Progress Report

Here is what I have managed to accomplish since I arrived in Europe on May 3.

I submitted a new book proposal to Princeton University Press. I submitted the final revised proofs of my Leibniz book to the same press. I put the finishing touches on, and sent off, at least three articles. I co-organized one conference, participated in one other, attended two others, and gave a colloquium-series paper. For these purposes, I travelled to Cambridge, Lyon, Helsinki, and Budapest. I made some, but not much, progress on the translation of G. E. Stahl's Negotium otiosum. In preparation for the essay-review I am expected to write, I read someone else's book on Leibniz (thumbs up). I wrote a long essay for the print edition of n+1. I dealt with the fall-out of a book review I wrote for the electronic edition. I worked through chapters 10, 11, 12, and 13 of Robert Goldman's Devavanipraveśika: An Introduction to the Sanskrit Language. I read Jack Goody's The Theft of History as well as his Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society, Surendrenath Dasgupta's A History of Indian Philosophy, and substantial portions of Valerie Allen's On Farting: Language and Laughter in the Middle Ages (a very serious and learned work). I finished reading Sterne's Tristram Shandy, Rabelais' Gargantua, and began reading Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. I made 17 posts to this website, not including the present one. I attempted to go running 7 times, and each time was frustrated by the condition of either my own body or of the environment in which I sought to run. In Marseille I bought special 'support socks' to help me run better, but they had no perceptible effect. I drank alcohol on only 2 occasions, which is for me a 17-year record low. I reduced my pants-size by 4 inches, surviving on a diet of mostly fruits and raw vegetables. I made at least two new friends.

Here is what I did not do:

I did not make any progress on the satirical novel I claim to be writing, and for which I had initially envisioned this sojourn as a writing retreat, during which I would take a break from all academic output, as well as from the production of minor occasional pieces. I did not go to Russia. I did not make any progress in my spoken Romanian. I did not begin flossing. I did not watch the World Cup, though the arc of its development from the initial matches to the final served as a sort of background framing device for my summer's activity. I did not discover any good new music, or see any films. I did not begin, as I had intended, to contribute to a charitable organization of my choice.

How many more summers will there be like this one? --Twenty? Thirty?-- Summers of cranking shit out and taking shit in, always feeling like I'm not really doing that thing that, were I to do it, I could stop and say: There. I've done it.

Comments

[The Necromancer]

Just reading this makes me tired. I can't hold a candle to your productivity, but I certainly share the same burning existential questions(TM). At the risk of sounding completely flaky and cryptic, it's never going to be about the destination.

And I make sure to floss every day...

[Sebastian Bitticks]

I know how it feels to get a lot of things done, and because you didn't get the writing done, it feels like you've accomplished nothing at all. Flossing. That's what winning a contract, meeting a deadline, and wrapping up a work project feels like to me. Because there is only one measure of success and only one type of accomplishment when you attach your identity to your work. I'm guessing you, like me, are guilty of this. Course, I've had no success at all, so I'm doubly foolish.

For me, at least, there is either that wind-at-your-back feeling of progress made on a worthy writing project, or toil.

Presently, I feel that the grind will be the grind until I work out a process that keeps the doubt reliably at bay. Ah, the juggling continues... Gotta get paid, gotta screw, gotta blow off steam, gotta stay fit, gotta read, careercareer and drinkydrinky. Someday I'll be well-fed and senile, and then I'll see these as the good old days!

Take care, my man.