Hi,

This week was the opening week at the university where I teach. Lots of the meetings were done through Zoom because of concerns about the delta variant. Still, on Wednesday, the administration had everyone (faculty and staff) come in and be physically present on the campus for an all-day event.

During the in-person event, I heard lots and lots of people say, "It is so great to be back together!" But the way they said that seemed overly enthusiastic and therefore inauthentic to me. (However, I might be projecting my own feelings of anxiety about returning to 100% in-person teaching when Covid continues to be very much a part of our lives.)

What I think I'm seeing is people (mainly those who have a financial interest in Covid being over so they can resume doing the in-person activities that generate their revenue) wanting Covid to be over so much that they will just act like it is over even if it is not over. Be that as it may, I think the repressed emotions around resuming too quickly will come out over the next few weeks.

Of course, I always knew that the day would come when society really opened up and started to be less cautious about Covid. I just hoped that that decision would be made when there were fewer signs that Covid is still a going concern.

To be clear: I hope I wong about all that I said above, and that Covid is actually less of a problem than I think it is! That would be great.

Anyway, I've got a few updates for you this week.

-◉-

Imageography:

I watched this YouTube video where Alec Sloth talks about a book of photos by William Eggleston. Sloth says that Eggleston was "photographing democratically," which meant that he treated that everything as photographable.

I liked the idea. Then I wanted to try my hand at photographing democratically. Here is one image from that exercise. (I have a few other bits of my attempts to play with photography organized under the tag imageography.)

Psychoanalytic Practice:

This week was taken up with lots of work on the soon-to-be-launched private practice, where I'll be seeing analysands, patients and doing supervision for people who are into psychoanalysis. I'm currently seeing several analysands/patients, and I have room for just a few more.

The site for the practice will launch very soon.

Podcasts:

Along with getting the practice stuff going, I've been organizing stuff for the start of the semester. This has resulted in almost no time for podcasting. Be that as it may, I have two episodes of my podcast lectures researched and planned out. I'm going to try to get to at least one of them this weekend.

InForm 050 still needs to be mixed and edited.

I've got an interview with Peter Rollins scheduled for 8/26, which I'm very excited to do!

Writing:

No writing got done this week. None. Way too busy to write.

I missed the daily writing practice that I got going with ◎ Drafts. However, it is also good to take time away from something to let the creative nutrients build up again.  

Fin:

That is it for this week. Till next week, take care & make some glorious mistakes!

-N