"You Sure About That?": Where I've Been Since November

A builder working on the ranna ghor (kitchen) at our village home.

I set out at the beginning of November with the intention to prioritize myself over my worries, and the universe replied: “you sure about that?” A few weeks ago, I made a chart of what has been pulling at my attention. It takes up the full 8.5x11” sheet and I’m pretty sure that it could take up even more if I let it.

The whole month, I felt very scattered. I had to concede defeat to NaNoWriMo at around 20,000 words. I went to my family’s village for a few days. I took a 10 day trip to Kolkata for my first time in India. Project As[I]Am released its fall issue, Unpalatable, and submitted a grant application (fingers crossed on that!). I’ve felt alternately drained and guilty that I haven’t been doing enough. If you took a look at my internet history, you’d see a slew of bookmarks for self-care interspersed with those for productivity tips. I’m not quite sure what I’ve been looking for, but I’m devouring advice.

Once I had made up my chart, I started putting things into categories: creating, absorbing, reacting, practicing, and completing. I started noticing some things. For instance, it’s hard to ‘practice’ personal rituals when you’re heavily focusing on ‘completing’ tasks. A lot of my energy this past month has been spent ‘reacting’ to personal circumstances – these events can be positive or negative, but they take up energy nonetheless. Hoping that Kolkata would be something like a reset button, I took some much needed time away.

While there, I started turning on my audio recorder as I walked around the streets. I picked up the sounds of fireworks and drums for puja, people chatting outside of parks, rustling papers in an archival library. And street traffic, endless street traffic.

I’m adding these recordings to the stockpile of bits and bobs that I’ve got lying around. Chronologically, I’m at the halfway point in my stay overseas and my creative output really reflects that. When writing for NaNoWriMo, the middle is the biggest slog for me. Beginnings and endings are deliciously dramatic by comparison. In the middle, I make lists of things that need to happen, but won’t for quite a while. I’ve been sleeping more during the daytime and staying awake at nights. All of it has been gathering and more gathering, as I try to condense my focus into a few larger projects rather than spreading myself thin.

So, if you haven't heard from me in the past month (or several...), then know that this is part of my re-commitment process. There may not be leaves on this tree now, but wait for summer and you'll see!

Academics and Creativity

It is time for me to tackle the double-edged sword that has been affecting me all of my college life thus far: the complicated relationship between my creative and academic minds.

I have devoted myself to academics, which is a major privilege and portion of my daily life. I am lucky enough to be able to learn about such diverse topics as medical anthropology and American literature after 1945. I get to choose based on my interests rather than a rigid course requirements list - a benefit allowed to humanities majors that I take full advantage of. Yet sometimes I get restless.
It is mostly inexplicable, like the desire to pick up materials I haven't touched in a while and put them immediately back down. "Where are you going with that?" I hear the voice in my head say, "You know you have a fifteen page paper due next week." And then I pack away whatever creative impulse I may have had in order to read more source material.
In these instances, I feel as if my academic priorities foreclose upon my creative ones. While I get a proliferation of ideas from all the new things that I'm learning, transferring those ideas into creative expression is put on hold in favor of doing the academic work necessary for that moment. On certain days, it feels like I've left half of myself in the bottom of a drawer or up on a shelf. Waiting is the most common state I am in.

But, while it seem that the marriage of my two minds is an uncomfortable one, I still believe it's a necessary union.
The beauty of putting these two together is most accessible when I am in a writing or drawing course. I get feedback on my otherwise solitary efforts and am encouraged to go ahead with more. I am allowed a space to roll out new material and talk about it. The experience breathes new life into the dusty corners of my creative brain, letting me enter again into a balmy equilibrium.
It is obviously harder to come by when I am taking completely reading courses and am lodged in books, but I value those experiences too. The writer's greatest pastime is to read, of course.

In short, I am torn about how to feel in academia as a creative person. so I am turning it over to anyone who finds themselves wanting to create in an academic setting: does academia stifle or liberate you? Do you feel like there is room for both the creative and academic states of mind? Are there ways they can combine or do you keep them totally separate? Let me know in your comments.

You may also be interested in reading my opinion piece Single Sex Education for Women and Girls.
You can also take a look at my writing.