coldhearted scientist وداد

I wrote:

Later when I have time, I will try to consider methods of using my plan, or even a Boicean style plan, to address problems that do not have to do with the low level problems he addresses, which appear to be not liking to write, not having any experience writing, not being organized, not having a strong work ethic. If you have work block you have to trust yourself about this; it might be possible to use a Boicean style plan to get out of it but this would not involve using his time blocks to actually write.

Tanya has strategies for overcoming “writer’s block” but her definition of block is different from mine. The writer’s block she describes, I call being stuck on a sentence or being tired. I use exactly her strategies to deal with this, so I can tell we are talking about the same phenomenon even if we are not calling it the same thing.

Sometimes I am stuck because there is something not right with my concepts. It means I need to do more research or think more, not force out more words. This has been clear to me since before college, and it was only late in graduate school and then in professordom that people started saying research or a change in perspective was “procrastination.” I think they were wrong about this. Not only wrong — I think they did not have the faintest idea what they were talking about.

Once when I had a very large project design problem, nobody would discuss it. All they would do was harshly repeat, sit down and write. I tried but it only made things worse. I needed research time and a discussion group, not about strategies for getting things done but about ideas and material. I also needed some bureaucratic information that I was refused: all I got was, do not ask questions, write! It was violent and this is why I feel violent toward Boice and the Boiceans. I want to take my oar, push them off my boat, start my outboard motor and speed far away, leaving them to flounder in the bayou. I have carried them too long and all they have done is weigh me down.

There is something I could have done with my 12-15 weekly research hours, or even with 2 weekly research hours, in those days: dedicate the time to thinking about the actual problems with the project, and my actual problems with it … and to figuring out how to get the bureaucratic information I lacked. (Now I would just ask the Internet, but all of this happened earlier on.) Had I not had my mind clouded by Boiceanisms, had I still felt like an adult and remembered I was already a competent researcher and a good publisher, I would have allowed myself to say things like: there is in fact no way to do what I am asked to do in the time I have (which was true) rather than say, with the Boiceans, that such thoughts were just a conspiracy to procrastinate, or “fear of success,” or some other ridiculous notion. I would have maintained some sort of trust in myself or self respect. I would have honored what I knew, namely that writing and yet not moving forward in the project is not actually indicative of a discipline or organization problem. I might have started working on the project without thinking about the deadline and without feeling so constrained by the project design to which I had ostensibly agreed. I might have taken power, as I had almost always done, and seen where that took me.

The Boiceans do not seem to respect such possibilities, insisting that everything is about not knowing how to write, not being interested in it, seeing it as a chore, and not knowing how to use time. I dislike them because they universalize their own situation.

Then again, I was taught to do research and to write, because I have a Ph.D. and not some other kind of doctorate, and I went to a good school and had friends who were good students. I was also taught to teach, but in the way one can when one is at such a school. I still have not made the adjustment elsewhere and I have difficulties around teaching and even service, I suddenly realize, that might in fact benefit from some of the better of the Boicean suggestions.

This of course only provides further support for my intuition about Boice: his ideas apply to things one does not really know how to do and does not entirely enjoy.

In any case the point of this post is to think about how, then, sitting at the desk I had then, before the computer I had then, I could have seriously taken control of that project. I am thinking about it for general purposes and also because I did myself a great deal of violence by not being able to engage with that project as my own. It was like cutting off several of my limbs — which, once again, is why I feel violent toward the Boiceans. I am interested in becoming the person I was before allowing Boice to be inflicted upon me, and that project is still waiting for me.

Axé.