it’s a very very mad world

Like most of my friends, I am on Pinterest a lot these days. I think the inspiration is addicting because you’re not just pinning an idea to a board, but you’re also pinning the idea of “You, Improved.” When you save something inspiring you’re imagining your life and yourself as something better: more organized, more stylized, more designed.

I recently read a post by a new writer at Hack Library School, Joanna June. She wrote about the idea of “the horizon” and how we tend to hope for a time in the future, on the horizon, when we’ll finally have time to sit down or get out and do everything on our to do list. She wrote something that, as I read it, felt like I wrote it, or had at least been thinking it for a long time now:

My issue is neither starting nor finishing right now. My problem is creating the head space to concentrate on anything longer than the next three minutes or think about that which is past today. … I’ve felt anxious and scattered in waves while trying to concentrate on my project and deal with whatever is most screaming for attention. Not ideal productivity conditions. [emphasis hers]

It’s very easy to say something about the hectic life we lead, and I could laugh to you about how I make lists about the list I need to make. But, really, what I’ve come to realize is it isn’t about realizing I’m busy now, it’s realizing I’m going to be busy for a very long time. I will always have the horizon, I will always hope for a time I can sit down to think, I will always pin pretty examples of good organization to virtual boards. And that, frankly, is a problem for many reasons — one being that I am finding myself much more often walking through my apartment, knowing what I wanted to find/write down/remember when I began at Point  A and then forgetting entirely by the time I reach Point B.

I’m nearly constantly watching something, listening to a podcast, talking to someone, listening to music, reading, or playing a game. Is my brain just too full? Should I eat breakfast in silence and stillness, and not pick up a New Yorker? Oh, but then I will constantly feel behind on the times!

There are solutions for this, of course, and I’m not going to lay them out since I don’t feel qualified to. Elsie Larson over at A Beautiful Mess some tips for Prolific Living which are a good start. However, I feel happy that I’m solidly choosing a lifestyle of “prolific living.” I’ve realized that I can’t just sit around, I need to produce (not babies yet!!). I need to feel part of the community.

One of the things I grappled with, when I chose archiving and libraries for my future path, was that it didn’t seem as world-changing as going to work for a nonprofit in policy or to become an environmental law lawyer or to become a teacher in a low-income, under-resourced school. But it’s not true. We aren’t those things, but we don’t have to be; we are not only important venues and keepers of culture but my peers are caring folks who also want to help. That’s a good community to be in, and I’m glad I’ve chosen to be a prolific component of it.

I leave you with this thought: live intentionally, but don’t map it out.

In the meantime, I have to ever-prepare. I need a system. I also especially want a good system for research in grad school — I had my own in undergrad, but writing a history paper is just different from writing an archives paper. And here I ask you! Before I set out to form an organization system, do you have any advice? How do you organize your research to ease the process of paper writing?

There’s the word balance again

An excerpt I appreciated from 116-117 of Scrolling Forward: Making Sense of Documents in the Digital Age (David M. Levy):

“… to voice any concerns about the direction in which technology is taking us is taken to mean that you are necessarily an extremist; it suggests you are a Luddite, wanting to pull the plug on the whole enterprise. But this needn’t be the case, and it certainly isn’t the case for me. By pointing to other forms of reading and other bookish practices, my aim is to contribute to a healthier mix and a healthier balance.

… Certainly the book functions as an important symbol in our culture, and it can symbolize many things, among them the weight of history, cultural authority, and modes of knowing. Unless we are clear about what we are after, and which values we wish to preserve, we risk losing by winning. It is possible, for example, that the codex will survive the onslaught of digital technologies having been stripped of  the bookish practices that, to my mind at least, make up its heart and soul. It is also possible that the codex will disappear but we will find other vehicles around which more-contemplative forms of reading can arise … And it is even possible, although I doubt it, that reading itself in all its various forms will disappear, but our culture will find other arenas in which to exercise its need for reflection. (Reading is hardly the only guise in which reflection and contemplation appear today.) What is it we want to hold on to, and what is it we want to move toward?”