Broody

I'm swinging in and out of one of my grey moods today. At the greyest, it's of the "I'm so tired and I'm getting old (pause for all over-34-year-olds to snort) and I'm stupid" variety.

The tired part is easy to understand; once again I am fighting June gloom in my efforts to get to work in a timely fashion. The bed is warm and soft, the light is dim and chill -- why am I trying to get up, again?

The old part comes from being too aware of the small signs of aging that creep up on one: white hairs appearing in strange places, observing fine wrinkles, feeling sore and creaky from a bout of yoga, and so on. (The yoga is particularly galling, as I realize that all the pain results from trying to do poses I used to do but am now too out of shape to attempt. The poses that were hard before don't trouble me; I'm used to them being difficult. But now a number of formerly easy poses are terribly challenging, and I don't know how to do them at a beginner's level. So I stress out my muscles and avoid going to class and the cycle spirals on downward.)

The stupid part is one that comes and goes; it usually manifests in response to situations where, as with the yoga, I remember being informed and able to hold my intellectual own, but now lack the knowledge or the passion to do so. Worse, I sometimes try to bluff my way through, or try to figure out an argument based on second-hand information, and end up looking like an idiot as well as merely ignorant. *sigh*

Plus there's the fact that I am basically lazy when it comes to providing my mind with information to work on; my mind is rather like a sharp knife that sits in the drawer unused -- it's capable of handling complicated information, but it seems like too much effort to do this purely for the sake of doing it. It's at times like this that I am amazed that I ever managed to get the doctorate; I love learning new things, and research can be great fun -- but I'm not great at sustaining focused attention on something (grasshopper mind!) and doing more than learning new stuff (such as using it as the basis for an argument) challenges my laziness. Now, in the absence of outside incentives to think hard, I am reluctant to do so. Why bother? And so I feel more and more ignorant each day, even as I grow more knowledgeable about the shape of knit stitches and how a tomato develops. It's interesting stuff, but more in the category of trivia than "useful" information -- at least according to the standards I've internalized.

I like feeling competent and useful. Too bad it doesn't happen more often.

Edit: This seems rather apropos.

I've closed comments here, as this post has been getting spammed.

Comments

[Harrison Brace]

Now, in the absence of outside incentives to think hard, I am reluctant to do so.

God it scares me to death when I feel that way. The mind gets dull if you don't give it hard problems. Dull in the way that it analyzes everything, even the most mundane details of daily existence. Though it may seem to obvious to need research, recent research has shown this to be true: "intelligence" is not a given, fixed quality of the mind. If you don't use it, you lose it (though you can get it back.)

[Rana]

Yes. In no small part grad school was a response to my fear that, given what tended to happen over the course of a summer, I'd become stupid without the imposed discipline of schoolwork. Now, instead of searching out facts and sources and analytical frameworks, and constructing something new from them, and defending it, I find myself picking up odd bits of info, such as a lot of fairly arcane material relating to spinning and weaving (such as yarn weights and how to determine fiber content). The result is that I'm nowhere near as competent as I used to be. It's all a jumble, not orderly at all. And I have no idea what good it is; it's merely interesting, and of the sort of information that my brain likes to cling to and hoard. *shrug* What else can I say? My brain's its own freaky thing; I've spent my whole life trying to figure out how it works.

[wolfangel]

It's an unfortunate affect of academia -- I see you also cited the Chronicle article -- that competent isn't about actually producing physical things, or knowing how to, it's about writing articles. Most people would consider crafts more useful than academia. It's valuable, too, even when it's hard to see it.

[susancy]

I agree with Wolfangel--all this creativity going into knitting and gardening, etc. is cool and valuable on its own. I'd guess that part of your mind is just be resting, rather than rusting. When I first had an extended break from using my left-brain, I felt this unexpected but completely delightful compulsion to take up arts and crafts. I made collages and papier mache and I even took a drawing class. I had done none of these things since junior high or maybe elementary school. It was a complete surprise. It lasted about 3 months and then I was able to read and write again, at least on a minimal level. I now think of that time away from words as a sort of fallow period for some of the fields of the mind.

[Michelle]

Rana, [snort snort] from a 35-year-old (almost 36) because there is always someone older snorting at your laments and I've found some gray hairs in rather alarming places, too. It is rather disconcerning.

I think I like Susancy's comment most though, that perhaps your brain is resting and that does not inherently indicate rusting. It is so easy to be mired in the intellectual process that we lose track of things like how fast a tomato grows. Who is to say which thought better advances your mind, mood, soul or psyche?

[Harrison Brace]

As for grey hair: I've dyed my hair since I was a teenager, and I don't intend to stop. So that way I just don't know.

