wasted

Its getting close to that time of the year when things start to slow down - students are finishing off their final lectures and the department shifts into final exam mode. The final push to mark and submit marks and then, the academics in my department relax and wait for the year to pass. For me, this period is increasingly representing a time when I write in the open. When no one is watching me. When no one in very interested in doing anything much and I sneak-in my writing. Make it mainstream, instead of that thing I try to do on a Thursday away from the office or on Saturday mornings and Sunday afternoons. But, unsettlingly, in plotting forward towards this period, I've had to take stock of the past year. It's depressing as I feel I've done so little intellectually engaging work. I have so little to show for the year past. My first post-PhD year. On my desk sits some of the books I bought over the past 10 or so months. Many haven't been touched, thumbed through. Some I've only managed to read a few pages, maybe a chapter. Reading is meant to be the lifeblood of what I do as an academic, what defines me, what I actually enjoy. And yet I feel as if I haven't even succeeded at it. It's easier to justify not having any writing outcomes, but no reading? Well that's another matter.