The staffs of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report really do the most amazing things with argument-through-editing. I’m thinking of incorporating some of their techniques into my lectures the next time I teach. Here, Jon Stewart brilliantly skewers the supposed “war on FOX News.”

So I believe I left you with an iceberg analogy – something about stocking the life-boats before the next disaster? I’m going to have to say goodbye to that analogy now. There’s no way I can say all I want to say and make it nautical/survival-oriented and keep a straight face. Especially since the first change I made to make my life more disaster-resistant was joining an (organization) cult. I consider myself fairly creative, but even I can’t figure out a way to make that life-boat-relevant, so you’ll have to live with plain, old-fashioned exposition.

I’m kind of embarrassed to admit this, but my cult? You know, the one that revolutionized my work life and gave me a feeling of security about weathering all my family health crises? It’s all about To Do lists.

You heard me: To Do lists.

Its holy book is organization guru David Allen’s Getting Things Done. Allen argues that people have only so much mental “RAM,” and when we use up all of it trying to keep track of our projects, we have less available to devote to actually completing the projects. If, however, we have an organization system in place that captures all our projects and the next actions associated with them, we have more RAM available for creative and energetic work. Ideally, this system includes space for thinking through why we’re doing what we’re doing – big picture-wise, what purpose does this project serve? It also includes the very next thing we’re supposed to do on every project we’ve got on the table – from writing a novel or dissertation to scheduling coffee with a friend. Any goal that requires more than one action is a project. Everything’s written down, and tracked. There are multiple lists, and tags like “Easy” or “Challenge,” @phone or @computer. It’s like a little bit of OCD heaven. The very basic nature of the system makes it easy to jump around between multiple projects in one day – making progress on all of them, keeping track of that progress – without experiencing that distracting schizophrenic-feeling so common to multi-taskers.

Okay, so I actually received the book as a gift several years ago and rolled my eyes. I certainly never intended to read it. I thought the idea of a whole system of To Do lists was a little too anal even for me – and I have all my books arranged by color on the shelves, with their locations noted in an ISBN-centered database. Label makers make me giddy with joy. I am not adverse to organization.

Then my dad died, and I maxed out my mental RAM in a big way. I did what I had to do, had a good work year all things considered, but I was so focused on making sure I didn’t lose track of what was coming next that I never found the time to enjoy what I’d just finished. I was quite miserable, and the pace I’d set myself was unsustainable.

I am many things, but I’m not a masochist. When something is obviously not working for me, I change it. My system for approaching my life wasn’t working, so I did some research. I remembered that book I’d gotten a few years ago (it’s on the orange shelf). I pulled it down and started to read. His argument made sense, and I was desperate enough to try it. It took me a month to get all my projects captured in the system, and then another few weeks to let go of the constant anxiety that I’d forgotten something so I could just trust the system.

Pretty soon I felt better about my work, but I was now concerned that I was now doing nothing but working. I wasn’t really sure how GTD – henceforth referred to as The Cult – was helping me in any way other than feeding my need for control. Great! I’m on top of writing and researching and cleaning my bathroom! What about the rest of my life?
Continue reading Joining the cult

Yup, still crazy busy. Be back soon!

This has been one hella crazy week, folks. I have a couple of posts half written to build on my last one, but they’re not quite ready to see the light of day yet. So here I am waving hi and telling you I haven’t forgotten you, but it’ll probably be another few days before you get the rest of the story.

Since you clicked on over, though, I figure you deserve a nerd-girl treat. Welcome to the life of a dissertator. Our desires are simple.

Crises are always lurking on the horizon, whether we see them coming or not. They’re sneaky, like icebergs.

If you follow my twitter feed, you probably already know that earlier this month was the one year anniversary of my father’s death. It wasn’t a bad day, all things considered. I spent it with people who loved him, and we spent it remembering him.

But this anniversary thing has had a profound effect on my month as a whole. I’ve been reflecting a lot on the way this last year turned out versus what I expected it to be on the morning of August 8, 2008. All my projects and plans went out the window because of one phone call, or rather, because of something I learned about in that one phone call: my generally healthy dad had collapsed and been rushed to the hospital. He was, I learned later, DOA. Heart attack.

The year I had anticipated, all the goals I had set – that future evaporated in an instant. I couldn’t hold anything in my head except my father’s death. In November that overwhelming fact was joined by another – my maternal grandmother had a ticking time bomb in her abdomen, an aneurysm that could burst at any time. From what the doctors said, we weren’t sure she’d make it to Christmas, 2008. So I was living book-ended by death; one behind, one before. And from then on, that was all I could see.

