Gillian Polack's Blog, page 103
August 22, 2013
gillpolack @ 2013-08-23T07:35:00
Today's I'm blogging about dreams. Not even very exciting ones. You may want to just skip to someone more interesting.
Not much sleep and carrying enough pain to make for colour meant I not only had many dreams, but I woke up with a dozen rattling my brain. Threaded throughout was the point that, if people would only let me finish what I was saying, they would hear something important. Just before I woke I had the words right, and I nodded to myself, but I never knew if the people round me got how critical the nuance was. It wasn't important that I didn't get the response. What was important was that I'd said what needed saying.
What my audience mostly tried to make me say was that "In the Middle Ages this exotic thing happened/didn't happen" as an answer to someone's rather unlikely claim. They also pushed me into other things, all equally counter to what I was trying to get out. What I was actually saying was that histories written during the Middle Ages were unlikely to contain information that supported my students' argument. In other words, I was dreaming (in French) of someone who was arguing something highly improbable, and I was being duly careful about the nature of sources. Terribly Gillianish. Also terribly Gillianish was everyone correcting me before I was finished, getting precisely the wrong conclusion. What's different between my dream and real life is that in my dream I managed to say what had to be said.
All this is normal messages-to-self and not worth reporting. What I don't get is why I was dreaming in French. And why I didn't have nightmares about printing last night, for the last thing I did before bed was have lengthy arguments with my printer. We came to a compromise, my printer and I, and the crucial stuff was duly finished. As am I, now.
Not much sleep and carrying enough pain to make for colour meant I not only had many dreams, but I woke up with a dozen rattling my brain. Threaded throughout was the point that, if people would only let me finish what I was saying, they would hear something important. Just before I woke I had the words right, and I nodded to myself, but I never knew if the people round me got how critical the nuance was. It wasn't important that I didn't get the response. What was important was that I'd said what needed saying.
What my audience mostly tried to make me say was that "In the Middle Ages this exotic thing happened/didn't happen" as an answer to someone's rather unlikely claim. They also pushed me into other things, all equally counter to what I was trying to get out. What I was actually saying was that histories written during the Middle Ages were unlikely to contain information that supported my students' argument. In other words, I was dreaming (in French) of someone who was arguing something highly improbable, and I was being duly careful about the nature of sources. Terribly Gillianish. Also terribly Gillianish was everyone correcting me before I was finished, getting precisely the wrong conclusion. What's different between my dream and real life is that in my dream I managed to say what had to be said.
All this is normal messages-to-self and not worth reporting. What I don't get is why I was dreaming in French. And why I didn't have nightmares about printing last night, for the last thing I did before bed was have lengthy arguments with my printer. We came to a compromise, my printer and I, and the crucial stuff was duly finished. As am I, now.
August 21, 2013
gillpolack @ 2013-08-22T12:16:00
Thank you
tegels
! I just received the mail. It had in it something I really rather desired and was expecting to wait a few years til I could get to York to obtain. Thank you!
On the way out to the letterbox, I was thinking that one of the reasons it's difficult being a singleton and over a certain age, is that there aren't so many little pleasures (no one to smile at or hug, for instance), so the big things of life have to do double duty. The post, with its lovely package, reminded me that friendship cuts into this being alone thing and provides the most joy at the most unexpected times.
Today is now officially a good day, even though it's a relatively high pain day and outside is bleak. And I have a new cookbook to read! Fortunately, it's just on lunchtime and I am just between tasks.
tegels
! I just received the mail. It had in it something I really rather desired and was expecting to wait a few years til I could get to York to obtain. Thank you!On the way out to the letterbox, I was thinking that one of the reasons it's difficult being a singleton and over a certain age, is that there aren't so many little pleasures (no one to smile at or hug, for instance), so the big things of life have to do double duty. The post, with its lovely package, reminded me that friendship cuts into this being alone thing and provides the most joy at the most unexpected times.
Today is now officially a good day, even though it's a relatively high pain day and outside is bleak. And I have a new cookbook to read! Fortunately, it's just on lunchtime and I am just between tasks.
