Assorted Backstory I

My name is Blurt. I live and work in Altville, a town of bikers, punks, and vegans, as well as the requisite solid citizens, and home to Research One, the institution with which I am affiliated and to which I will refer as Business Model University, in homage to the recent mandate that large universities are not here (merely) to educate the masses, but (rather) to produce some return on the money states spend on them.

I am a semi-professor. By this I mean that I am a TA. A grad student, in other words. But wait. I took time out last year from my non-lucrative TA gig here at BMU to work full time at nearby Greek University. There I was an Assistant Professor, with office supplies, a retirement plan and everything. (Hey, I have an MFA. Theoretically it’s a terminal degree.)

My year of adventures on the non-tenure track is up, and now I’m back at BMU, ambling toward a PhD and waiting for my partner to finish his diss. and hurry up and get a job already.

We live in a tiny house, with our coy dog and our fat cat. We do not have a washer and dryer. We do not have a dishwasher, or central air. We do not have call waiting, and if we are talking on the phone to our mothers, it means our friends cannot get through. We do have computers, three of them. They are easily the most expensive items in our house. (Of course, the competition for that distinction is not stiff: the second-most-expensive are the mattress and box spring, $200/piece. )

We do have a wireless hub. We do have homepages. We do have broadband.

This year we are on the move. Partner is on the market. Competition in the field is stiff: he’s heard back (a rejection) from one place, where his application was one of 350.

Still, Partner has some pubs (no articles: a review-essay-thingie, an encyclopedia entry, art reviews and poems), a crapload of teaching experience, and an interdisciplinary dissertation with its fingers in some sexy pies. We’re hopeful. Kinda.

We love Altville. But I am tired of living in a flyover state. In a red state.

Me I’m between careers. I have an MFA. I’d love to stay home, run on coffee and bourbon, and write a book. Or try to.

Instead I pick anxiously at my PhD (exam stage, between directors) while I teach classes and do correspondence grading, the better to string together the money with which to make the car payments on the (wonderful and too-expensive) little car I bought last year when I was a Prof. I’m in the same field -- nearly the same specialty -- as Partner, so it’s in my interest to cultivate my differences. Consider alternate career paths.

So I daydream. I research on the web, surf, and read blogs like crazy. I answer my e-mail like a mad thing, when I’m not avoiding it out of procrastination or guilt. I fantasize about time spent on the computer that has nothing whatsoever to do with responding to students or grading.

I have a lot to say. I like to type. So I started a blog.