Another thing that I should probably link to but won’t is how I’ve mentioned I’m taking some online classes and that one of them is English Composition I. I really went into this thing thinking it would be an easy win for me, and it super has not been. It’s a self-paced, study-on-your-own/submission driven class, and it only asks for four papers. FOUR ESSAYS is the entire body of work required by this class. I know saying this is really about to put my arrogance on blast, and I know I can be an arrogant prick, but I really thought I’d be looking at a month in this class, tops. And yet I’ve been stuck on the second essay for weeks. The assignments are not long, at least not for an overly verbose dork like me, and they are, though not entirely, pretty dang open ended. These are the types of parameters for papers that my younger self would see as an opportunity to just swoop in and snatch a victory, but my friends, I am not swooping.
In case you missed it (because I won’t link to it), I did complete the first essay. The essay’s parameters were 550-750 words and meant to be a personal narrative with the theme of gratitude. This program offers two attempts for each essay, with a grade and feedback on the first and I think they take the best score of the two. I thought that there were three attempts, so thinking I could burn the second and use that feedback to prepare a near-perfect third, I instead turned in a final that was most definitely below par. I mean, I could (and slightly do) blame my misunderstanding of the submission process, but in truth, I kinda thought that I had it nailed and it would either complete the assignment or just leave some light clean-up work. Like I’d get a high B or low A or something, and only submit the third if it the lost points were grammar, punctuation, or otherwise quick fixes. What actually happened is that following countless rewrites I got super-duper off theme and turned in a final that couldn’t qualify for the biggest chunks of the rubric. Now, it does appear that what I had submitted was otherwise pretty well written, which is nice. Though as much as “nice” helps me cope with my wounded writing pride, it really doesn’t do anything for my grade.
That event did not deter me, in fact it made me that much more determined to rise to the next occasion. However, the open-ended nature of these essays remains, which has really bogged me down. This is usually something that I look forward to, a real chance to just go on and on about whatever bullshit is in my head. I’m a man whom is passionate about many things, some of which I am absurdly passionate about, and I’m sure I could scratch together something quick on virtually any subject. In my younger years, I think that’s exactly what I would have done. I would have picked a current, hot-button issue, collected up talking points like health potions and power-ups in a video game, and then laid them out point by point and wrap up by connecting them with perfect transitions. Let’s ignore how decades of weird video game logic has left me with hangups about using those potions and instead acknowledge the issue that I keep running into in this context – I don’t want to write my assignment about something that I actually care deeply about. It feels flippant and dismissive of the actual situation, and I hate it.
So it took me at least a week just to pick a topic. Oh, right, the parameters – it’s now up to 750-950 words, it’s supposed to be in a persuasive letter. Convince someone of a thing. That’s pretty simple. So I looked up and thought about a bunch of different topics. Most just fully did not interest me, and the ones that did all fell into that space I mentioned before – I’m quite passionate about it and don’t want to just write a couple of ignore-able paragraphs. What I came up with instead is the idea of convincing a close friend to take an online class, which got around that problem, but has a new one. Now it’s flippant from the start. And you know what? I don’t feel great about that, either. I’ve done a fair amount of the pre-writing and I’m pretty sure that I can pull this off, so I’m going to stick with it. But I think I’m going to need to get over this stance.
I keep coming across this notion of writing, one which really fits nicely in my view on work. Actually, I think it might be multiple ideas, but they’ve been swirled together in my head. Let’s see if I can unravel them a smidge. To start, this is a process. To whatever degree anyone can, it is not for me to simple one-shot a paper, or for any of my writing to be simply spewed forth without some struggle. Now to that point add that processes with iteration are easier to find a way through. You treat it as a project, with a beginning, middle, and end. You setup a framework and work your way through, with space left for rework, because the rework isn’t a punishment, it’s refinement. It’s how we get to a better finished product. Add to that another thought, one that I find referenced in the Arts and Sciences, that all works, great and meager, are in conversation with each other. These includes ones own works representing the self, and also the individual pieces representing a time and place, a snapshot of that self of the then, talking with all other pieces of that self from their unique stance in that timespace.
As we expand beyond the self, we find that our pieces have not become but rather always were in conversation with all other pieces, including those of entirely disparate discourse, throughout all of history, well without our active conscience involvement. I feel this way because I am the product of a species that has been trying to learn a better way to exist in the world within which we do already exist. When I write, sketch, or log something in my journal, I am taking a snapshot of how I am at that moment, as is true of when I post something on this blog. But that snapshot of that moment is a product of the life I have lived, here in this world that I live in. So it stands to reason that if I were to write something about the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, I am talking not only of them, no matter how objectively I attempt to approach it, but also about myself, the observer. And I am also talking about the Geo- and Eco-political environment that they exist in now, along with their entire history and how their histories have existed within those previous contexts. Each new piece on the conflict, mine or a professional’s, adds to the discourse, and bends the conversation one way or another by its existence, even if only slightly and if only for the writer. So each of my new pieces is also a snapshot on how I view this, and also reflects back on me to help me refine my next piece.
That’s a very long walk, but I think that what I’m saying is that to write you must write, and no writing is a waste. So I should just write about it, and if my piece is bad, well then at least I’ll have gotten some of my bad writing out of the way. Well, not the Armenian/Azerbaijani conflict – I know precious little about it, and don’t plan on writing anything about it anytime soon.
On that general theme, though, a topic that did come to mind is how I feel about the Kurdish people. Don’t worry, I’m not about to launch into some weird, unexpected racist turn here, in fact I’m probably not going to talk about them much at all, at least not today. I suppose I should make my stance clear, which is that I very much support their autonomy and independence. This is, of course, an extremely dumbed-down and unsophisticated version of my actual thoughts, but you know, I don’t really want to get into right now. I kinda don’t really want to get into it at all, because I’d inevitably feel compelled to talk about complicated aspects of it, including my complex thoughts on diaspora-based governance and also my own personal history with the PKK. Yes, it turns out, I have a personal history with the PKK. Which was mostly good, by the way, but you know, people tend to see liberation movements and terrorists, especially if they can be successfully scapegoated for a hike in gas prices. Multiple times.
However, a good while ago I decided that if I’m going to continue with this whole school thing, then I need to take it seriously. I think that part of taking it seriously means that I’m going to need to treat assignments like this with the same seriousness I would want to read from others. So I think I’ll just have to start taking on topics like that, even though they make me uncomfortable, and it doesn’t matter the why or the how of that discomfort. And if I’m going to do it, I need to make sure I have my shit together about it. And so now I’m looking at some reading material to fill in the parts of that story that I’ve missed, and I’m also trying to get a better handle on the essay format itself. I know that many scholars and experts love the essay, and if I want a professional career where I do stuff that I care about, I’ll need to get better at the format. So I’m also trying to find some examples that scholars and experts consider to be great essays. Look dawg, I’m like Kakashi Hatake – I can copy any master and make it my own.
And with the Naruto reference in hand, this thought is officially over. That’s enough for now, but I really do need to get back around to some of those subjects I keep saying we’ll put a pin in. I think I wanted to talk about fashion? I bought some corduroy pants. I used to hate the material, but I have to admit, I kinda like the pants. Very cozy.