An Antidote for Avoidance

Maybe there are other antidotes for avoidance. There’s no cure. Avoidance is persistent: it keeps coming back. That’s not your fault; recurrence is just part of its logic. Avoidance will keep trying to shut you down. It will prompt you to defensively close. A regular writing habit must begin in kindness and become a matter of course. There will always be something more urgent to do. We all have pressures, demands, long to-do lists. We have obligations to family, students, and colleagues; we have errands to run, dinners to make, dishes to do—not to mention grading, course prep, lectures to…

A Slow Leap

In 2016, when my two years as a postdoc in the environmental humanities at UCLA ended, I jumped off that post-ac cliff—and found that I was still walking on the ground. Unfortunately for my vitamin D levels and fortunately for my finances, that ground was a sidewalk along a well-potholed street in Indianapolis rather than well-heeled Westwood Avenue. Since then, my spouse and I have been making a life here, and I’ve been living at least one of my dreams: working one-on-one with writers whose research and scholarship I admire. I’m starting this blog to share the ways of approaching…