Brain Dump ... kinda whiny

Hi everyone,

The computer's online, so this is a quick brain dump before a whole bunch of random stuff comes squirting out of my ears mixed in with grey matter.

First, as you know, I've spent the last few days in a state of enforced idleness.  I'm not doing well at it.  I've killed some of the time with writing a review of Donald Kagan's book on Thucydides, and I settled (and then accidentally overwrote) a 12 page paper on some issues of evidence law.  And I've been trying to get out a few more ideas on city and rural perceptions of time without getting anything much of value.

Secondly (and not unrelated to the first), I'm incredibly sick of the sound of my own voice.

Thirdly (also not unrelated to the last two paragraphs) I've discovered I have no desire to be self-employed.

Fourthly, because things are a bit up in the air workwise, I can't scurry over to Louisiana to see my girls.  Hopefully an opportunity to do so will present itself (I think I see how that can be made to happen, as a matter of fact), but it can't be done in the immediate future.  Unfortunately, 3G access is so poor here that skype is out of the question.

Fifthly, ...  No, I'm not saying that one.  Save that one of the next historical projects I'd like to experiment with is the long term cultural effects of societal trauma.  I have a theory that culture operates to perpetuate the fallout from socially traumatic events.  Hence, the vast trauma of the First World War was passed on to the children of the generation that experienced it though cultural habits and mores, and on to their children too.  I speculate that it its effects persisted up to the 1970s. Similarly, I speculate that the same mechanism sees my parents still living out the experience of the Great Depression, despite not having had first-hand experience of it.

Sixthly, I do rather wish Dad didn't talk so much, and insist on saying the same things again ... and again ... and again ... and again ...

Seventhly, how the Hell is it that being with your parents returns you straight to the age of 15 years?  I'm thirty five, have had an at least adequate career, and notwithstanding some jolts, pretty well had my life sorted out.  How is it that being back with family does your head in like this?

Eighthly, I know I could go back to Melbourne, but aside from broadband access there's not actually a lot there for me.

Ninethly, I'm actually feeling a bit ho-hum about reading other people's blogs at the moment becuase so many of them seem to be people who actually have their shit together.  Although I may be setting myself up for failure there: for some reason most of the blogs I read are those of women, and the female of the species, as a rule, tends to be in a much more shit-together-status than the rest of us.

Well, nil desperandum.  Time to pull on the boots and keep going.  Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more!

More later.