9/16/08

I was successful today in reading another section of Dora, several poems, and some Lovelace. Tonight I'll read more poems.

I wish I'd typed The Rover or finished my Columbia piece. Aha! I just went and did it. One more thing out of the way!


So reading Lovelace made it more obvious to me today that I have a lot more thinking to do about how poets talk about other poets. The big claim that I wanted to make doesn't seem to be true--poets are still using friendship as a way of talking about other poets. What's perhaps interesting is that they're policing that friendship in certain ways and restraining the sort of gift-giving that's rampant in, say, Spenser. At the same time, though, Spenser is not exactly unconstraining his relationship descriptions either. Sidney is defiantly hetero.

So I don't have a project again, in some sense. So I guess I just need to keep chipping on. I'm a little disappointed in myself for the amount of time that I'm wasting. I need to get a little more discipline, if I'm going to be able to do this--I can't keep jacking around like this.

Or, to put this more positively, I like the feeling of knowing what I'm talking about. I like being able to contribute in discussion. I like being able to write interesting things that appeal to me. I can do this. I just need to get a little more discipline. After all, realistically, what I did today isn't any worse than what I did most days last year. I just have a higher standard for myself now because I'm beginning to see that I can do more.

I just followed up with Leonard. All work is avoidance of harder work, which is good as long as it isn't always the same work that's hard. If I can just get myself to keep doing some things, I'll stay afloat.

I'm a good RGS. I'm a successful graduate student. And I'm a reliable employee. I just would like to be better at all of those things. I'll have 10-20 more hours a week, minimum, if I can stop wasting Internet time. I think I need to do that.

I'm gonna read a little Ashberry and go to sleep.

Reading:

Thurs--Ashberry, little bit more Dora

Monday--Bible/classics, some theory articles
--Lycidas, Rehearsal Transpos'd, etc

I need to go crazy with printing.