So ready to move on

I wish I could be content with my job, because it's a great gig on face value. I am employed by a world-renown university, in a reputable department. I am paid extremely well. Really. It's indecent. But I feel intense discontent.

I have been unhappy since the beginning. For the last 13 years, I have had to deal with colleagues successfully dictating what I should be teaching, then telling students not to take my courses, implying to my face that I am not good enough for the department, then writing to the department to try to prevent my rightful promotion. Why? Because I am French-speaking, because I work on Francophones, because I am a historical anthropologist and not a social historian, because I don't have a penis. Only in the last three years have I finally been able to dictate my teaching load and in fact teach in my domains of specialty (including in the French department in French), though I have just discovered that one colleagues has resumed his telling students to stay away from me. I don't have inconvertible proof unfortunately, which is why I have not slapped him with a union grief, but still, ugh!

I have written about all this before, but the sentiment remains. I am so completely ready to move on. Either to a new department within my university (but the options are minuscule) or without. There is a slight possibility on the horizon that might materialize around 2017, but that is still pretty far away and contingent on that university's budget and government support.

Most importantly, my husband does not want to leave his job, he is extremely happy where he is. If the new position does come about for me, he would have to leave his current employment, because we would be leaving Ontario. This is causing him significant anxiety. My wish to leave my job causes him anxiety, so I do not mention it much. I am not willing to leave him either, so I have not been as gung ho in my search for another position as a result.

Then I listen to my son talking and all I want is to move back to Québec to make sure he doesn't turn into a Canadian nationalist willing to fully Anglicize. But all he has as models are the kids in his French Public school who are already embracing assimilation and two parents who work in English. Hell, this entry is in English! There are limits to what can be done here. He has expressed the opinion that if we were to leave Ontario, he would consider moving to Québec City, because his grand parents live there. And my bother-in-law who builds houses, because building stuff is cool. However, my still-very-hypothetical job prospect would be in Montreal, so much negotiation and comforting would be needed to make him accept the move.

This all means that two out of three members of my household don't want to move. So I am stuck in my nearly joyless job. My courses are at least satisfying. Quite so. I am teaching my specialties and I know what I'm doing. I am a good teacher. I am very good researcher, but I have had to put much of that on the back burner since my son's arrival. I am on sabbatical in 2015-16, so I'll be finishing all the manuscripts finally. I'm ready to move on to a new project too, so this does not help with everything else stated above. I can find some satisfaction in the everyday performance of my teaching duties. Unfortunately, this is not enough.

Will I be applying to the position in Montréal if it materializes. You can bet on it. I want this badly. But it will bring great difficulties in my personal life that will have to be sorted and will not be easy to solve. My son will adjust no matter what. My husband's happiness will take a lot more work.

In short, blargh.

Arting the days away

One thing that has become clear to me in the last few months is that if I draw (paint, collage, doodle, etc.), I write. Since writing is an essential part of my job (the whole publoish or perish thing is real), I need to draw more in order to write more. Simple as that. It works.

To that end, since le beginning of the year, I have participated in various schetchnoting and doodle challenges, and creative prompt schemes, and produced a lot of pages of stuff on paper. if you follow my Flickr account, you have seen those pieces accumulate.

In the last couple of months, you have seen me do (and complain about) slow journaling. It's absolutely not for me. I have had more pleasure from doing things in my Occasional Journal (9 pieces in all) than from all of the Slow Journaling thing (61 pieces). So I have decided to return to the mostly graphical arts on the one hand, and writing on the other hand. Least June and July, I had done a modified #Index-Card-a-Day challenge from Daisy Yellow in a notebook with different prompts. I had thought I would do the 2015 #ICAD challenge next June. However, I have decided to do the true 2014 #ICAD now. I will not be doing it in exact order and I very well may do it faster than in 61 days, doing more than one card a day or doing several cards in parallel over several days. But I will be doing it on index cards using several different techniques. So far, I have done drawing and mixed-media collage, with paint. I am not placing any limits on myself.

I have found that I make different art in a sketchbook than on loose paper. Both are freeing in different ways. The interaction between pages in a journal brings out a lot of interesting themes and possibilities, but there is little choice to fill the pages in order. I guess one could not fill them in order, but I find I cannot. Loose paper, however, be it watercolour paper, bristol board or inder cards, is freeing precicely because one does not have to do anything in order. Any one piece of paper can go where and when ever one feels like. If I want to do prompt #29 right now and do #4 tomorrow, then that's what I do. If I want #7 and # 32 to answer each other, I do so. And I don't have to worry about smudjing the previous pave while doing it. I like this. If I feel like doing a page in the Occasional Journal, then that's what I do too.

Since I am no longer commited to journal in one notebook in a form I don't like, I should blog more here, with actual words rather than with passive aggressive pithy statements. Which should bring back what little interest this blog has in the first place. No more pithy!

More art!

Slow journaling, la fin!!!!!

Enfin débarrassée.

Slow journaling, jour 52

jour 52

Slow journaling, jours 45 à 49

I'm almost caught up.

Jour 45

Jour 46

Jour 47

Jour 48

Jour 49

Slow journaling report: hummmm.

I hate it. I am only doing this because I set myself a challenge. I know now that this is not for me. Had I not pre-created the lines for each page, which I thought was a good idea, I may have liked this thing more. As it is now, this slow journaling thing is too constrictive. At this point, the only reason I am continuing this is because I gave myself this challenge and I hate to lose a bet, even to myself. Oy.

Slow journaling, jours 43 et 44

Jour 43

Jour 44

Pseudo-history course: Create-a-Myth assignment

This is going to be so fun!

“Assignment Objective: The point of this assignment is to create a pseudo-historical theory from scratch and explain the process and details needed to make it fully believable in popular media.

Assignment Question: Make me a myth and make me believe in it. Your paper should come in two parts. First, write the myth in the manner of pseudo-historians. Let yourself be inspired by the readings from this semester. Provide the “proof” that is needed to make the myth work. Second, explain how this myth is believable and how it could endure. I will be analyzing the logic of your arguments carefully.

Formatting Guidelines: Assignments should be from 1500 to 2000 words (use the spell count on your word processor). These limits will be enforced. Written assignments must be written in PROSE. Absolutely no shorthand is allowed.

Supporting Documentation: You do need to have references and a bibliography. Some of them should be academic in nature. Others may not be. Some may be completely forged. You can add images, maps, videos, web pages, etc., that you choose to create. The point is to provide “proof” that would make your myth believable. Be creative. Illustrations and the like, as well as the works cited, do not count against the final word count of your paper.

Marking scheme:
1) Originality, 25%
2) Internal logic and “believability”, 25%
3) Documentation, 35%
4) Language, spelling, syntax, 15%
”