Friday, November 11, 2005
(8:50 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
Friday Afternoon Confessional: Be Still and Know
I confess that I'm fairly confident that some kind of job situation will work out -- in the worst case, I'm prepared to go back into total Social Shutdown for a month or so. I confess that I'm toying with the idea of running an experiment to see how long a circular balance transfer scheme among all my credit cards would be sustainable without hurting my credit rating -- how long I could convince the credit card companies to exchange money among themselves (thereby meeting minimum payment obligations) without any input from me.
I confess that I'm not going to AAR, but I fully intend to submit a paper proposal of some kind for next year.
I confess that I'm doing fairly well in maintaining that delicate position whereby my dissatisfaction with my scholarly work provides sufficient motivation for me to get off my ass (figuratively speaking -- really rigorous scholarly work only occurs while one is seated), without reaching the point where healthy self-criticism shades into pathological self-loathing and creates a drag on said work.
I confess that The Idea of Prose is now my favorite Agamben book, precisely because it is inconceivable that I should ever be able to pulverize it into a suitable building material for my own work. In this respect, it is the most Agambenian of his books.
I confess that I've had some trouble concentrating lately. I confess that I sometimes prefer to wash the dishes over reading, even when there are like four dishes in the sink. I confess that I found the thorough sweeping and mopping on Sunday -- including such excesses as moving couches, etc. -- to be deeply satisfying in ways I can't fully communicate.
I confess that I take multiple people to the handful of good restaurants I know, so as to cultivate the impression that I have good taste in restaurants.
I confess that I feel that Kierkegaard is something I need to "deal with" -- almost every time I think of an idea for an article to write, Kierkegaard is involved. At the same time, I was more or less consciously putting off reading The Sickness Unto Death until the last minute for class this week.
Ah, my dear readers -- surely you have something you need to confess.
