I have, unfortunately, volunteered to do a presentation on Friday on some materials and a paper I've written on Meredith Monk – foolishly, insanely foolishly, given that I must finish the Buffy article for presentation in Liverpool Tuesday, given that part of Saturday is lost to a birthday lunch, given that it was entirely and loonily gratuitous to volunteer in the first place.
I'll cut my losses, of course, and minimize changes to the work I've already done, and play a series of videos, which is really all they want anyway – but I even, and thoroughly, resent the loss of the three hours that the entire seminar will take from my day.
Volunteering for such a non-essential academic event is the kind of dysfunctional move that has colored a lot of my career; in the 1980s I was frantic to do things, anything – write program notes, manage dance companies, sing in any ensemble that would have me. Some of that was about trying to get into some artistic profession that I could survive in (and it's lucky I finally turned back to academe; I would be so unsettled, so desperate at any of those professions on any ongoing basis – they aren't protected enough, there isn't enough free time attached to a salary; and besides there are too many events to manage, not enough professional space to read books).
Then in the 1990s, although you would think I would have grown past the desperation of Doing Anything Anyone Might Want, I still did many presentations, many conferences, many little things as opposed to big ones; something I actually counsel my students against – although, admittedly, presentations of new material drive one to write papers (or fragments of them), they don't give the necessary reflective space to write anything larger or better.
All, of course, as anyone could see rooted in a general world view of Never Enough – this is the world of the negative narcissist, the perpetually insecure and inadequate, the professional barely concealing the panic he/she feels at being found out as not good enough, as not having done enough, to deserve their position of authority. It's unfortunate that the contemporary academic world encourages such an attitude, and can even create such an attitude in those who didn't already have it; but I have always been a prime victim of such ridiculous worries, as I was already exactly like that.
Well, at least it means people around the world know my name. But it's silly – and the impulse to volunteer was the impulse of a younger, sillier man, one who shouldn't be on the verge of fifty.
All right then, we'll make it all symbolic: since this presentation will occur on the last day before I am actually fifty years old, I'll try to make it my farewell to the desperate wish to please – on Saturday I will drink (not alcohol, I'll need to do work after that celebratory lunch, but let's say Chinese tea) to the prospect of a future where I only do things that actually lead forward, that are more satisfying and enduring.
Despite history, despite habits, I will magically become the – comparatively – wise one of fifty years....
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