[yami]

My experience has been very similar to Susan's - in the past couple of months my appetite for sustained left-brainy occupation has just barely started to return after a most-of-a-year bout of sewing, gardening, and baking. I imagine one could concoct some mixture of Maslow's hierarchy and parody-pop psychology's "N stages of life process X, starting with denial" for the arty-crafty resurgence observed in people leaving stressful academic environments; it would be vaguely funny because it's vaguely true.

[marianne]

Understanding the development of a tomato plant is important - we think of "farming" as non-intellectual but in fact without agriculture we would die. Perhaps because anyone can grow a tomato we don't value it - academa makes you think exclusiveness is a value in and of itself sometimes. We will in fact have to deal with the ecological effects of "stupid" farming in our lifetime. These days when doritos are practially a food group, knowing where food comes from is a radical act.
I think that we tend to get a limited idea of intellectual activity from the academic world. A good friend and I were recently commenting how we used to sneer at the women (they were all women in the 1980s at our school) who were studying early childhood education. Most would end up preschool and K-3 teachers. Yet now that one of us has kids and is a full time parent, we are shocked at our arrogance that we could think these women were not very smart.
I also agree that there is value in the type of intellectual activity that takes place in academia. I am alarmed at the anti intellectual trends in this country. I too have a humanities degree, a B.Phil I got in 1988.
I chose not to go on to grad school due to warnings about the bad job market in academe and have worked in the financial world most of the time since. I have met many smart, interesting, intellectually oriented people there, and have not regretted it. I recently found the Chronicle on line when looking for career ideas for a friend who is working on her Sociology dissertation. Just want to put my 2 cents in - all who are not able to find a job in academe and are looking elsewhere - there is a big world out there but it takes time to get your foot in. Don't despair. I too was an admin assistant for a few years, and got really sick of it. I found just being social with everyone at work seemed to result in new jobs/responsibilities. I later realized I was networking.

[sappho]

Hi. I've been reading Ulysses as it appears page by page on a web site (http://botheration.org/ulysses/index.html if anyone's interested) because I never did (well, I'm an american studies person), and this seemed like a way I might actually do it. Anyway, in one of the first few days, Buck Mulligan (who Dan tells me is not intended as a role model, so I shouldn't be quoting him, but...) says to Stephen D., "Give up the moody brooding." which I have been quoting, at least to myself, for the last week, since it seems pretty good advice for any number of work/life experiences. I'm even thinking of needlepointing it for a pillow cover or embroidering a wall hanging, with, of course, implicit ironic air quotes.
More seriously, I think that just because one isn't thinking about some officially identified "real"/"academic" topic, it doesn't mean one isnt't thinking/having an intellectual life--just running a blog is, actually, more intellectual effort than the huge majority of the population put into the internet, who if I understand the statistics correctly, are using the internet almost exclusively for pornography and gambling.
And, I'm a bit wary of the idea that the brain needs to do specific kinds of intellectual work, it seems to me that the intelligence(s) required to have a good relationship with another person, to move through the world with as little damage to others as possible and so on is as valuable, and perhaps more rare, than the abilities needed to succeed in graduate school...

[Rana]

Hmmm... I think I need to clarify "useful." You all are completely correct that knowledge need not be generated or shared in an academic context to be useful or worthwhile. What I was getting at more, I think, was that the things I am learning now are either trivial relative to making a living (I'm enjoying learning about my tomatoes, but can't imagine making a career of it), or -- more this -- are purely derivative.

I don't mind being a beginner, especially when it comes to relatively unimportant things like idle hobbies. But I had several years to get used to the idea that I was not merely learning, but producing knowledge. I was generating new models of thought, new analytical categories, synthesizing information in new ways, and taking old, neglected data and enfusing it with fresh meaning and significance. Now I am tracing over tracks that have been well traveled for generations. The information is new to me but I don't feel like I'm contributing anything to the larger pool of knowledge by learning it. I'm not even discovering long-forgotten techniques or lore, let alone developing new ones. Even my mistakes are ones that other people have made before.

So my broodiness is a combination of feeling stupid about new things (to me) because they are new to me, and feeling like what I do is ultimately meaningless because it's mere parroting of other, more expert voices. I mean, I've gone from being a person who engaged with experts in the field on their own terms, and who was offering tools to them that were potentially superior to the common wisdom, and who received praise for the originality of my ideas, to someone who regurgitates what other people know and have far greater expertise in -- expertise, moreover, that is not achievable by me in this lifetime.

It's a bit depressing to think about.

[Harrison Brace]

My fellow grad students and I invited Richard Rorty to Stanford to give a talk about the internet (way back around 1995). He made an interesting point, and I'm about to give you a vulgar-as-hell summary: "intellectual engagement" on the internet is just too easy. Deep intellectual work is hard; it's even hard on the body. But that deep commitment and struggle produces something irreplaceable.

