Slacking off

I have time to write on my blog, but I choose not to because I'm lazy or distracted.  A couple of years ago when I was writing my east coast blog, I posted my new year's resolutions.  This year, I posted them on my fridge, where they are a daily reminder of how bad I am at keeping new year's resolutions.  Just another cliche to get me through the day.

Speaking of cliches, I really hate it when people who are well into their twenties write things in their blogs and Facebook notes like "the sound of the rain of the pavement at night reminds me of the time when we used to dance" or something like that; I'm not very good at emulating emo poetry.  But you all know what I mean.  The point is, they should know better by know.  Being all melodramatic and angsty is so grade 10.

I've been reading a bunch of Malcolm Gladwell's writing lately, and it has really rekindled my interest in writing for myself.  I've barely read or written anything at all in the last year.  I really enjoy his work, I think that he is one of the most interesting modern writers of popular non-fiction.  I was never much for fictional story telling, but I felt very satisfied when I was able to produce a good piece of non-fiction prose.  I guess that's kind of what I'm going for here, and I really dig Gladwell's style.  It feels very conversational and I like that.

The biggest reason that I left the university was that I couldn't stand unnecessarily inflated academic writing.  It offended me.  Sentences like "the culture of post-capitalist hegemony invests itself in the politics of pedagogical institutions"* drove me right out of the English department.  Literary critics writing criticisms of the writing of other literary critics has got to be the biggest waste of ink, paper and brain power of all time.

I spend a few minutes every week or two wondering if every argument that I make for why I decided to quit is really to justify it to myself.  I say that I'm 100% convinced that it was the right move, but I don't necessarily agree with myself all the time.  Maybe I had the wrong attitude; maybe I was just too lazy; maybe I'm not smart enough to see it through to its end.  I can't say that I didn't learn a lot while I was there, and I certainly had some fantastic experiences and brilliant profs along the way.  I just hated the politics of it.  The expectations.

Now I'm just rambling, but I'm trying to reach for a way to rectify my indebtedness to university education for teaching me how to think and write and argue with my extreme dislike of the bureaucracy of academia.  I started to feel like I was being tricked into buying a piece of some giant, quadrennial edu-cycle machine.  It felt like shoveling coal into the boiler of a big steamer that was supposedly aimed at the promised land of improved job prospects and income earning potential.  The catch is that you don't get to take a break to come above decks and take a look for yourself, you just have to trust this inaccessible gang of navigators who tell you that's where you're headed.

I've always enjoyed writing, but struggled with the endings, as is the case again here today.  Because I don't have to agonize over how I'm going to wrap up an essay and therefore earn a good grade, I end up writing these awkward outro segments that inevitably trail off with "well, that's all folks," or some cheap variation thereof.  Note to self: work on better endings.  So, until next time, keep fit and have fun.

*To see the website where I got that sentence, check out this link.