this is a jetsetter music letter

Saturday night over a drink with friends, I quickly listed off everywhere I had been in the last few months and was going in the next few months:

October: Little Rock, Arkansas (Feminism(s) and Rhetoric(s) Conference)
December: San Francisco and Europe (tourism, friends)
February: East Lansing, Michigan (campus visit)
March: Seattle (friends), Pittsburgh (friends), State College, PA (campus visit)
April: New Orleans (CCCC), Long Beach (ACLA), possibly Columbus, OH (campus visit)
May: New Hampshire (friends)

I was told I was suddenly a jetsetter. There’s never been a year in my life before that has been marked by so much travel. My environmental footprint is huge — like I escalated from a little less than a brontosaurus to a brachiosaurus (but at least I’m still a plant-eater). Three national conferences in a year as well, which means that I should be writing for the conferences right now instead of blogging.

I thought Jeff Rice’s words today seem pretty apt:

Conferences, after all, are a lot like eating too much as a tourist. You keep going and going and going….even when you are full. Or full of it. Whatever.

Apt at what, I am not sure.

The title of this post is from Morningwood’s “Jetsetter” on their self-titled album. The song is, as most songs are, about love and sex. Apt here, as well, if we think about the love of writing, the erotics of writing. I’m writing cause I miss you / and I’m writing cause I’m stuck. “Jetsetter” is also about being away from home and sleeping around and then wanting to come back home. I feel like it’s been so long since I’ve worked on “academic” work for extended periods of time (meaning research outside of this blog) that I feel like I want to come back home to it… How to get unstuck? Write this post and then dive right in.