Sit at computer for about five minutes. Type some stuff.
Check the mail--outside at the mailbox.
Check email.
Mess around on Facebook and Twitter.
Look again at what I've written.
Brush the cat.
Eat some cashews.
Have a drink of water.
Check Facebook.
Write a sentence. Erase it.
Text Will.
Think about dinner.
Re-write the sentence I just erased.
Sigh forlornly.
Walk out to courtyard. Sit on deck chair. Fall asleep.
Wake up and repeat many of the steps above in any order.
I have written nearly 1000 words on the Dead Poet Project. None of them are good.
It's a rare thing. To be a scholar of some (small) repute on a minor English writer is reward enough itself. The joy is in the work.
Nevertheless, when that minor writer has his best book adapted into a film, there are many other pleasures, small though they may be. I've been very pleased to watch Christopher Isherwood's novel, A Single Man, climb up the Amazon.com best-sellers list since the release in December of a recent adaptation, starring Colin Firth. The novel's publisher, the University of Minnesota Press, came out with a movie-tie in version of the book in early December. My very casual eye has seen it break the top 500 on Amazon. Not bad for a book 45 years old.
As I said, the joy is in the work. So, with the help of the UMP, I pitched an article about the novel to The Chronicle of Higher Education, the most-read national publication dealing with college and university issues. I enlisted my sometime collaborator, Chris Freeman, to write about the genesis of Isherwood's novel in his own experience teaching in southern California universities. The article, called "Isherwood the Multiculturalist," can now be seen online at The Chronicle Review. It's password protected (ooh, we're "premium content") for now.
Oh yeah, you can also watch the trailer for the film online.
I have set myself the totally artificial task of writing a blog about the ten words I used most often in my Facebook status updates. Perhaps if this goes well, I could turn the challenge into some kind of meme for bloggers. For that to work, I think I would have to have more readers than I currently do. Also, maybe someone has already mined that meme and I’m coming late to this. Who knows?
Using the Top Words application in Facebook, these are the words that appear most often in my status updates in 2009: today, run, thinks, good, work, week, off, tonight, new last.
A bit about the words themselves. “Today” is not a surprise, since most of my status updates have to do with the contemporary. What are your plans today, and how are you feeling now tend to be the common status update themes. Same could be said for “tonight” and “week.” Only two verbs occur: “run” and “thinks.” (I would bet that “work” appears more as a noun than a verb for me, as a synonym for “job” more than something I or the toilet do or don’t do. I could be wrong.) I ran a lot in 2009, and I guess I thought a lot too. “Off” might be related to work or not work, and “new” probably relates to things I bought. “Last” is curious, unless it’s related to “week” and it relates to the past tense. (I can’t think of anything I stopped doing, as in “that was the last time I’m going to eat sardines.”) “Good” is puzzling—I don’t think of myself as a really positive person, but things in 2009 were pretty good, I guess, which is as good a segue into a year in review as any…
Today. There were fifty occurrences of this word in my Facebook updates in 2009. I was surprised it wasn’t more, given that I update my status frequently, usually more than once a day. There are times when I am an absolute fanatic about FB, checking it, refreshing the page, trolling friends for new friends. Facebook has become for me a regular part of how I keep in touch with people. I used to check email obsessively, but now my hotmail account sees less activity than my Facebook. Still, at fifty, that’s nearly one “today” a week. “Tomorrow” and “yesterday” aren’t even in the top ten.
Run. In a way, 2009 was my most serious year of running. I completed four half-marathons: Palm Springs in February, Duluth in June, Disneyland in September, and Malibu in November. For the last several years, since I started running really, I considered organized runs (not “races” please, I don’t race) as the motivation for me to run: if I am signed up for an event, my theory went, I would stay in training. I did a lot of training in 2009, most of it informal. I run sometimes with a small group of guys in Palm Springs, and it makes the training almost fun. Toward the end of the year, however, after a dismal run in Malibu, I started thinking that long-distance running may not be what I need to achieve my fitness goals. Moderate exercise and a new diet may achieve what I set out to do when I turned forty. I’m not sure where my running will go this year, but I am reassessing my priorities.
The boys before the Palm Springs Half Marathon, February 2009.
Thinks. I don’t remember if it was in 2009 or earlier when Facebook dropped the word “is” from the pre-programmed status updater. But when “is” disappeared so did the generic update, “Jim Berg is.” It may have been funny the first time but not as profound as the teenagers thought. “Thinks” turns out to be, for me, a good generic intro for some rant or rave that I want to share. “Jim Berg thinks that cod liver oil just may be the thing to keep his joints lubricated.” “Jim Berg thinks that Up! was his favorite movie of 2009.” Plus, as an academic, having the word “thinks” be the third most common makes me seem seriously smart. I should just have “Jim Berg thinks” as my default status update. Therefore, he is?
Good. I’m taking a cue from my friend Jocelyn and calling 2009 a good year. Sure it sucked in a lot of ways: economic collapse (but that is soo 2008), two wars (soo Bush-Cheney), California going down the tubes (blaming Arnold for convenience here). But for me personally, and this is ALL about me personally, I think I did okay. Not 7/10 okay, but maybe 6/10. But still, even 5/10 would be “good.” After a lot of initial to-ing and fro-ing, I made some progress on the Dead Poet Project, I lost 15 pounds on an easy-to-follow diet, and I look and feel better than I have in years. Went on a few dates. So, yeah, let’s go with 7/10.
Work. I try to keep complaints or ruminations about my job to a minimum on the FB. A lot of my co-workers are there, and they see stuff. Anyway, in the larger sense, my “work” is my scholarship. And much of this year was given over to the Dead Poet Project. Toward the end of the year, however, a little movie came out called A Single Man. Now this movie just happens to be based on a book that I am something of an expert on. So, Dr. Freeman and I have penned (typed? keyboarded?) a piece for a national publication about the novel, its author (Christopher Isherwood), and what it all means for the classroom. Not a bad ending for a year that was sometimes frustrating in the library and at the computer. Come back next week for a link to the essay.
Week. This unit of time measurement is clearly as old as the B-I-B-L-E. If it weren’t for that little creation myth, it would be hard to see why we humans are so tied to the seven-day week. How, really, is Saturday different from Tuesday? Or, why do I have to go to the office on Tuesday and (usually) not on Saturday? Can’t every day be Saturday? Wouldn’t THAT be fun?! Sigh.
Off. Status updates must have as much to do with not going to work as going to work. “Jim Berg can’t believe he had the last 11 days off and didn’t do his laundry.”
Tonight. The feel-good club hit of the year has to be “I Got a Feeling” by the Black Eyed Peas. Club songs are often of the “I’m going out to get hammered and laid” variety, and nothing said that better than this song, with its refrain: “tonight’s gonna be a good good night.” Even Oprah used it to kick off her 2009-10 season, complete with a “flash mob.” Watch the video and then tell me I’m wrong. Try.
New. I’m nothing if not optimistic, cutting edge, and short of attention span. So I’m always on the hunt for the next new thing. Yeah, no. The word “new” was used twenty-two times: could that correspond to the number of times I bought a new article of clothing? The number of times I saw a new movie, play, or concert. All very doubtful. I’m still wearing those jeans that made my “ass look dangerous” back in 2005. New is not me. Really.
Last. Is the last word on the subject, except for my final challenge, the thing that will perhaps make this silly task meme-worthy. Use all of your top ten words in a single sentence:
Jim Berg thinks that after a runtoday the new work week will get off to a good start, especially if he is able to see Avatar, at last, tonight.
