rainy night in Charleston

Timing is everything, right? Just before I left for the airport, I checked my email and found some bad news. “If you don’t listen, you’ll feel”—I tell my students that at the start of every semester, and yet here I am nearing 40 and I *still* have not learned to listen to *myself*. I remember having a debate with my therapist once over boundaries—she felt I wasn’t forceful enough when drawing that line in the sand, and I insisted that the people in my life merely swept the line aside. I don’t have problems setting boundaries, I have trouble POLICING my own boundaries once they’ve been set. I said no to a project several months ago, but the editors kept pressing and so I relented and spent a good portion of my summer working on an academic essay. It’s way over the word limit but I think it’s pretty good, and yet today I learned that the editors would like me to remove all traces of my “personal history.” In other words, “Don’t act like you’re a writer. Just be a scholar. Act like you didn’t write the two books you’re analyzing.” I *almost* sent off a terse reply but decided to wait, which meant I drafted endless imaginary emails in my mind during the flight from NYC to Charleston. Then I opened the door to my room here at the hotel and forgot about the endless pressure within academia to be something—someone—other than WHO I AM. I don’t know why I keep ending up in hotel rooms with canopy beds; I actually have a four-poster bed back in Brooklyn, but this feels so much more luxurious. My faculty grant is paying for this trip so I figured I might as well stay in a nice hotel. I keep thinking of that episode of Miranda where her friends seem to have more exciting lives so she claims she’s taking an exotic vacation but really just checks into a nearby hotel. Have you discovered the comic genius of Miranda Hart yet? Here’s a taste, in case you don’t happen to watch PBS on Friday nights…