August 20, 2013
gillpolack @ 2013-08-21T15:42:00
Today's class was rather special, even in the annals of my Wednesday classes. Let me tell you some of the reasons why.
Every now and again, a student produces a work that gives me a clear idea of how they see themselves in the class and how they see the class. This one was created as a possible part of our Mental Health Week activity, and my student gave me an extra copy, just for myself. I don't want to put it online, for it's not my copyright (though it will probably be freely available to Canberrans as part of Mental Health Week this year) but I am glowing contentedly. It's not that the student says nice things about me (though he does, very nice things), it's how he sees the class and the work everyone does, both separately and together. It's not your typical student evaluation, and it's one that I shall treasure.
In class itself, I worked off more of my ire concerning pocket bigotry by teaching my class how to unpack those nasty little epithets that are going around, and how to use them in characterisation, and how to get rid of stereotypes from their own writing. They now have some writing techniques to counter the epithets that get flung at them and to write more complex characters into their tales. I also taught them about unicorn chasers...
Quite a bit of the rest of the time we spent discussing Fabianism and why Frank Harris is not a reliable witness for the life of GBS. We talked about HG Wells' pamphlets, Oscar Wilde's art lectures, Beatrix Potter's work in the Lake District and much more. It appears that my students have quietly moved on in their reading and have reached the stage where they're ready to talk about it.
Every now and again, a student produces a work that gives me a clear idea of how they see themselves in the class and how they see the class. This one was created as a possible part of our Mental Health Week activity, and my student gave me an extra copy, just for myself. I don't want to put it online, for it's not my copyright (though it will probably be freely available to Canberrans as part of Mental Health Week this year) but I am glowing contentedly. It's not that the student says nice things about me (though he does, very nice things), it's how he sees the class and the work everyone does, both separately and together. It's not your typical student evaluation, and it's one that I shall treasure.
In class itself, I worked off more of my ire concerning pocket bigotry by teaching my class how to unpack those nasty little epithets that are going around, and how to use them in characterisation, and how to get rid of stereotypes from their own writing. They now have some writing techniques to counter the epithets that get flung at them and to write more complex characters into their tales. I also taught them about unicorn chasers...
Quite a bit of the rest of the time we spent discussing Fabianism and why Frank Harris is not a reliable witness for the life of GBS. We talked about HG Wells' pamphlets, Oscar Wilde's art lectures, Beatrix Potter's work in the Lake District and much more. It appears that my students have quietly moved on in their reading and have reached the stage where they're ready to talk about it.
gillpolack @ 2013-08-21T08:16:00
Yesterday I took time out to see Elysium. There were things that I liked about it and things I didn't, but I'm all discussed out. I'm mostly discussed out because of the roles of women in the film and because of some of the judgements made about culture and advantage in the film. It's like a giant political poster. I would have liked something a bit more nuanced, I think, but it's an action film and so my feeling is mostly wishfulness. Mostly. There's one side of my feeling that is anger at our current zeitgeist.
I wrote a long, long explanation of some tweets I got yesterday. They were antisemitic and I found myself explaining why.
It's better to look bullies in the face, but sometimes it's not possible to do this. I used to talk very publicly and directly about these issues. I stopped because, when I was trying to explain my PTSD to those who asked, some assumed that any attack on me or on people I knew were my fault, because I was Jewish.
Every time I think about it, I go into rant mode and have to pull myself up, because in our current world, we're laying that kind of blame far more easily than we have. Nevertheless, lack of physical safety is not something I want to experience again. I'm conflicted.
In this one instance, the bullies have won (temporarily).
They've won because of the reactions of some people who should know better, not just the "it's your fault" mob, but the occasional person who thinks it's a good idea to play mindgames or get involved in a theoretical argument about these things. And it's the fault of a public language that is accusatory and of anyone who doesn't question the group mentality.
It's not enough to question the insults hurled at people we know (Zionists, in this particular instance- I do happen to know some Zionists and they have nothing in common with the people mentioned in that tweet) but we also need to question those hurled at people who we think are not like us. Recently I've seen a vast number of tweets hurled at whites and at feminists, because apparently it's OK to hate as long as one hates from a position of suffering.