But here’s what I realized this month: first, my grandmother is still with us, and anticipating her imminent death isn’t doing either of us any good. Second, I may have spent the year feeling like my little ship of goals and dreams was sinking, but the reality is it’s still afloat.

I still fulfilled all of my commitments. I taught my classes; submitted papers to conferences; fulfilled the terms of both of my fellowships; wrote my dissertation, wrote fiction, applied for future funding, gave lectures. I ended this past year right where I need to be.

So how did I miss all that while it was going on? How did I become my own worst critic?

The conclusion I’ve come to isn’t anything particularly radical or revelatory. I always plan to do more than I have to do, and in the case of this last year, I’ve done only what I had to do. Thing is, up until recently I was still holding myself accountable for all my want-to-do’s. In my befuddled state, I was kicking myself for prioritizing.

This is the question I was left with: I know I can function through a crisis, but is it possible that I could learn to function well? And by “well,” I really just mean not cause myself unnecessary additional stress or negativity. To return to the iceberg analogy – how do I best stock the lifeboats? Even if I don’t have to use them, knowing they’re ready is a pretty effective de-stressor.

Research, as you know, is my answer to everything. So in the past few weeks I’ve done some reading and made a couple of changes to my work- and lifestyles as a result of what I found out.

I’ll be blogging about what exactly those changes are in separate posts over the next few weeks. But I’ll leave you with this little nugget for today.

Take a quiet moment sometime soon and draw a mental line between your need-to-do’s and want-to-do’s. Not every need is associated with work or family or income. Not every need will be validated by others. And both of those truths are okay. This isn’t anyone else’s line in the sand, it’s yours, so draw it however you please. When the next iceberg hits, you’ll be able to make better choices about where to put your energy.

Authors, Books, Blogs

Via the Huffington Post, an author gives Barack Obama a copy of her book for Michelle, and the literary establishment is scandalized. Why? It’s a romance novel!

Film and Television

Ain’t It Cool News lets it slip that Jamie Bamber of BSG is doing a guest-turn on Dollhouse.

AICN also has footage of all of Syfy’s Comic Con panels. I am really looking forward to Caprica!

Miriam over at Feministing expresses some concerns about HBO’s upcoming adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex.

Help me spread the word, please!

CALL FOR PAPERS

Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference PANEL
2010 Conference in Los Angeles, March 17-21

*******************
Hollywood’s Mythmaking Traditions: Visions and Re-visions in Film and Television

For almost as long as Hollywood has been making films, it has been remaking them. Whether through repeated adaptations of the same source material (Cinderella), remakes of overseas successes (The Ring), franchise reboots (Star Trek), or revisions of dated Hollywood material (Battlestar Galactica, V), Hollywood producers often bank on the continued resonance of old stories over the introduction of new ones. This panel explores why some remakes succeed and others fail. What are the commercial and creative criteria by which success and failure might be judged? How has this cycle of cinematic vision and re-vision altered old myths and created new ones? Possible topics include (but are not limited to):

• English adaptations of successful foreign language films (i.e. Let the Right One In)
• Traditional fairy tales and myths made and remade in film
• Comparative analyses of specific television remakes (i.e. Battlestar Galactica, Bionic Woman, V, Life on Mars, The Office)
• Franchise reboots
• Comic book adaptations
• Reception studies of remakes / adaptations
• Theorizing adaptation / remakes
• Retelling “history” (i.e. The Tudors)
• Cinema as vehicle of modern myth
• Book author as genre (i.e. Jane Austen, Ian Fleming)
• Alterations reflecting changing views on gender, race, class, sexuality, etc.

Please send abstracts (300-350 words) and your full contact information to spalmaATemory.edu by August 20, 2009.

Accepted presenters will be notified by August 25. The final panel proposal will be submitted to SCMS by the September 1 deadline. Acceptance of your proposal does not guarantee that SCMS will accept the panel as a whole.

Shannan Palma
Doctoral Candidate in Women’s Studies, Emory University
spalmaATemory.edu

I admit I was feeling pretty tapped out on Stargate by the end there, but I’m intrigued by this glimpse of SGU: Stargate Universe.

Continue reading Saturday Matinee: More TV trailers