Three days after the most recent and probably final due date for this chapter. I'm torn between feeling completely inadequate, wondering what the editors think of me (that I'm a flake?) and other things. Like, when a professor retires and they are written about as having "written over 100 article, chapters and essays..." do they think back to each one as their baby...their carefully nurtured and pruned bonsai tree? Do they think about the hours that each took, the time away from families that its completion exacted? Do they perhaps wonder if what they wrote will ever be read by anyone for whom it will really matter or is it enough to know that they themselves wrote about it and at the time, it mattered to them?
Or maybe it's just me. Maybe other academics don't think about the human cost and value of what they've written at all--maybe they just DO IT, figuring that any sense to be made about the work, any ruminations about the signficance of it all will be something to save for those days in the nursing home when they're staring out the window into the black beaded eye of a bright red cardinal perched on a branch. Perhaps at that moment all they will think is "what a pretty bird." Or, if they're lucky/unlucky, just "bird."
Perhaps I should get to work on this chapter, as if my family's medical insurance depended on it.
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