Shoulda Woulda Coulda

We have a new cat bed for upstairs, as the one in which Hans passed away last week clearly still smelt of him, and/or death, even after multiple washes, and the surviving two refused to use it. The problem is that it’s a design which Hector can get his teeth into, literally, and drag it off the bed onto the floor – and even down the stairs. We thought he had abandoned this habit, or we would have bought a different type, but clearly he was just waiting for conditions to change to resume his plan.

Plan? It’s always tempting to start doing Heath Ledger impressions when it comes to Hector, who might not chase cars but definitely chases squirrels, but in this case at least there does seem to be a consistent, long-term goal. In the past, he hasn’t always taken the bed all the way down the stairs – but he doesn’t try to take it anywhere else. And often it remained at the bottom of the stairs, but several times he’s dragged it across the sitting room, and one attempted to pull it into the cat box, an old wooden chest into which we cut a couple of side entrances. This is the Lair, where Hector takes empty cat food packets to chew on – one suspects he soukd he gnawing bones and/or issuing demands to western governments from the controls of his giant space laser if he had the opportunity – and it’s hard not to conclude that the long-term goal is to upgrade the accommodation by adding a bed, practical issues of getting a three-foot bed through a six-inch hole notwithstanding.

Please note, in the interests of historical accuracy, that this is a photo from two years ago of a different cat bed being pulled downstairs by Hector.

I started thinking about this yesterday morning, waiting for the alarm to go off after being woken by the thump of the cat bed onto the floor, partly because the big commitment for that day was a departmental meeting about developing individual research strategies (obviously in the hope that this will traenslare into a collective effort to keep bringing in the external funding). Again, considering my own career, I’m inclined to respond: Do I look like a man with a plan? I’m just a dog chasing random ideas, though to be fair I do have some idea what to do with one if I catch it… The idea of drawing up a five-year strategy seems absurd, in a world where resources are not instantly available but have to be hustled. Maybe if your research activities are limited to individual reading and writing it could make sense to have a clear strategy and milestones, but even then life is likely to get in the way.

On reflection, though – and it’s with this insight that I could make a constructive contribution to the discussion as a more experienced colleague, rather than risk sabotaging the Director of Research’s exhortations – the problem is not with having a plan per se, but with its linearity. Planning for five years’ time makes no sense if it’s conceived as a single goal, because too much depends on what happens previously – rather, it needs to be thought of as a decision tree, or a Soiding Doors scenario. If this, then this; if not, then that.

Concretely: this time last year I was still pushing to get a major project application together on the Politics of Decadence; I think it was late March that I decided it had to be postponed by a year, and instead I would at least get an application for a Leverhulme fellowship on Marx and Antiquity submitted (this was a version of earlier bids, so easier to get done). At that point, the plan became: if not Leverhulme, then Decadence application in 2024; if Leverhulme – the situation I’m now lucky enough to find myself in – then push Decadence back by another year, as it would make no sense to start it earlier. And further down the line, it all depends on whether the Decadence bid is successful first time, or needs to be reworked.

Or, something else comes along in the meantime. The Marx and Antiquity Project includes writing a book that was first conceived at least a decade ago, but which repeatedly fell on the wrong side of critical if/not gates – above all, if I hadn’t got funding to pursue a project on the Reception of Thucydides, which then occupied my attention. I suppose that I had enough of a plan to try to get back to it eventually – but not to the extent of ignoring something new that seemed like a good idea, the Politucs of Decadence thing (including an application that wasn’t for the project I had in mind but was for a connected idea, with someone I wanted to collaborate with, that happened to fit with a specific funding call).

Actually, Marx should count himself lucky; there are other projects and book ideas that could have been the next thing if circumstances and funding decisions had been different, that now seem unlikely to be revived any time soon (I must remember to look back at a post I wrote a few years ago about the various books I wanted to write at some point, to see how much the list has changed). Considering how much I floundered after my PhD in trying to develop any sense of direction, it’s quite a privilege to have more ideas than I have time or energy to develop; it is also probably an advantage, that I am not too utterly committed to just one projectm such that I’ll be devastated if it never works out, and have a greater possibility of responding to new opportunities, simply because I have more embryonic projects that might be relevant to something.

Alternatively – as I have remarked of myself before – this is all about an irretrievably butterfly mind, always thinking that the next flower looks as if it might have more delicious nectar than the current one. Or the Siamese cat who creates plenty of disruption, and threatens to chew holes in a brand-new bed within a week, but never gets anywhere close to fulfilling his ultimate goal because he’s got distracted again. But I prefer to believe in the ultimate possibility of fitting a metaphorically three-foot-wide research plan through a six-inch opening…