Wresolution Wednesday

I don’t do New Year’s Resolutions, but I do buy into the idea that the start of the new year is a good time to reflect and set some goals for the next year.

I have five things that I want to accomplish this next year. Some are contradictory and some don’t make sense, but a life well lived has to have some randomness, some inconsistency, and some goals set for the sake of setting goals. 

1. Exercise. I have some low grade health issues that benefit mightily from consistent exercise (and some, like bad knees and a finicky hamstring that suffer when exercise becomes too consistent). I want to continue to walk (run, ride my bike) down the fine line.

2. Play Chess. It turns out that I like to play chess. I’m terrible at the game and for the first 1000 or so games I played over the past year, coping with my limits as a chess player (and the many steps both forward and back that I would take on a seemingly daily basis) was hard. I would get frustrated and annoyed when I made bad moves and sullen and discouraged when I lost games (especially to players with a lower ranking).

Over the past year, I’ve come to realize that despite the veneer of rationality, any given  chess game involves a significant degree of contingency. On a good day, I can see moves ahead, enact thoughtful (if not truly inventive) strategies, and can pressure players ranked many (sometimes hundreds of) points above. On a bad day, I hang key pieces, bumble through book openings, and miss obvious opportunities. Good days and bad days are hard to predict in myself. Good days and bad days for my opponents are even hard to predict. Moreover, we don’t play in a controlled environment. A casual lunch time match can easily get interrupted by a phone call, a colleague, or a dog. Moreover, an inexperienced player can make unconventional moves that confuse me. Experienced players can play openings or defenses that I’ve seen hundreds of times unknowingly giving me advantages.

What this has all taught me is to be patient, enjoy games even when I lose, and not to worry about always being “on”. These seems to be good life lessons and perhaps some of the value of chess as a metaphor.

3. Write in my Notebook. There is a growing community of folks in my circle who have taken to writing regularly in notebooks. There were several reasons why this struck me as an appealing challenge. I enjoy conspicuously embodied practices where our physical limits bump up against our creativity (and writing a notebook make me realize just how hard long form handwriting is!). I also like the random discipline of having to pull out the notebook and write words on a regular basis. This means that I have to carry the notebook, a desirable pen, and think up things to write. Finally, there is a kind of pointless satisfaction that comes from filling a notebook with text.

Maybe at some point in the future, I can activate these habits into something that is actually useful, but first, create the habit. Then make it work for you.

4. Finish the Bakken Book. I have one major writing goal for the next six months or so. I’ve promised myself that I’d put together one last book on the Bakken. Regular readers of this blog know what that book is about (in fact, they’ve read my outline here and seen various snippets of low stakes writing). This book not only will make some of our massive archive of photographs available, but also offer some final words on our work (and our thinking) about the Bakken.

Right now, I’m committed to low-stakes writing, where I take moments of time when I find them and put words on the page. My hope is that this will provide a framework for the argument that I want to make and allow me to compile references as either parts of the scaffolding or as discursive notes to myself. This will (ideally) allow me to read and write simultaneously and fit what I want to do in and around my other responsibilities. 

5. Do more for others. One thing that I constantly battle is my tendency to get overwhelmed and then slip into “selfish scholar mode.” For me, selfish scholar is when I start to privilege my own work over contributing to the advancement of others within the my various academic and creative communities. This usually happens when I start to feel the stress of the semester bearing down on me. To be crass (and to avoid moralizing), reverting the self-scholar mode when stressed defeats part of the purpose of creating resilient and active support networks through consistent collaborative practice. In short, the more you give the more you get and when your stressed the giving becomes all the more important because the getting becomes all the more crucial. 

Part of the burden and the privilege of tenure is helping others. I need to remember this and avoid telling myself that I can get ahead by focusing on myself.