Against My Better Judgment

Life is short, but it's not as fleeting as my anxiety can make it feel. I have a tendency (and it used to be much worse) to beat myself up for tasks not completed/started, not keeping up with hands-on projects, letting hobbies fall behind, etc. I also feel that I need to be productive all the time, and things that still need doing around the house make me feel like I'm being lazy, even when I'm not. I think this is why I have always avoided picking up hobbies that I didn't think I could keep up with perfectly.

Yesterday I finally got to a couple chores that I had put off for a long time and was despairing of ever starting: pulling weeds from the fall lettuce and organizing our junk-filled shed. I just didn't think I would ever find the time or the energy to do them and that the lettuce and the shed would fall abandoned. But yesterday, by surprise, an occasion presented itself to dedicate the day to the yard, so I got to work and finished the weeds and did about 1/3 of the shed job.

The experience just reminded me that life, and things in life, are not as ready to fall apart as I may think sometimes.

As an exercise in keeping up a regular writing practice, I give this blog a solid E for eh, it's enough effort; as an exercise in conquering perfectionism and self-loathing, I give it an A++++.

I thought I'd use this entry to reflect on the garden I started in the spring of this year. I wasn't into gardening when I had the opportunity growing up and only got into the idea as a renting, apartment-dwelling adult several years ago. This is the first year I've had the yard and disposable income to try my hand at growing vegetables. I had planned to take detailed notes throughout the season, but that plan never materialized, so I'll describe in general when I planted what, what I used, and what went wrong/right. I'm gardening in Zone 7a. I might update info from time to time as I stumble upon it.

Lettuce: by far the greatest success. I planted it in late March using old commercial soil from a previous garden in our yard. I got both a spring harvest and, after I realized how much I can plant in such a small space, a much larger fall harvest. Much of the fall harvest was grown in the former beet plot, the soil topped off with our home-made compost.

Strawberries: I don't know what went wrong with these. I planted several plants that I got from a local nursery on April 14, and they briefly seemed to be growing berries and sending out runners as normal. The first problem was definitely that chipmunks kept eating the berries. But after a while, even after blooming, they failed to produce berries entirely while continuing to send out runners. I tried cutting the runners as recommended, but that didn't help with the berries. Even spray fertilizer didn't help. I think the commercial soil I used might have been poor quality or the wrong kind. Now that I think about it, a row of garlic also failed to thrive there, and things definitely grew better in that plot when I topped it off with compost. I'll try again next year, but I need to replace or cover over the soil and enclose the planting bed from the start.

Beets: Planted around April 6. These were a success, but they ended up small, I think because I didn't plant them deep enough to start with. I grew them in soil from the old garden.

Tomatoes: A qualified success. I planted six plants on May 19, which I think was much too late for our heavily-shaded yard. I think we would have ended up with many more tomatoes if it hadn't been for bluejays and other creatures pilfering them for weeks before I was able to improvise a chicken-wire enclosure. A couple of them have grown very large, but I think they need a long growing season and some pruning. I purposely didn't prune new shoots just to observe how the plants grow, but now I'm left with a ton of green tomatoes at the tops of very tall plants that will never ripen. So I will definitely enclose, prune, and plant tomatoes early next year. Another note: the plants really failed to grow the first several weeks (again, I think due to insufficient light), but growth accelerated rapidly after I used some spray fertilizer. I should also remember that. I planted some marigolds and basil around the tomatoes, which I've read are supposed to repel pests. The basil, at least, has been a welcome addition to our kitchen.

Potatoes: I planted one slice of a supermarket golden potato on April 12, which grew into a large plant that I didn't quite know how to take care of. It produced a few very small golden potatoes that I think would have been larger/more numerous if I had known to hill the soil around the plant. It also had a couple pest problems that I was able to fix with a spray. I think I harvested around July 20. It may be worthwhile to plant an entire crop of potatoes next year.

Onions: Same deal as the potatoes: planted from supermarket varieties around April 6, didn't quite know how to take care of them. But I did get enough small onions back to tell me that it's worth another try next year. I just have to remember to bury the roots deep and keep a close eye on them. When I checked on one a few days ago, it was soggy and rotten, so I should remember to plant them separately from plants that can take a lot of water.

I still (Oct. 29) have a good amount of lettuce growing as well as some brussels sprouts (in a former lettuce plot) and some very sickly looking carrots. Maybe I'll update with their progress later.

About my compost bin: basically a cylindrical chicken-wire enclosure that I throw our plant-based table scraps in. I have two of them set up, one of which is always empty, and I mix it by switching bins. I also have a tarp that I throw over it when it needs to dry. It's a primitive system, and I've been meaning to come up with a design that doesn't create so much loss, but I've had neither the time nor the materials. It has been filled with soldier fly larvae for at least the past four months, so this batch is off to a good start.

Next year I definitely need to plant everything earlier and enclose the tomatoes and strawberries. I also need to remove or cover over the soil in the strawberry patch. Produce-wise, this year's garden was a bit of a dud, mostly because of problems I didn't anticipate and couldn't find time to fix over the (very hot) summer. I think I'll be able to make a good haul next year if I fix these and a few other simple things.

I'm on day 5 or 6 of what started out as an accidental break from social media. Thankfully, I've been able to really immerse myself in research work lately and have often found myself going several hours without checking my feeds. As I've done this, I've realized that my mind is much calmer when I'm doing my work than when I'm on social media. Strange as it sounds, I've often come out of long writing sessions feeling rejuvenated and relaxed, I think because the kind of mental focus I need for my work is less taxing than that required by (my) social media. And yes, it is also partly taking a break from all the bad news in the world, which I believe in doing from time to time.