It's like the criticism so many people have made about blogging: it's not "really" writing. You don't struggle with your words as much as you would if you were going to actually "publish" (whatever that may mean.)

I think there is something to Rorty's argument. And it's very hard in the "real world" to commit yourself, body and soul, to researching, explaining, and working out a tough intellectual issue.

Not impossible, by any means, but hard as hell. I've been trying to impose that kind of discipline on myself since I've left -- with some success and some failure.

Forgive me if I use some part or all of this comment for a future post on my own blog.

[Rana]

Go for it -- I'd love to read it. It is _exactly_ that lack of passion harnessed to discipline that worries me. I'm perfectly capable of being obsessed by a topic and spending the time to learn more about it -- it's putting in the hours to defend it (and footnote it -- gah!) that I have trouble motivating myself to do.

And in the absence of any concrete punishment or reward, passion will only get you so far when it comes to grut work like that.

[oliviacw]

I've just completed my first year in graduate school, after having been a professional, successful, working adult for 12 years. And I will say that I have felt, this year, almost exactly as Rana claims she does now, to whit:

So my broodiness is a combination of feeling stupid about new things (to me) because they are new to me, and feeling like what I do is ultimately meaningless because it's mere parroting of other, more expert voices. I mean, I've gone from being a person who engaged with experts in the field on their own terms, and who was offering tools to them that were potentially superior to the common wisdom, and who received praise for the originality of my ideas, to someone who regurgitates what other people know and have far greater expertise in -- expertise, moreover, that is not achievable by me in this lifetime.

I have been reassured that all new grad students feel this way - and more so for those who have past successes in other fields. I suspect it's a common response to any immersion in a new endeavor, it's just that academic demands that you become a contributor to new knowledge in a relatively short order. In fields without that demand, you have to convince yourself that it is possible.

[yami]

I'll second Harrison's comment. Blogs are a good format for nurturing the early stages of creative thought, but not so good for the discipline required to bring that thought to full fruition; I too would love to see a post on finding discipline outside a formal institutional structure.

I think this discussion actually ties back to the specialist/generalist or polyphile/monophile split - you seem to be holding yourself up to the specialist standards of tomato botanists and knitting gurus here, Rana. Do you really want to make an original contribution to knitting, or would you rather have your amateur interest in knitting inform your other work in a currently mysterious but utterly brilliant manner?

Maybe there's not much to say about the history of hand-knit tomato cozies in amateur horticulture... but I think there's something intruiguing about the notion of preparing oneself for serendipity.

[dale]

My mind was never weaker than when I was working on my dissertation(s), I think. My intellectual curiosity hit its lowest ebb then, I was using no creativity, and though I was absorbing a lot of information I don't think I was doing anything that would have checked the progress of Alzheimers.

Of course, I was not one of nature's grad students. I knew people who were using their brains in academic work; I just wasn't one of them.

If you like games at all -- you might try picking up Go. You can learn rules in twenty minutes (well, except for a couple ones that cover really uncommon situations.) It gives your spatial mind a workout and forces all kinds of really difficult problem-solving. You *can* memorize tricks and standard plays, and that will help you some, but mostly it just demands lots of raw creative thinking. (Plus it is -- to me -- one of the most aesthetically gratifying activities in the world.)

[Rana]

True! I don't want to be an expert in existing modes. The whole of my academic endeavor was about boundary crossing. :)

But I'm feeling tired of being a Jill of All Trades (and Mistress of None) when I would rather be a Renaissance Woman.

Discipline. I lack discipline. In more ways than one!

Seriously, though, I think part of the larger underlying problem is something that's been plaguing me in various ways for a while. That is, a lack of faith, or optimism, or hope, or whatever fits best. It's hard for me to trust in the future, or in my ability to imagine or create a given future, in the wake of such an abysmal failure to obtain the future I was envisioning (and trusting in) for so many years. Yet I'm not much for presentism; I'm too prone to overanalyzing things to live successfully in the moment -- I'm better at planning things for the long term. Disciplined activity is easier when there's a goal -- yet now I have no goals and don't trust my ability to envision new, achievable ones.

I tell myself sometimes that I have years and years to figure out what my life will be, yet that's both true and not, and thus an ineffective form of self-reassurance.

[Rana]

Whoops. Jumped you there, dale.

I've played Go once or twice before, and did enjoy it. I don't know if pure intellectual activity in the absence of material result will satisfy me for long, though. I like to feel and see the results of mental activity. (hmm... maybe if the Go stones were pretty and smooth...)

I think I'm pretty feeble at self-discipline in more areas than intellectual activity, come to think of it. Exercise, eating properly, doing chores... yup, I'm just a lazy ol' thing.

[dale]

Nonsense.

[Rana]

Really? I feel lazy! :)

[dale]

Well, okay. You feel lazy. I'll concede that, since I can't very convincingly dispute it :-)

Really what I was saying I guess is that I don't believe in "lazy." (Even if I believed in the category, though, btw, I don't think I'd believe you belonged in it.)