This hate blinds us to the suffering of others, but it also makes me very unhappy. How can I open a dialogue with people who hate me for the colour of my skin, for being a feminist, for my religion, for my fiends' politics, for being an SF fan, for being an historian? I have done this by mostly ignoring the hate (because it doesn't start with these people - the labels are the product of very complex history) and looking through to the person hurling those accusations and finding out who they are and what they're like. Most of them are very wonderful human beings who are doing good work. Their goodness is obscured by this accusatory, nasty environment.
I wonder if it's a product of the need to be brief? On a texting and twitter culture. I think that's a factor. It's not the whole thing, however. I'm hitting the visible iceberg, but there's a vast and complex remainder of that iceberg just out of sight.
This is not a good time and place to be different. So many people are scared, even if they have no need to be. Some of them are defending Castle Privilege with all the insults in their vocabulary.
I think the quick spillover into long screeds on my blog is due to a new factor in my life. In all our lives. Elysium picked up on it. It's easier to react in an extreme fashion right now. It's easier to hate. It's easier to love. It's easier to forget that the person standing opposite us is just like us: a human being.
It always has been far easier to assign something nasty to a group, when, really, it's the individual you should be hating. The tweet demonstrated that Rupert Murdoch may well be a bigot, but it also demonstrated that the writer of the tweet is undoubtedly one. I find this impossibly sad. I have spent so much of my life unravelling hate, and now we get a simple change of times and it's starting at the very beginning.
I can't help my friends deal with the bigotry against them if I'm drowning in bigotry against me. These attitudes don't grow in isolation. We need to tackle them together.
I wrote a long, long explanation of some tweets I got yesterday. They were antisemitic and I found myself explaining why.
It's better to look bullies in the face, but sometimes it's not possible to do this. I used to talk very publicly and directly about these issues. I stopped because, when I was trying to explain my PTSD to those who asked, some assumed that any attack on me or on people I knew were my fault, because I was Jewish.
Every time I think about it, I go into rant mode and have to pull myself up, because in our current world, we're laying that kind of blame far more easily than we have. Nevertheless, lack of physical safety is not something I want to experience again. I'm conflicted.
In this one instance, the bullies have won (temporarily).
They've won because of the reactions of some people who should know better, not just the "it's your fault" mob, but the occasional person who thinks it's a good idea to play mindgames or get involved in a theoretical argument about these things. And it's the fault of a public language that is accusatory and of anyone who doesn't question the group mentality.
It's not enough to question the insults hurled at people we know (Zionists, in this particular instance- I do happen to know some Zionists and they have nothing in common with the people mentioned in that tweet) but we also need to question those hurled at people who we think are not like us. Recently I've seen a vast number of tweets hurled at whites and at feminists, because apparently it's OK to hate as long as one hates from a position of suffering.
This hate blinds us to the suffering of others, but it also makes me very unhappy. How can I open a dialogue with people who hate me for the colour of my skin, for being a feminist, for my religion, for my fiends' politics, for being an SF fan, for being an historian? I have done this by mostly ignoring the hate (because it doesn't start with these people - the labels are the product of very complex history) and looking through to the person hurling those accusations and finding out who they are and what they're like. Most of them are very wonderful human beings who are doing good work. Their goodness is obscured by this accusatory, nasty environment.
I wonder if it's a product of the need to be brief? On a texting and twitter culture. I think that's a factor. It's not the whole thing, however. I'm hitting the visible iceberg, but there's a vast and complex remainder of that iceberg just out of sight.
This is not a good time and place to be different. So many people are scared, even if they have no need to be. Some of them are defending Castle Privilege with all the insults in their vocabulary.
I think the quick spillover into long screeds on my blog is due to a new factor in my life. In all our lives. Elysium picked up on it. It's easier to react in an extreme fashion right now. It's easier to hate. It's easier to love. It's easier to forget that the person standing opposite us is just like us: a human being.
