I have committed enough prose here this year that the process of looking back was actually helpful for me – and I hope it surfaces some things that you might find of interest. As a matter of practice, I throw some things up on the blog so I’m reminded of them later – a kind of outsourcing of the brain. There’s this, for instance:
Looking at age in convents is an interesting bit of demographic thinking that must have impacted the lived experiences of the sisters, even in an unenclosed convent like Thalbach. (Talbach? Thalbach? I’ve spent so much times in the documents that I forget how I came to decide which spelling to prefer! Yikes!) Anyway, if you’re curious about monastic experience, you can look at the data; if you’re more of a newbie to understanding the monastic life, this post on Initiation into Monastic Life gives some orientation to the topic.
Another thing that was fun this year was thinking about inner voices and outer voices; Margery Kempe is a good example of that:
This is a topic that still calls to my heart, especially since it’s the “bright shiny distraction” from the writing I’m doing in the moment, which is very much in the trenches shoveling of small details of practice based on nuances of text in the world of commemorations. But I digress.
The single most popular thing I wrote was another one of those exploratory pieces, thinking about archaeology of Chaco Canyon alongside the topography of Vorarlberg churches. It asks what it means to build for the ear, and not just the eye:
I’m glad this post “resonated.” (I’ll see myself out…) Seriously, though, that question of how sound moves through space is really interesting, and if it doesn’t wind up fitting the book outline, it probably needs to move into article form. AFTER the book, self, AFTER the book.
Then there’s the question of writing process. I’ve written several posts about writing this year, a kind of meta-reflection on one way to get it done. I don’t believe in the One True Path to productivity – you do you – but I do believe we’re all a bit better off if we share our tricks for how to make that writing, and particularly scholarly writing, work. For example, how do you let things go and get to your primary focus? Enter, stage left, the research question:
This tool is helpful; it provides focus and helps winnow down to the core of an argument, particularly if your “just one more” meter is set as high as mine.
Then there are the practical details. This list of links is one I’ve pinned, for obvious reasons, so if you’re needing a quick where-to-go in the manuscript and incunable space, this is my first attempt to get things out of my overburdened bookmarks folder and up into navigable space. Kinda like the old web. Nostalgia as tool?
Sometimes you post when your passions take you away. “In Praise of Janky Translations” is both about what I think important in a push-back against perfection, and about how translation and text prediction occupy very different spaces. It captures my voice pretty darned well, I think, and captures a moment of tech outrage that is my contribution to the “STOP PUTTING AI IN EVERYTHING” conversation.
I’m not anti-AI in the big picture, but it clearly, CLEARLY, does not belong in the translation tool in the form it took here. No, no, no. Just don’t.
And last, but not least, I’ll end with a post that reflects a practical exercise, one that still sits in my heart as one of the better things I’ve invented this year. I decided to make a gratitude list, with as many items as I am years old. It was a good exercise, and one I recommend to you as we close out the year that was.
Happy New Year, everyone! May the words come...
