Simple Pleasures, Drastic Measures

I saw an eagle today, and it got me thinking.

Okay, perhaps it wasn't an eagle proper. The partially failed efforts of my eighteenth century seminar professor to successfully clear a dry-erase board resulted in a smeared dry-erase pattern that vaguely resembled an aerie-dweller. At least, I thought so. You too can be the judge.

(Now might be a great time to point out that I have a Twitter now! You should go check it out and follow, since I'm a whore for shameless self-promotion and desperately require attention in order to feed the falsely extravagant ego that's standing in front of an otherwise hollow, weak-willed shell of a man.)

Regardless of your own personal view on the legitimacy or merit of spying animal shapes in semi-satisfactory erasures, the fact that I found, documented, felt the need to comment upon, and shared such a discovery spoke strongly to me. It reawakened a particular yen that kicks in every now and again, one that gets its share of face time in this, my humble little corner of the Internet (when that corner is not cluttered, of course, with bitching after bantering after diatribe after ranting after raving after tirade about how awful and soul-sucking my work currently is). And that is, of course, my desire to say something that is meaningful and interesting to as many people as possible.

Despite putting myself on a career track that would have consisted primarily of researching and writing texts on some of my favorite works of literature, plus a healthy dose of teaching those works to presumably appreciative (read: awake) students, my graduate work -- and the prospect of an academic career in general -- has stifled my creativity. This is not a new revelation, as I've proved herein time and time again. But I've been trying very hard to rationalize how it is that a life of writing (albeit academic writing) could be so incurably detrimental to, well, my (creative) writing -- of which this blog is included.

It's equally unsurprising that I've felt both pain and pity over the jettisoning of my blogging during times of great stress. Quoth the author, from an ill-conceived draft, begun over a month ago, that shall hereafter never see the light of day:

I had every intention of taking the clichéd resolution approach to blogging, embracing the turning of the calendar as an excuse to turn a new leaf and start fresh and set myself to a particular (and particularly stringent) schedule and yada yada yada. I should have known that my resolve would quickly be shattered when, on New Year's Eve, I fashioned an idea for a blog entry about how my world would be transformed in 2009, as a direct result of jettisoning the poor karma and horrid fortunes that 2008 brought me. I took this idea -- which I'd fomented through judicious bouts of sitting at the computer, staring at the blinking caret, ready to rock -- and proceeding to shelve it, thinking, Meh, I'm not in the mood right now. I can write it later.

And now, as you have seen, a month later, that very promising post has been unceremoniously relegated to a relatively uninteresting vignette meant only to serve as a passable but by no means notable way of entering my latest entry. Poor little misbegotten post. You never really stood a chance, did you?

And, as it turned out, neither did that draft. That to me is fucked up. But then, it's always harder to work on things that need be done than on things that want to be done.

But rather than go down that same, tired path in this missive, I want to tie it into my aforementioned eagle. It would seem that today, of all days, my mind was tuned in enough to receive even the simplest of inspirations. Whether the result of ennui, impatience, or the malaise of indifference that has as of late characterized my participation in seminar, something in my crazy head was crying out for some meaningful stimulus. And there, miraculously, it was!

What I have to wonder, however, is if it's really so miraculous. It strikes me that these kinds of things happen on an almost everyday basis. And if you, like me, have the kind of mind that's wired to the type of detail that you feel strongly compelled to examine in all its glorious minutiae, then you understand that it's actually a natural, organic, and surprisingly regular occurrence. Sure, in our daily doldrums, we often miss the "little things" that those with an surplus of clever ideas (and often, consequently, a dearth of attentive ears -- and yes, I know how damnably close to self-description this veers) cry desperately for us to awaken and discover. Yet those are the very same things I've been neglecting to the degree that their reemergence takes on almost religious significance.

I know what you're wondering. What if I'm not a creative-minded person? What if these things genuinely just have no impact on my life? Why should I care?

I want to posit that it matters because there's so much negative stigma associated with the simple things that they're so easy to lose sight of. And while it's true that our world has a depth of complexity so vast that it makes the mini-verse of Lost pale in comparison, why do we have to feel so bad about noticing the spare, glorious details of life? What's wrong with taking the time to savor the beauty in a small, plain thing? Or in enjoying a diversionary task that will not make you any more productive but might, in the short run, make you less likely to snap under the pressure of excruciating reality? Why do we too often need to reach that brink before the simple joys made themselves apparent?

If I long to be a writer, I understand that I will need to make myself available to these opportunities more often. And it's comforting to know that, as I near the end of the trial that has been my graduate work, my senses appear to be reawakening to the possibilities around them. I can only hope that, when all is said and done, I shall, like my precious eagle, find myself able to not only be seen but to soar.