It always has been far easier to assign something nasty to a group, when, really, it's the individual you should be hating. The tweet demonstrated that Rupert Murdoch may well be a bigot, but it also demonstrated that the writer of the tweet is undoubtedly one. I find this impossibly sad. I have spent so much of my life unravelling hate, and now we get a simple change of times and it's starting at the very beginning.
I can't help my friends deal with the bigotry against them if I'm drowning in bigotry against me. These attitudes don't grow in isolation. We need to tackle them together.
August 19, 2013
gillpolack @ 2013-08-20T13:59:00
I'm due a five minute break. If I had an hour to spare, I could've spent it with a very nice neighbour who has very fine taste in art. She's retired, and she wanted me to come round for a cuppa this afternoon. She doesn't get the working-from-home thing and put quite a bit of pressure on me to drop everything and come round. I can't, though, for my day is very full from about 3 pm, which means I only have *until* 3 pm to do everything else.
M is not the first person who has got aggrieved about me not being on call seven days a week because I work from home. None of these people would ask someone to duck out of a government department job to spend an hour chatting, but there's usually someone who expects this of me. The only people I allow to do it are my mother and two very close friends, and they ring, which means I can get housework and stuff done while I chat.
I freely admit that I'm a bit of a workaholic. I really like goals and I really like meeting them in plenty of time.
I also love spending time with friends.
The two only mix when the friends make a quick call or email and say "When's a good time?" or suggest a couple of possibilities. I can very seldom do "Coffee, now." When I do it, it's usually because a friend has a personal crisis. I can never afford to make a habit of it, because, honestly, there aren't enough hours in the day already.
Today I'm working through the fallout from yesterday. I did achieve stuff yesterday, but they were all straightforward things, which means my work until 3 pm is complex and interesting, but requires focus. It doesn't require having to explain yet again that I am working and can't take time off.
I'll be honest, I can manage ten or fifteen minutes off, or I can manage an hour over lunchtime. But this is not the sort of time that retired neighbours regard as polite. We may live in the same block of flats, but we lead very different lives.
The phonecall interrupted the short story that had to be finished, but I got most of it down, and I really need to attempt tough love with it. It's wildly underwritten, though the shell, I think, is good. I can't finish it til tomorrow, I suspect, for my next hour is in the land of the non-fiction, which is wilder and weirder.
M is not the first person who has got aggrieved about me not being on call seven days a week because I work from home. None of these people would ask someone to duck out of a government department job to spend an hour chatting, but there's usually someone who expects this of me. The only people I allow to do it are my mother and two very close friends, and they ring, which means I can get housework and stuff done while I chat.
I freely admit that I'm a bit of a workaholic. I really like goals and I really like meeting them in plenty of time.
I also love spending time with friends.
The two only mix when the friends make a quick call or email and say "When's a good time?" or suggest a couple of possibilities. I can very seldom do "Coffee, now." When I do it, it's usually because a friend has a personal crisis. I can never afford to make a habit of it, because, honestly, there aren't enough hours in the day already.
Today I'm working through the fallout from yesterday. I did achieve stuff yesterday, but they were all straightforward things, which means my work until 3 pm is complex and interesting, but requires focus. It doesn't require having to explain yet again that I am working and can't take time off.
I'll be honest, I can manage ten or fifteen minutes off, or I can manage an hour over lunchtime. But this is not the sort of time that retired neighbours regard as polite. We may live in the same block of flats, but we lead very different lives.
The phonecall interrupted the short story that had to be finished, but I got most of it down, and I really need to attempt tough love with it. It's wildly underwritten, though the shell, I think, is good. I can't finish it til tomorrow, I suspect, for my next hour is in the land of the non-fiction, which is wilder and weirder.
August 18, 2013
gillpolack @ 2013-08-19T13:04:00
Yesterday was wonderful until dusk. Then today started.
Today is one of those high-pain low-air days, where the universe keeps throwing negatives at me and reminds me that good things are not my lot. A few years ago, days like this were so common that giving up was very tempting. Now, I have days like yesterday to balance them with. I still don't get a lot of good things, but I get enough to keep me going.