"Lazy" is what supervisors call people who don't have sufficient reason (or sufficient resources) to do what they're told. & It's very often what I call myself when I have perfectly good reasons for not doing things that some not-necessarily-very-clued-in piece of my psyche suddenly decides I ought to be doing. Or when my different motivations start tripping each other up. Or when I need a rest and stubbornly refuse to really take one. That kind of thing.

[Rana]

Okay, that makes sense to me. And, when lazy is defined that way, I'm probably not lazy.

No, I was thinking more in terms of that lie in the sun scatterbrainedness that gets in the way of doing things, even things one wants to do and knows one should do. Or taking the easy way out and not doing something just because it would require a bit more effort than puttering along in an unthinking fashion. It's like with my yoga practice -- I know that I like yoga when I am fit enough to do some of the more complex balancing poses and can take a class without worrying for every. single. pose. whether I can do it without hurting myself. The solution is simple, and, if undertaken, not even unpleasant -- do some yoga every day. But I don't do it, even though it is not really that hard, and I would really like to have the benefits that would result (physical well-being and the mental sanity that comes from having an established routine). But I don't do it. And I'm not sure why. So calling myself "lazy" seems to work.

Of course, as I type that, I realize that resorting to the "lazy" description is a cop out, and, well, lazy.

I did say I tend to over analyze things, didn't I? :)

[dale]

Okay, I guess you ARE lazy :-)

Actually, that reluctance to practice (meditation, in my case) is fascinating to me. I don't understand it. I *like* meditating. Usually, anyway. I have no doubts about it being good for me. But I'll find myself avoiding it -- fairly often, in order to do things I enjoy far less, and that are decidedly not good for me. What *is* that?

I mean, even if we call it "lazy," just to give it a name, we still haven't figured out what it is, or how to stop it.

[Rana]

I don't know. It is such a weird bit of counter-intuitiveness, isn't it? Maybe it's the "fuss factor" -- especially given that I know that I have a miscalibrated sense of fuss. That is, if something seems like Too Much Work, one tries to avoid it, even though the "Too Much" and the "Work" parts don't hold up to scrutiny. Walking to the grocery store is "easy" while riding the bike there (same place, same distance) is "more work" and getting in the car to drive there is "too much work." Driving downtown to the yarn store to pick out some shawl yarn is "too much work" but the idea of spending hours spinning yarn as "easier" or "less fuss" doesn't make much sense. Ditto for the yoga. It is not hard At. All. to unroll the mat and begin (and I know once I begin, I'll keep going) yet it is "Too Much Work" somehow. And so on. I wish there was a convenient rubric to apply (like "work = something unpleasant" or "work = something someone else thinks I should do") to help me decide how to go about countering this attitude, but so far I haven't figured out what it might be.

It is striking me, again as I type, that simply doing yoga or whatnot is probably far less time-consuming than fretting about not doing it is!

Hmm... that might be part of the problem with grad school; there's a lot of attention to giving you reasons for doing the work (to meet deadlines, to get a grade, to get published, to get a job, to please an advisor...) but not so much to learning how to find your own reasons. I only had one professor who asked us, regularly and repeatedly, "Why are you doing this?" -- a horribly difficult question to answer, let alone answer concisely. It was terribly frustrating at the time, but I appreciate it now.

[susan]

I take your point, Rana, about feeling as though your re-using or learning "old" knowledge rather than creating new knowledge through research. There is something immensely satisfying about creating knowledge, partly because it is really hard to do. It can be extremely tedious; it requires various kinds of discipline; and one has to deal with all kinds of fundamental questions about evidence and the nature of knowledge and the logic of arguments. For certain kinds of minds, research is really seductive (especially when it goes well, which it doesn't much of the time). It may be that you will ultimately need to have this in your life in order to be really happy. (On the other hand, I have been thinking for awhile now that the research ideal has gotten out of control in our culture, but that's a different topic.)

[Michelle]

I agree with Harrison and Yami.

Blogs don't require anything more out of you than you are personally willing to give. That's the beauty of them. I agree with Sappho too that at least it's using the internet to a supposed productive advantage, but it's not the same as disciplined *forced* production to a level that is above what you thought you could accomplish.

But on "The information is new to me but I don't feel like I'm contributing anything to the larger pool of knowledge by learning it." Do you feel this huge need to contribute? Because I don't so I can't necessarily identify with this. How can you contribute? Can you volunteer?

Rana, God help me for saying this, but I think you just need a very good self-help book.

And BTW, you now have (as of 11:01 pm CST 6/29) 24 comments on "Broody." I'll give you an automatic stamp of analytical and lazy but let's hear about those tomato plants, man! Socks, whatever.