Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

I've really dropped off the map with this blog in recent years due to a few major life circumstances, including miscarriages and job loss. I figure I will record my journey in a series of blog posts, poems, and short essays as I attempt to navigate my issues and write more for the blog. I have been continually working on academic articles and chapters along with editing fiction and hopefully working on my own book proposals for an edited collection and for a possible music/film book. I always have so many ideas, but my follow-through has been lacking.  Here are my proposals and goals for 2024: 1. Rework my Green Day 33 1/3 proposal in hopes of publishing some of it. Perhaps, I might put it on the the blog like I did with my Drive-By-Truckers Southern Rock Opera attempt a few years ago. 2. Write and publish a CFP on my favorite television show of the past few years for a possible edited collection. 3. Finish the two chapters for edited collections that I am currently working on. 4....

Sometimes I wonder why I write since I seem to be running into more roadblocks these days. I put many hours into a project even though it might never reach fruition due to someone else's disinterest or rejection. Worse yet, I might never finish the project because I am tired or do not know how to complete it. The obstacles keep mounting whether they are external, such as committee meetings or more papers to grade, or internal, especially self-doubt and inability to commit to ideas. I seldom have writer's block, but I often lack the commitment to do the hard work of editing or revising.  Writing is a commitment that sometimes feels too much like a compulsion because I often find myself writing when I should be relaxing. I want to write in my free time, but I also want to sleep, watch television, or listen to music. Instead, I try to push through, but my job and other commitments have made it increasingly hard to do so. There are only so many hours in a day is a truism that does ...

Over the past few years, I feel like I have begun to slowly unravel. I feel like I lost part of myself that I might not be able to reclaim. I am far more tired than I feel I have the right to be. But I also have never learned how not to be hard on myself. A colleague told me recently that "you are always so hard on yourself. You have to learn your self worth." Nothing could be truer, but it is hard to rediscover my value because of my own negative thoughts and self-deprecation. All the stress from my PhD studies is finally catching up with me. When I was working on my dissertation, I never had that much time to worry because I was so busy trying to get it done. Now I feel even busier. I teach five classes and have five tutoring sessions on top of it. I am working on an article that does not seem to be gelling quite like I want it to, and I hope that I can eventually catch up on sleep. My stress management seems to be failing me. I get home after a busy day at work and pre...