If I can get through til tomorrow afternoon, I'm seeing a movie with a friend (for I saw the shift into Spring and realised the pain side of it would hit me this week) then talking about the Beast in the evening with K, then I have my Wednesday class, all of which is good.
I have to deal with 26 hours, though, and going to bed and sleeping it off isn't an option. Nor is doing anything that requires much heft, for one of the causes of the miseries is not being able to breathe properly. I hate asthma. I really do. I also hate it that I'm waiting on information/decisions from fourteen different parties in fourteen different locations to do with fourteen different things that are of great importance to me, but obviously not to them. Make that fifteen: I'd forgotten one. And that's not counting the friends who said they'd get in touch about this or that, or the ones that have borrowed books and not yet returned them.
What I've been doing on days like this is filling boxes and sorting papers and making things move even if the world was against it, but I've run out of boxes.
Also, I have furniture to sell. Bookshelves and big loungeroom furniture. If I end up unemployable, then my books will have to go in less spaceconsuming shelves, and the furniture I have right now is more suited to a house than a flat. So I need to sell my wine cabinet, my wall unit, my coffee table and some bookshelves. Then I can have dinner parties again, which will make me happier. If the world's going to be so d* negative, it's my bounden duty to change the world.
I have no idea how to sell furniture. I hate selling things, to be honest (I don't like the whole money thing - I've been every single position on committee except treasurer). I quite possibly need some help.
Today is one of those high-pain low-air days, where the universe keeps throwing negatives at me and reminds me that good things are not my lot. A few years ago, days like this were so common that giving up was very tempting. Now, I have days like yesterday to balance them with. I still don't get a lot of good things, but I get enough to keep me going.
If I can get through til tomorrow afternoon, I'm seeing a movie with a friend (for I saw the shift into Spring and realised the pain side of it would hit me this week) then talking about the Beast in the evening with K, then I have my Wednesday class, all of which is good.
I have to deal with 26 hours, though, and going to bed and sleeping it off isn't an option. Nor is doing anything that requires much heft, for one of the causes of the miseries is not being able to breathe properly. I hate asthma. I really do. I also hate it that I'm waiting on information/decisions from fourteen different parties in fourteen different locations to do with fourteen different things that are of great importance to me, but obviously not to them. Make that fifteen: I'd forgotten one. And that's not counting the friends who said they'd get in touch about this or that, or the ones that have borrowed books and not yet returned them.
What I've been doing on days like this is filling boxes and sorting papers and making things move even if the world was against it, but I've run out of boxes.
Also, I have furniture to sell. Bookshelves and big loungeroom furniture. If I end up unemployable, then my books will have to go in less spaceconsuming shelves, and the furniture I have right now is more suited to a house than a flat. So I need to sell my wine cabinet, my wall unit, my coffee table and some bookshelves. Then I can have dinner parties again, which will make me happier. If the world's going to be so d* negative, it's my bounden duty to change the world.
I have no idea how to sell furniture. I hate selling things, to be honest (I don't like the whole money thing - I've been every single position on committee except treasurer). I quite possibly need some help.
gillpolack @ 2013-08-19T07:34:00
A few minutes ago, someone tried to send me a fax. I guess it proves that sending a fax to a phone number doesn't work, not even at 7.27 am. It also proves that it's quite possible to wake up in a hurry after a bad night.
That isn't what I want to know, however. What I want to know is "Why?"
That isn't what I want to know, however. What I want to know is "Why?"
gillpolack @ 2013-08-18T23:01:00
I've got just one box more of fiction, and then all the fiction I don't need for near-future research or comfort (unless I've gone wildly wrong) will be in my storeroom. I've leaped ahead and started on my non-fiction tonight, though, because it's a night when things are going wrong around me. Small things creep out of the woodwork and annoy me until I give up trying to do work or have fun - I just drift about, wondering why some evenings are like this. And so I'm using up today's crop of boxes (only five, but every box helps) to start thinking about what non-Medieval non-fiction I don't need for the next three years.
This is a fine exercise, and I'm enjoying it. I have many projects out there on the desks of others, waiting for this paper or that paper or maybe for even an initial decision. I have my core projects (the ones I speak about here) that I will do regardless, and then I need to allow for all these others. And each and every one of them requires some of my library.