Anyway, I've realized that I really, really enjoy this slower but more focused mind-state that I seem to have lost and now rediscovered. I can't bring myself to click on the apps now, because I remember the frazzled mess it made of my mind. Being able to focus on my most important tasks has also freed me to relearn what people always say about “listening to your body,” as I realize that I do much better work when I let myself rest when I need to, and switch between physical and mental tasks when I need to. When I regularly use social media, my energies are spent simply processing the things in my feed, and messages from my mind and body get obstructed or misdirected.

I've studied a tiny bit of Buddhism, practiced some meditation, and successfully begun recovery from CPTSD, so I'm used to paying attention to how my mind works. I want to bring this calmer energy to my experience more consistently without losing touch with what I care about, so I think I'm going to set myself some rules about social media consumption going forward. In general, I want more of my reading to be blogs and other indie media, as opposed to posts in a feed.

Today I emptied my backpack of folders and papers and came across the presentation handouts I received at various sessions at Kalamazoo this year, so I decided to do a brief Kazoo Review 2024. For the uninitiated, Kazoo is the nickname of the annual International Congress on Medieval Studies held on the fine campus of Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan. It's one of the largest annual gatherings of medievalists in the world. I attended and presented this year for the first time since before the pandemic, so it was interesting to see how the congress and the campus have changed. It is definitely smaller, I estimate about 2/3 of pre-pandemic attendance, but I think much of that has simply moved online, which is probably a good thing for several, including environmental, reasons. I’m not sure how or if the session topics have changed -I should mention that my discipline is more medieval-adjacent, so I don’t have the eye that some might have for such things.

My session was well-run and included papers on quite complex manuscript issues from late antique texts, so I wasn’t able to follow them entirely, but the audience seemed to receive them well. My paper -much more allusive and literary- made it painfully clear that I’m not as learned a paleographer, but I felt well-received as well. I would write about the sessions I attended, but it is now a few weeks past and I don’t remember any of them well enough to do the presenters justice. Overall, though, the papers seemed well-researched and were well-presented, as has been my usual experience at Kazoo.

Every day of Kazoo there is a day-long “book fair” of scholarly publishers, rare and used booksellers, etc., as well as antiquity dealers and craftspeople who work in medieval styles and materials. It didn't seem to be as large as usual, but this might be a consequence of it being spread across several conference rooms instead of one large room like in past years. You can find some really interesting things there, and “going broke at the Kazoo book fair” is a common refrain among medievalists, but alas souvenirs were not in the budget for me. I did look at some early printed books that cost hundreds of dollars though.

Spine of a small leather-bound book. Its title reads Meditationes S. Augustini S. Anselmi S. Bernardi S. . . rest is illegible

Title page of the above book. The paper is discolored from age and printed in Latin. At center is an image of a griffon standing on a platform. The date at bottom is 1592.

The most visible change was the campus of Western Michigan University. I don’t remember exactly what it looked like before, but they’ve at least renovated several buildings and built a completely new student center, where most attendees would go for lunch and wine hour. Yes, we have a daily wine hour. I say it affectionately, but historians are a bunch of drunks. Anyway, the student center is very modern and open-space, which was nice. The new Sangren Hall also has a new, bright, open-air feel. Most impressive to me was the landscaping between the buildings, which made for a great picture when it finally stopped raining. WMU campus is very wildlife friendly in general -I was fortunate enough to see some deer between the dorm buildings a few years ago.

Large, angular pools of water flowing downward from one pool to another, surrounded by green plants, flowers and university buildings. The sky is overcast.

Unfortunately I was only able to stay for the first one and a half days, but I enjoyed what I did see. It was nice to be in person among colleagues again and to see what’s happening in the field.

I suppose I should start posting if I ever want this blog to grow. Perhaps I should get some baggage about writing off my chest before attempting to write about anything else. I have a complicated relationship with writing. On the one hand, as a historian, I’m no stranger to it, and I’m pretty good at it, if I may say so, judging by the consistently high praise I’ve received from my colleagues. On the other hand, I’ve never considered myself a “writer,” because I’ve rarely done any sort of writing that was not an academic hoop or accolade. I’ve always admired academics who have the confidence (and time! where do they find the time?!) to branch out and write about non-academic or ac-adjacent things. I’ve always felt that I don’t have the time -I have “more important” things to be writing- or anything interesting to talk about. Only in the past few years of my mental health journey have I come to recognize the deep anxieties that that lack of confidence emerges from -anxieties that I am already well on my way to working through, and I guess this blog is part of that. I want to learn to be a little more versatile, spontaneous, and confident in my writing.

Even my academic writing has been hobbled by anxiety in several ways, and I’m hoping this blog helps with that, as well. I’ve always been the kind of writer who tortuously edits as he writes, reading over each sentence a dozen times to get just the right rhythm and sense. I think I wasted many nights in college perfecting small assignments when I could have been writing something more creative and enjoyable. I always felt, in my anxiety-ridden way, that every minute not spent on my coursework was a possible point lost or an embarrassing mistake missed, and that I just didn’t have it in me to do anything else. I became a good writer, yes, but an extremely slow and weary one, and I don’t think I can pursue a career of publishing at the current rate. It has taken me this long to realize that writing is like a muscle, and that, counterintuitively, if I want to do it fluidly, I need to do it frequently -and imperfectly. Perfectionism is my biggest enemy in all of this, so I hope to make the occasional short, sloppy post without having a heart attack, and that will be progress.

And battling perfectionism means ending this entry right here when I’ve made my point and resisting the urge to make it “complete” with some other insight. I don’t know what I’ll write about next, but I’ve set aside a “blog journal” to write down ideas as I get them. It was a huge help writing this first entry, so yay for planning!