Writing

Thinking about writing while driving in: I often am honestly amazed at the skill with language people assign me, when all I can see is an inability to write the way I want, about what I want. When I do write nonomphaloskeptically (which is rare), it's always first or second person. At times, that perspective suits me, but I feel like it limits my scope beyond that which I'd always choose. I think it comes back to my discomfort with having to use 'he/his' or 'she/hers' in third person, and I've never made peace with 'zie/hir'. Until this can be resolved, third person remains a perspective that fundamentally renders me invisible and/or impossible, and it's hard to come to terms with that.

spectres of grad school

For the first time in a long, long time, I have several works of fiction to read, and several that I've just finished reading. Without joking, I think I can safely say this is the first time in a couple of years (at least) that I've read two fiction works back to back. But you know what?

Reading so much fiction makes me feel guilty.

It's not like reading theory, science, criticism, economics, etc necessarily makes me feel good, but... some strangely Calvinistic part of me insists that it's necessary, that these collections of facts might be of use, that I might be leaving huge holes in my knowledge if I miss them.

Now, I feel like that week or so in grad school, when the term was over, papers turned in, and I had the luxury of reading what I wanted to read before work began again, only... there's no guarantee work will begin again.