4. MAYBE QUIT
Birbiglia warns, "There is going to be an insane amount of work ahead, and your time might be spent better elsewhere." And he quotes Angela Duckworth who argues that this is the better question: "In what way do I wish the world were different? What problem can I help solve?"
If that doesn't thrill me, then I should quit. I tell my students this all the time, if the research question doesn't thrill you--quit. Time to eat my own dog food. Hmmm, yummy, better than I thought.
3. LEARN FROM THE FAILURE
Who will be my editor? This is not something I have asked my learning community to do. Is it something they would like to be put upon to do? Perhaps I need to ask others, my own revolving "dissertation" committee that would actually be useful. Who could this be? Academics need not apply? No, I need a broad spectrum of folks who aren't afraid to be honest.
2. FAIL
Everything I do feels like a failure of some kind. Especially if no one seems to take me up an opportunity to collaborate and learn. I just need to get used to the idea that folks don't get why I was put here like I do. But failing alone is not what we want. We want 'failure toward' something. Or perhaps it is falling toward something. We get up and take more steps and then fall again. Until...like the stupid babies that we are, we keep upright and walk, unsteady but better each time we arise. After that the falls are more spectacular, bur more ...edifying.
One set of steps I need to take is toward longer form work and toward my regular production of poetry. I live in an academic environment that does not value that in folks like me. I am viewed as a self-publishing dilletante as I do this. So be it. It is more important for me to do than to get folks to attend. That will always be a fail, this attention whoring, this marketing of one's 'brand' in the service of mammon. So...I will write and publish more poetry and begin some longer term projects.
1. DON’T WAIT
Every morning as I prepare for class and every day that I have time to explore new ideas (and old ones, too), I should do so and share them. Write posts, write tweets, do screencasts, do hangouts. Do anything. Offer to do anything as long as it gibes with what you want to bring into the world and with what is asking to be born into the world. The only think I know that fits that description is my own voice and self and take and stance on learning in the world. Right or wrong. Mine.