In about ten boxes time, the non-fiction in my library (as opposed to the much larger collection of non-fiction outside my library) will be sorted and it will make it much easier to do any of those projects. And if I get a green light for something, I will find the actual work much easier, for thinking about the projects and what they need is part of the task of putting books in boxes. And if I get a red light, I might just find some more boxes.
All this sounds complicated, but it isn't. I still need more boxes though. Lots and lots. I knew how many books I had in theory, but I didn't realise how bad the doublebanking and stacking was for doing work with those books. The sooner this is done and my books are all re-organised (for I think I can classify according to type of work, which would be very cool), the sooner I will be able to move ahead.
I was supposed to be writing tonight, and I started, but the things-going-wrong affected the writing and I decided that tomorrow is sufficient unto the task. I have one more box to fill. Then I can face the lack of TV, DVD, video download on my computer and that I have run out of hard copy novels to read for Aurealis.
This is a fine exercise, and I'm enjoying it. I have many projects out there on the desks of others, waiting for this paper or that paper or maybe for even an initial decision. I have my core projects (the ones I speak about here) that I will do regardless, and then I need to allow for all these others. And each and every one of them requires some of my library.
In about ten boxes time, the non-fiction in my library (as opposed to the much larger collection of non-fiction outside my library) will be sorted and it will make it much easier to do any of those projects. And if I get a green light for something, I will find the actual work much easier, for thinking about the projects and what they need is part of the task of putting books in boxes. And if I get a red light, I might just find some more boxes.
All this sounds complicated, but it isn't. I still need more boxes though. Lots and lots. I knew how many books I had in theory, but I didn't realise how bad the doublebanking and stacking was for doing work with those books. The sooner this is done and my books are all re-organised (for I think I can classify according to type of work, which would be very cool), the sooner I will be able to move ahead.
I was supposed to be writing tonight, and I started, but the things-going-wrong affected the writing and I decided that tomorrow is sufficient unto the task. I have one more box to fill. Then I can face the lack of TV, DVD, video download on my computer and that I have run out of hard copy novels to read for Aurealis.
August 17, 2013
gillpolack @ 2013-08-18T16:03:00
My day has so far included Mudgee labneh, Orphan Black, ancient rock, an Antarctic tent, friends and a bit of gentle strolling in the sun. It's only 4 pm, so I've still got a great deal of the day to go. I suspect I shouldn't finish the day with quite as much food as I began, however. Also I suspect that the evening will include some work.
August 16, 2013
gillpolack @ 2013-08-17T16:34:00
My loungeroom has a new rug. It's only temporary, and it's a bit slippery. It's about ten years worth of paper that needs recycling.
I had been thinking about seven giant folders full of my past. I realised that, if I sat down and worked my way through it, a lot of it could go. About partway through the first folder, my paper-sorting had changed from "How can I get rid of this" to "How can this be useful?"
Most of my paper is still going into the recycling bin, but three types of material are most definitely staying.
One is handy if I end up somewhere that's dealing with university cutbacks. It's a collection of public documents and training documents from my early public service days, when I was the quite junior person working on changing the public service office structure entirely. I am a handy person for such things, and I had completely forgotten it. Reducing the papers to the most useful reminded me of what I did and what I learned from some rather amazing people. That was a time of big reform in the Australian Public Service, and the structure we put into place mostly stuck. It was an extraordinary learning process, being the most junior person on the implementation team. That was my second year in the public service.
My first year was even better, from a writer's point of view. By selectively choosing the papers from the coursework I did in my orientation year, I've now developed a nice little set of papers that can be used to develop seminars for writers on how to think about administration, policy, legislation, admin law. This sounds mundane, but it's one of the matters missing from so many novels - an hour of training will get rid of so many idiot errors and make paper-based cultures look real. Just one hour. Two days would be even better, of course, so I kept papers I can use to jig my memory for either. I now want to teach it, so that I can make it fascinating for those who think it's boring. That would be fun.
