Today has been a long but productive day — unlike yesterday. I went to work only to find that they didn’t have a free computer for me. Finally, Val (the new VP of production) told me I could use Regina’s because she was in a meeting, but I quickly determined that I’d be wasting my time there. Using someone else’s computer like that is akin to cooking in a stranger’s kitchen. And I knew I’d never get anything accomplished if I stayed there, so I did indeed just come home. I’ve overcome the “distraction factor” of being at home, so I do actually accomplish things while working here.
Today I worked on Neusner’s first two chapters, and Whit’s latest. I still feel a little uncomfortable having someone write the biggest chunk of the work (a total of twenty-eight chapters) who is just beginning work on his Ph.D., while Neusner has written over five hundred books and taught for many years. But that’s really not my concern, and I’m glad I don’t have to worry about it. I worry about it nonetheless, but it’s not my responsibility to worry about it. Anyway, Neusner’s first chapters are quite good — a little more academic than Whit’s work, but I don’t know if it’s inaccessible to undergrad students. Granted, a lot of it will have to be simplified, but it’s the wording/phrasing that will be changed (breaking sentences into two or three separate sentences) and not the actual content, I think.
I’ve begun reading my third Berger book, Invitation to Sociology. He has a chapter subtitled “Alienation and Biography.” In it he discusses how we view our biography depends on our perpective and what’s important to us at that given moment in our lives. Since, as Henri Bergson pointed out, even memory is a matter of interpretation, then it’s clear that even for ourselves we don’t have a definitive, normative biography. Things that seemed important as we did them (like talking to Deanna on the YOU trip) are later subsumed under the category of “irrelevant.” “As we remember the past, we reconstruct it in accordance with our present ideas of what is important and what is not” (56).
In this light, what we call “maturity” is radically different: “Maturity is the state of mind that has settled down, come to terms with the status quo, given up the wilder dreams of adventure and fulfillment” (55). What I see as “maturity” (i.e., having given up on my dream of being a musician) I would have seen as a pathetic lack of confidence as a “youngster.”
I have to decide what I want to do with my life; I have to make a decision regarding teaching — do I teach at the high school or university level? I don’t think I would mind the high school level if I could teach writing, but I don’t really care to teach literature at all. But I can be highly creative and sneak in bits of philosophy, sociology, and such. I re-read my letters from class IV and the overwhelming sense I got, even from them, was that they felt I should continue being a teacher because I’m good at it; I agree. So what to do?