Keeping on

There’s been too little handwork around these parts. It’s been days since I picked up the needles for more than ten minutes on the train. This Shalom has been waiting for its buttons all week, perfect buttons that I bought and then promptly lost. It’s not good to be slowing down before the holidays, but a weekend wedding in Cincinnati (that featured an amazingly spirited 45-minute hora, the likes of which have never been seen before) turned quickly into a week of book talks for my Bryn Mawr history. Today is the last one–thank god–and then I’m hoping to get my life back on track. Have I mentioned how much I loathe giving talks? Fortunately, this one was almost fun to write. Instead giving over to my clunky, tangled, tortured academic voice, I wrote it in what I think of as my nature writing voice, something closer to what I use in this space. The difference is astounding.

But who am I kidding? Life never really slows down. I need to write a paper for MLA, prepare for interviews, and figure out the coming semester (I've been starting to do just that here). And on top of all of it there’s Christmas and the 35 or so family activities we have planned.

Each night before I go to bed, though, I think about all the writing that I want to do in the coming months:

1. Write a panic narrative for a side project a friend and I are working on.

2. Write a book proposal for a biography of Elizabeth Zimmerman (I think this could be really cool). It would be sort of popular, but sort of scholarly and would tie into my desire to write about new domesticity. I’d also like it to have a web component.

3. Work on my essay “Prude: On Being a Prude” (you think that’s a joke, but it’s not)

4. Revise that god-forsaken essay on Alcott

5. Maybe, just maybe, look at my dissertation. But maybe not.