No-one in Canberra wants this, of course, because Canberra has a high level of understanding of this material. Every city has its own idiosyncrasies, and understanding of government structures and economics is one of Canberra's. This is why I never thought of these aspects of world-building apart from historically - I and most local writers automatically factor them into our worlds. Anyhow, now I'm geared to teach it, should there ever be a demand. I had a year's intensive training (four different government departments, plus lots of coursework) and then nine years of work as a (mostly) policy wonk. It's a relief to know those years are useful.
The third group of papers are to do with courtesy in French. Most of my papers from my French Grad Dip are gone (onto my floor, right now) but those topics haven't dated and will be useful, again, to writers. Just the other day I talked about salutations and signing off in English with a writer, so it's cool to have that kind of information at my fingertips for French. There's some other material, but that's the cool aspect of the French papers.
In terms of culture, the way people send letters and what they say before, during and after are so crucial as ways of pointing to subtleties. That's another training session I'd like to teach writers, someday. How to develop these systems and why they're important. What the formal trappings of a letter says about the culture and the personality of the letter-writer and the recipient and the relationship between the two. This is part of the showing vs telling thing, but not one that gets discussed very often. This is why I kept those papers.
I was supposed to be writing this afternoon, but I've come down with some low-level virus, and turning my past mess into future usefulness was a good strategy. I don't know how I'm going to get all this paper into the recycling bin. Five very full arch-lever folders are now empty...
I had been thinking about seven giant folders full of my past. I realised that, if I sat down and worked my way through it, a lot of it could go. About partway through the first folder, my paper-sorting had changed from "How can I get rid of this" to "How can this be useful?"
Most of my paper is still going into the recycling bin, but three types of material are most definitely staying.
One is handy if I end up somewhere that's dealing with university cutbacks. It's a collection of public documents and training documents from my early public service days, when I was the quite junior person working on changing the public service office structure entirely. I am a handy person for such things, and I had completely forgotten it. Reducing the papers to the most useful reminded me of what I did and what I learned from some rather amazing people. That was a time of big reform in the Australian Public Service, and the structure we put into place mostly stuck. It was an extraordinary learning process, being the most junior person on the implementation team. That was my second year in the public service.
My first year was even better, from a writer's point of view. By selectively choosing the papers from the coursework I did in my orientation year, I've now developed a nice little set of papers that can be used to develop seminars for writers on how to think about administration, policy, legislation, admin law. This sounds mundane, but it's one of the matters missing from so many novels - an hour of training will get rid of so many idiot errors and make paper-based cultures look real. Just one hour. Two days would be even better, of course, so I kept papers I can use to jig my memory for either. I now want to teach it, so that I can make it fascinating for those who think it's boring. That would be fun.
No-one in Canberra wants this, of course, because Canberra has a high level of understanding of this material. Every city has its own idiosyncrasies, and understanding of government structures and economics is one of Canberra's. This is why I never thought of these aspects of world-building apart from historically - I and most local writers automatically factor them into our worlds. Anyhow, now I'm geared to teach it, should there ever be a demand. I had a year's intensive training (four different government departments, plus lots of coursework) and then nine years of work as a (mostly) policy wonk. It's a relief to know those years are useful.
The third group of papers are to do with courtesy in French. Most of my papers from my French Grad Dip are gone (onto my floor, right now) but those topics haven't dated and will be useful, again, to writers. Just the other day I talked about salutations and signing off in English with a writer, so it's cool to have that kind of information at my fingertips for French. There's some other material, but that's the cool aspect of the French papers.
In terms of culture, the way people send letters and what they say before, during and after are so crucial as ways of pointing to subtleties. That's another training session I'd like to teach writers, someday. How to develop these systems and why they're important. What the formal trappings of a letter says about the culture and the personality of the letter-writer and the recipient and the relationship between the two. This is part of the showing vs telling thing, but not one that gets discussed very often. This is why I kept those papers.
I was supposed to be writing this afternoon, but I've come down with some low-level virus, and turning my past mess into future usefulness was a good strategy. I don't know how I'm going to get all this paper into the recycling bin. Five very full arch-lever folders are now empty...
